the rest is just music

Holy fuck....

2010-11-20T07:51:00.000-08:00

...does this blog have shitty writing. It's so pretentious... so novice rock critic... I can't believe this contrived nonsense is actually a product of mine. Why does everything I ever write seem so good when I'm writing it but so fucking obnoxious a month later?

I have a new blog. So far it's not a piece of shit dangling into the mouth of literature:

www.flowersgrowinginagarbagecan.blogspot.com

Enjoy.

James Blood Ulmer - Black Rock

2010-09-11T19:26:00.000-07:00

Hey, how would you like to be FUNKED in the ass? Well if the answ

No, no... that will simply not do. We are all mass-attending, traditionalist, nuclear family suburbanites with strong Christian morals and family values in mind. Allow me to rephrase:

Hey, how would you liked to be FUNKED in the consenting, virginal, recently wed vaginal canal in the missionary position beneath the covers with the lights off with candles lit and procreation in mind? Well if the answer is y

Actually, that whole peel sounds way more condescending than I imagined it would. Sadly, it's been tattooed on the lascivious breast of the internet forever and ever, with no hope for an E-mastectomy in the near future. Or in layman's terms: this entry has been rotting in my post queue for way too long now, and (as usual) my motivation to keep this blog afloat is delicate as a soap bubble, I feel like beginning a complete revision may totally shatter the illusion of will necessary for it's completion. On with the show, then...
[strike]So here today, we are here today to speak ever so highly of the work, today, of [/strike]

I'm tired of strike through text.

Anyway, today, we're not only celebrating the fact that I finally found a cheap copy of this LP in a record store, but the fact that it's an awesome slab of music by pro-badass and talented songwriter and guitarist, James "Blood" Ulmer. Also, is the "Blood" part of his name hyphenated? I feel like it's never a consistent enough notation for me to make conclusion on. Anyway (again), if you're unfamiliar with the banquet of baby makin' grooves James "Pus" Ulmer, his unique mixture of abstract jazz, funk, punk-energy, and caustic rock that both predated no wave and went along for the ride is something I'd recommend to just about anyone who's stumbled upon this blog. Black Rock is the second album in the historical anomaly now known as "the Great Columbia Records Disaster" in which Columbia signed Ulmer for three whole albums of avant-garde jazz/funk/punk nonsense that sold a total of 5 units(!). An unmitigated disaster, indeed.

Shamelessly bunk statistics aside, this is probably Ulmer's most accessible work, especially with the inclusion of the teeth-grittingly "UHN!" laden title track and the cheesy-yet-undeniably-catchy gospel-esque rock ballad "Family Affair", sung by both Ulmer and Irene Datcher. Aside that, the rock and funk fixations are definitely bumped up a notch here from his past work, with Amin Ali slappin' and poppin' the living fuck out of his bass throughout the 9 tracks and Ulmer bringing more guitar bombast than ever. That said, the technical proficiency on display here is still mind numbing, the melodics stil har, the rhythms still poly, and the instrumentals still ripe for gettin' down to.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=C9BSXNIL

I'm not sure if I'd call this his best work, but then... who actually cares what I consider to be his crowning achievement? The important thing is, this, and everything from Tales Of Captain Black to Odyssey are fantastic, and worth tracking down (or downloading considering how difficult most of them are to come by). Actually, everything after Odyssey might be fantastic, too, but I haven't heard them. I know you're too scared to go deep into the twisted labyrinth of cacophony known to some as James Blood Ulmer's back catalog without my stamp of approval, but fret not - I will be with you in spirit.

Can we all agree this would be side splittingly hilarious if I used strikethrough text on that last part?

Sonny Sharrock - Monkey Pockie Boo

2010-08-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

Are my reviews getting too reviewery?

Early in my career as a word alignment artist, I penned a lavishly post-modern review of Sonny Sharrock's 1969 ethereally transcendent debut LP, Black Woman - an timeless snapshot of jazz and flamenco deconstructionism I've become irreparably enchanted by since my discovery (on my own, that is, and before anyone else would even give this stunning record the time of day, ha ha!). Trekking through the remainder of Sharrock's largely approachable and enchanting catalog of soundscapes, I've sdsfg5

You see? That's what I mean by too reviewery. Wordy, self-assured, wiser-than-thou, garbage. And it's an unconscious thing, too. Ugh. Let me see if I can meet up with these pretensions, but at the other end of the spectrum. So here we go: equidistant to the center of normalcy as the above paragraph, just in the opposite direction:

Sunny ShaROCK is KUHra-zy! Lots of wEiRd noises and big ol' screamy AHHHH parts and boop-bop drums going slappety-slap with the woodle wo00dle string thing in the 1st track and oh MY GOD the BEST pa

Maybe both of these are sort of exaggerated a fraction, though.
Alright, that's enough amusement of any kind. We are here to do business like adults. ~~Adult men, to be precise, as women are inferior in every way.~~ In my travels, I've discovered that, much like every artist ever, Sonny Sharrock has a few lame albums in his musical armory; namely Paradise and the super rare follow-up, Dance With Me Montana. The former is slick-as-oil fusion-esque bullshit with big clean-as-a-whistle funk grooves and keyboards providing a backdrop for Sonny to get quasi-nonsensical over and Linda to sing quasi-nonsensically with. It's truly a bizarre release when you consider it's attempted commercialization leaves most of the elements that made the first two unprofitable intact, just smeared with high-gloss resin. Oh, and the latter has a silly painting of Sonny doing a panged Eric Clapton face on the cover. I haven't heard it, actually, but it's probably bad. Alright fine I'll listen to it before I say I hate it.

Monkey Pockie Boo is the cryptically/retardedly titled follow-up to the aforementioned LP, and is a rather different affair, with all the melodic, flamenco-esque guitar flourishes ~~kidnapped, brutalized, and hastily concealed beneath a soft bed of soil and decomposing leaves alongside a highway~~ completely depleted in favor of a rickety mess of comparatively standard free jazz noise bursts. No negative implications, though, because despite it's corresponding "normalcy", it's still what you'd call a classic (because it's really easy to use this as a justification of one's approval) of near comical AGGRESSION. This album will flog you senseless, in other words.

Just like Black Woman, this album is pretty damn short, and frankly, that's the way I typically enjoy my albums - just barely cracking the 35 minute mark. Why? Perhaps my IQ is remarkably low and I get intimidated by double albums half the time. "27th Day" is a hair over 17 minutes, bustin' in dis bitch with a clunky, brooding scrape of the bass punctuated by Linda's wails and most tubular of all, a kazoo/slide-whistle. The moments where the kazoo harmonizes with the upward sweep of Linda's vocals are truly awesome, and provide one of the very few moments of clarity in the album. Unlike most free jazz releases where the band begins by playing a motif, the scratchy bass and the relatively composed vocal emissions are about as close as you get - heck, the band even returns to this "motif" at the songs conclusion.
"Soon" is the real gem here as far as I'm concerned, which begins with an unaccompanied vocal melody that could bust into gospel at any second, but instead slams a crowbar at your head with a startling burst of improv-noise from all involved. The aggression displayed on this song is ludicrous, with the percussion at it's busiest, Sonny's shards of guitar coming across as more blistering noise than fragmented abstractions, and Linda losing the fuck out of her shit all over the place. For 7 minutes! Great stuff, and it makes the closer, a title track, sound like an exercise in restraint in comparison. The two (Linda and Sonny) start chanting, and everything stays relatively grounded despite the frantic percussion. It's good, but I'm tired and don't feel like writing anymore today, so just trust me here.

http://rapidshare.com/files/157508430/Monkey-Pockie-Boo.zip

Sorry for the lame rapidshituponmyface link (seriously, why hasn't the galaxy embraced mediafire?), but I'm not at my laptop right now. Expect a new link, soon. "SO HEY", you interject most rudely, "HOWZ ZHIS STACK UP TO BLACK WOMAN, LOL?" This is probably the more celebrated, reputation-packed affair, but I'd take Black Woman over this most days of the week. Not "any day", since Monkey Pockie Boo is really good. No sir. But most days, sure. Black Woman presented a unique vision that sadly was never expanded upon or even heard by most jazz-wads of the era (as far as I've heard), which sorta blows considering how beautiful, chaotic, and mesmerizing it is as a whole. I'd love to hear more artists meld the flamenco-esque guitar virtuosity with angular, aggressive guitar improv, busy percussion, and such blaring vocalesce.
Sadly, this would never be.

Until I took up the challenge, that is.

No wait, I've never played an instrument.

Khanate - s/t

2010-08-19T10:58:00.001-07:00

It's about time I shared an unusual little personality disorder with you, the presumed reader: annually, if not bi-annually, I slip off my avant-dork coil and recede into the most harmless cache of my music collection - namely, a stew of nostalgia-overloading pop punk, ska-punk, and indie rock. In this exclusive time span, I become what the snottiest of the hipster cognoscenti might consider a music wastrel, jiggling my angsty hindquarters to the emotionally resonant crash-n-scream of The Broadways, Discount (who I actually did a post on), Archers Of Loaf, Lucero, Defiance Ohio, Assorted Jelly Beans, Crimpshrine, Scared Of Chaka, Common Rider, and even a brief encounter or two with fucking Alkaline Trio (I know, shut up).

Now I know what you're thinking: "Steve, who the fuck cares? Why be embarrassed by anything you listen to (except Alkaline Trio, you giant vagina)? Music is there to be enjoyed, not for status" - and you'd be right! There's no reason to be embarrassed by anything I enjoy, but that's what hits me as so fucking strange - it's not that I'm embarrassed to tell people I like this stuff, it's the fact that I DON'T EVEN REMOTELY LIKE half of this music when I'm not in the aforementioned pop punk/ska/folk punk/indie phase. Confused? I am too! There are a handful of artists I flog in these yearly dark ages I would defend any day of the week (The Broadways, Operation Ivy, Discount, early American Steel, Pavement, Boris The Sprinkler, J Church etc...), but then there's the other stuff - the stuff that has no real musical merits that I know sucks ass even when I'm listening to it heavily. This category includes The Lawrence Arms, Doughboys, Fifth Hour Hero, The Lillingtons, This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb, Built To Spill, and a zillion other lame-beyond-comprehension musical nadirs who happen to write a few super catchy tunes in relentlessly stupid fashion.

Why bring this up now? To explain the lack of entries, primarily. I started this blog to detail my adventures in the wild-n-woolly - free jazz, RIO, no wave, ethno-whatever, psychedelic, noise rock, just plain noise, drone, lost gems, etc - while keeping the rest of my library on the sidelines. I'm beginning to rethink this stance, though - why halt entries completely just because I'm not getting a headache from some Brotzmann squawk or Solmania shriek? THINGS ARE GONNA CHANGE AROUND HERE - just not right now, since I'm totally diggin' some Sun Ra as I type this.
Anyway, now that we got that drivel out of the way, let's talk about the album above (way above) - New York's drone/doom juggernaut Khanate's debut. Back in late 2006, I was wading through the gloomy jungle of doom and sludge metal (of which I'd only made excursions into via Dystopia and Man Is The Bastard previously) when I read a largely negative review of Khanate's self-titled debut on Teufel's Tomb (a metal review site I have a history with). It essentially dismissed the record as too slow and too heavy for staff member Double D's to enjoy. Being a sucker for the utmost extremes of any genre, I excitedly downloaded a sample track, the suffocatingly dense and sick-as-a-mutha' "Skincoat" - a near 10 minutes of feedback, disjointed sub-Burning Witch riffery, and some of the most harrowing and utterly disturbed vocals I've ever heard. After the 9 minutes and 40 seconds elapsed, I was fucking SOLD and hurriedly ordered a copy o'er the web.

No surprise, the rest of the album was just as good, albeit far less accessible than the sample track (if you can believe that after hearing it). The guitarwork is the cornerstone here, alternating between crushing, sub-zero BPM riffage, bursts of feedback, passages of echo-y twang a la Hex-era Earth, and even a few malnourished, skeletal, and quiet melodies rendered even creepier by the juxtaposition of a faceless bass growl rumbling in the distance. Pretty much any Khanate enthusiast will tell you the real hook here is former O.L.D mouthpiece Alan Dubin's unbelievably psychotic yelps and sputtering whispers, and I'd have to agree. If you're familiar with the aforementioned grind band's Old Lady Drivers LP, imagine the cartoonish psychobabble elicited at a third of the speed and heavily enunciating quasi-abstract lyrical blurbs of pain, hatred, and unconscious insanity. Throughout the album, little whispered words are looped and distorted to great effect amongst the quieter portions, especially the three-and-a-half minute interlude, "Torching Koroviev". Also, no covers of Eric Clapton's "Cocaine"*.

The 4th track (of five) is perhaps my favorite, albeit not a track I've been man enough to listen to outside the context of the album. "Under Rotting Sky" is perhaps one of the most deadening pieces of music I've ever heard, with the riffage slowing to such a crawl that it forgoes any semblance of melody or rhythm towards the conclusion and edges close to pure, discomforting, abstraction. Alan's crazed exclamations about strangulation of himself and another with a "blanket of you" escalate this track into a number one hit for cocktail parties. Try listening to this album while biking through your quiet little town at midnight. It's funny how vulnerable it can make you feel.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2mhjxunp2lb

Hey, I have a fun idea! To get all Julian Cope/Pitchfork-y for a second, let's make a pretentiously artsy and largely visual interpretation of this album's sound. Okay, here goes: a rundown farmhouse in a barren field. A series of mindless daily endeavors delivered with unhealthy precision. A sole inhabitant falling through a delirium of anti-social anxieties and insatiable obsessions. A corpse redressed and positioned at a dinner table. Self loathing complimenting a god complex. A massive UFO abducting all the world's styrofoam before jettisoning into the nearest star. A single woman breaking the heel off her designer high heels. A sentient pineapple. A boxer accused of

In conclusion, I will never make any money through artistic means in this lifetime.

(*Also, this isn't a wAcKy, RaNdOm, quip, O.L.D do a cover of "Cocaine" on their first album)

Sonic Youth - Confusion Is Sex

2010-08-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

To quote Bruce "The Employer" Springsteen: "a man who turns his back on his blog just ain't no good". As such, I will no wait ju

So yesterday I had a near unfathomably dull and seemingly interminable dream segmented into literally dozens of loosely connected "acts", each of which would require at least one paragraph to detail and one additional paragraph to describe the excruciating levels of boredom associated. It all started with a blindfolded car ride to the envelope factory, when suddenly t

Have you ever taken a dump so tremendous that you craved the cold embrace of an earthen plot? If not, well lemme tell you, mister, the

I think we can all agree that the above are not the most engaging opening lines for a blog entry, and since I have close to nothing interesting to say, let's move directly into the actual content.
As weird as this may seem, I got into Sonic Youth all those years back through a hastily conceived research paper on the New Yawk No Wave scene for an 11th grade English assignment. At the time, I was reveling deep in the world of post-punk snob-rock and spiraling towards it's ultimate artistic conclusion in the fields of punk-funk and mutant disco. No Wave, as it was, became a short lived obsession of mine, and I ended up hording every DNA, Gynecologists, Theoretical Girls, Friction, and Lydia Lunch associated hunk of laughably overserious shit within reach. It wasn't until this brush with research fields of the utmost prestige (ie: wikipedia) that I'd heard a whole lot about Sonic Youth's involvement in the scene, or at least, Thurston Moore's.
Ahem:

The Noise Festival was an influential festival of art noise music curated by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth at the art space White Columns in June 1981. Sonic Youth made their first live appearance at this show. Each night three to five acts performed, including Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatman, Jeffrey Lohn, Dog Eat Dog, Built on Guilt, Rudolph Grey, the Avant Squares, Mofungo, Red Decade, Robin Crutchfield's Dark Day, Ad Hoc Rock, Intense Molecular Activity, Smoking Section, Chinese Puzzle, Avoidance Behaviour, and Sonic Youth.

Good enough context for me to take the plunge. After all, quite a few people consider 1983's Confusion Is Sex the last legitimate No Wave release (which is not something I necessarily agree with, as I'm not one of those elitist dorks who claim that any artist replicating a genre who's scene has long since expired to be illegitimate).
To those who haven't heard this album, there are a number of ways I could describe it, including Glenn Branca orchestrating an indie rock unit. That said, this is a seriously art-damaged mess, severely de-& re-tuned, with odd little inconclusive lyrical quips meandering hazily out of the disaffected maws of Thurston and Kim (who remarkably, sounds even more atonal than she does now). As I recall, there is no studio wizardry or effects pedals at play here (aside the distortion of course), just a mass of otherworldy tunings and heavily prepared guitars that often take on a metallic, clanking, percussive edge.

"So how about the songs? Are they even any good?" you and I say in unison, bored to hell by my increasingly slipshod reviewing style. Well, while this is likely the least accessible material Sonic Youth ever recorded (barring their hit-or-miss live improv sessions and the hilarious TV Shit EP with Yamatsuka Eye), it's the most easily ingested No Wave (or at least No Wave-indebted) album next to The Contortions' monstrous Buy LP I detailed a year ago. There have been far more whacked out takes on the genre, but Sonic Youth had the knack early on for taking these unusual components and crafting actual melodies out of them. Sure, they're often extremely unwelcoming, idiosyncratic, melodies braced with extremely cold 'n' dark inflections, but it not once sounds like the band is just fucking around or even experimenting too heavily. If I can go out on a limb here, the stark, disjointed, make-up of each song sounds a league or two more natural here than the like-minded mid-song passages found in the late 80's incarnation of the band.

To answer that earlier "question"/lame literary device, this is a fucking great album that any fan of the band (or avant-garde rock) needs to check out. It definitely requires some foreplay, especially considering that two of the album's most somber, downright creepy tracks start up the party, but once you let it sink in, it's a super rewarding listen.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MGZTNZ62

For the record, I actually prefer college-friendly Sonic Youth most of the time, so if you need a more eardrum-friendly fix, start at EVOL and work your way up to Goo. BUT OH, wouldn't it be soooo subversive to ONLY like this album? I would trade in so much indie cred for an opportunity to solely enjoy all the albums the world ignores for relatively logical reasons. Here's a potential top 10 list for me to adopt once I reach the apex of eclectic hipster contrarianism:
1.) Gerogerigegege - Showa
2.) Bad Brains - Black Dots (and ONLY Black Dots)
3.) Earth - Extra Capsular Extraction
4.) The Fall - Live In London 1980 (Cassette Version)
5.) John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Wedding Album
6.) ZNR - Traite De Mecanique Populaire
7.) Whitehouse - Right to Kill: Dedicated To Denis Andrew Nilsen
8.) Led Zepellin - Coda
9.) Friction - Live '79 (B-Side ONLY)
10.) Discharge - Never Again EP

3 Newer Hardcore Bands That Make Life Worth Living

2010-07-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

Back at the beginning of June, I trotted to Failuresville on a horse called "Voluntary Unemployment". Since that fateful day, the quality of my everyday life (contrary to logic as far as most are concerned) skyrocketed. My original intent was to travel the country like a vagrant 'til the wheels fell off, but all alone out there, all the beautiful, poetic, aspects of total liberation that drew me in initially faltered to the swelling frustration and boredom that a complete lack of community entails. I suppose I could've viewed it as an opportunity to pack on the character through long bouts of hardship, but fuck that, I've got more character than you could shake a {noun} at. Well, that isn't true, but please give me a break; I'm attempting to coalesce my sub-"gonzo" ramblings ov olde with a writing style that actually keeps my brain from destabilizing into a thin syrup. As such, this blog probably sucks just as hard as usual.

The above was committed to the back of a band flyer with a dried out Bic pen in a span of 20 minutes at my buddy Joe's apartment in which I was fortunate enough to inhabit for a few days before hitting the road again. This particular doodle represents a moment in between a blissful leaving of home and making the distraught pilgrimage back where I finally reconvened with the artistic coil I shuffled off 2 years back in favour of debilitating hollowness. I ask you though, who hasn't fallen victim to the sexy siren we call debilitating hollowness? I'm not particularly proud of the doodle itself - it's pretty standard fare as far as I'm concerned, and done in a shit medium besides - but for whatever reason, it became the harbinger of a long dormant desire to improve and communicate with other art dorks. The next thing you know, I'm pregnant.
~~With a yearning for the art world, that is!~~ ~~HA HA HA HA HA hahjkvbk,,kfudicc9jn davh,w~~

The next thing you know, I actually feel a wind beneath my wings (if I'm using this stupid cliche properly), and decide a mountain of debt is worth expanding my horizons and allowing myself the chance to land a job I could actually derive more than monetary worth from. Either art school will deliver the goods, or I'll be wrong as a denizen of my age range typically is.

Ever since Maryland Deathfest, I've had my favoritism for the more extreme branches of music rejuvenated, and thus, have started coiling up the mountain of slack accumulating from the moment I put away my ratty, membrane-thin, Napalm Death tee and threw on a fashionably tight Pavement shirt. "YEAH, MORE LIEK GAYVMENT", says you, incorrectly.
But anyway:

ITEM THE FIRST:
Weekend Nachos - Unforgivable

With a name bespeaking such incredible frivolity, your irony detector's should short-circuit when this bubbling cauldron of dark, humorless, and brutal, hardcore-and-sludge inflected powerviolence punches you square in the eardrums with it's teeny little balled up fists perfectly evolved to frictionlessly navigate the human auditory canal. Weekend Nachos have been kicking the veritable ass since 2004 (presumably) and have a few EPs and a full length preceding Unforgivable, and recently, an EP of pure sludge proceeding it. It's always nice to bear witness to a band unveiling their best work to date, and Unforgivable is totally on my nonexistent "Top 10 Of 2009" list somewhere. Y'know, floating in the intangible ether. Just like fellow face grinders Iron Lung's Sexless/No Sex "opus" (ie an album I like a lot), Weekend Nachos take this opportunity to further baste themselves in the sumptuous tar prepped by sludge cuistôts Eyehategod and low-end Man Is The Bastard, giving this album a biting dynamic betwixt the powerhouse blast-a-thons of yore, comparatively rockin' hardcore punk, and crushing doom riffery. It's nice to see Relapse Records can still throw a fastball here and there.
Get it here.
Then get it here for cheapsies.

ITEM THE SECOND:
Punch - s/t LP
Punch is a fantastically fresh and tear-ass'ing youth crew damaged powerviolence (or "fastcore" if you want to spat about it) unit with a collective straight-edge and vegan mandate ~~that doesn't really fucking matter because as is the case with most hardcore, the lyrics are smothered to intelligibility by the~~ Nah, I kid, we're all good enough sports to have the lyric sheets tattooed on the inside of our eyelids. Ooh, but there is a song about bikes:

RIGHT OF WAY

Always thought that one is one, but I guess that’s not the case, because now I know two does not equal four wheels. Better step aside- where you’re going is not as important as where they’re headed.
Unless it's metaphorical. The music ist fucking krieg, though. Quite a few bands in this niche sacrifice technicality and songcraft for adrenaline-OD'ing frenzies, but Punch is way leaner than the pack, with bursts of melody amongst the frenetic blasts and intelligently structured vocal delivery, replete with tasteful "crew" shout-outs. Lastly, vocalist Meghan's impassioned, top-of-the-lungs, screaming is god-tier quality and makes me yearn to hear more "goils" (as Peter "The Corpse" Steele may have said) pick up the mic for this brand of intense hardcore. I was planning on seeing them in New Yawk Shitty, but my friends ended up bailing and adding to the canon of grim memories on getting lost at the subway was too much to bear.
Get it here.
Then get it here.
Also, I was kidding before. The lyrics are quite good.

ITEM THE THIRD:
Cult Ritual - s/t LP
Approaching this album was a little intimidating, as up until this point, Cult Ritual have kept their trifecta of top notch releases below the 10 minute mark. The release of a full length - especially regarding hardcore - typically reveals whether or not the band in question is capable of bearing close to their roots without turning into an interminable bore. For a recent example, see Bone Awl's Meaningless Leaning Mess - an album full of quality songs, but bogged down by a running time too great for the number of ideas presented. Fortunately, Cult Ritual can handle an LP's length and then some, as their 4th self titled disc is easily their greatest and most infatuating work so far. Armed with a crusty, warm, production sound and a slew of great riffs, these guys offer up a platter of U.S. style noise melded with scathing hardcore punk, fragments of melody, sound samples, a 3 minute exercise in minimalist drumming, intelligent lyrics, crushing sludge, and enough variation from track to track to lead me to believe these guys could tackle a double LP with little fatigue. Yes, these guys are hyped to shit, but they really are as great as you've heard.
Get it here.
And I'd tell you to buy it here, but apparently it went OOP already. Woops.

Now that this megafuck of a post is complete, I'll see if I can get some shorter, punchier, reviews and uploads out at a greater velocity. Don't hold me to it, though. I didn't use my own links this time around, so if any of them cease to deliver the goods, let me know and I'll stop being a leech and upload them myself.

MDF 8 & bullshit

2010-06-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

Lately, I haven't posted anything. I'm not totally certain I can settle on a singular reason for doing so, but it's somewhere in the murky waters of 9-5 purported apathy, a lack of confidence in my quantification of musical qualities, or some other vague sense of literary dejection. Either way, I've just not been feeling much propulsion behind my fingertips when the keyboard is adjacent. None of which is to say I've been listening to any less music than I ever have - my aural input is consistently huge - it's just that acting as anything but a spectator has felt like a chore recently.
Also, I quit my job, cut all my hair off, and am days away from traveling like a vagrant.
But enough about me, let's talk about
Nah, let's continue talking about me. Last year, two of my friends headed down to Baltimore for the Maryland Deathfest VII - a 3 day "extreme music" festival featuring an all-star cast of punk, grind, black/death metal, and powerviolence groups from around the world, and one of which I was too broke to attend at the time.
Actually, that's bullshit, I could've made it I had the mind to, but at the time, my interest in these particular branches of extreme music sunk down to primordial depths; so low in fact, that I could hardly stomach the idea of spending three full days bludgeoned by the soundtrack to 3/4ths of my high school career. I even performed a mighty cull of my itunes library, eliminating all but a handful of artists eligible for gatherings of the MDF variety.
In retrospect, I was clearly deluded and potentially hazardous to those cohabiting. If you've ever performed such rash processes of elimination, you'll surely get where I'm coming from, as it never takes long to regret your decision and begin a descent into self-mutilation as restitution. I dunno. But hey, check out this gorgeous lineup I could've lived without witnessing for a pathetic 115 dollars:
Pestilence
Bolt Thrower
Asphyx
Napalm Death
Atheist
Absu
Immolation
Brutal Truth
Venomous Concept
Abscess
Birdflesh
Pig Destroyer
Grief
Devourment
Flesh Parade
Catheter
Jig Ai
Margrudergrind
Agenda Of Swine
Crowpath
Kill The Client
Maruta
P.L.F
Despise You
Weekend Nachos
Splitter
What the fuck, man. I was an anus for passing this up, even if just Devourment (who's track record includes one of my all-time favorite albums with Molesting The Decapitated), Weekend Nachos (a fantastic powerviolence band notorious for their spasmodic live performances), Crowpath (at the forefront of forward thinking heavy music), Immolation (perhaps the most consistently excellent band in their gene pool), and Grief (a cranium cave-in of sludge) crawled out of a ludicrously skyscraping tour van pile-up featuring the entire roster. Luckily, I was panned over by this all-encompassing sense of regret shortly after the opportunity was lost to time and ordered tickets to 2010's shindig within a week of the line up's confirmation. Little did I know at the time, everything in the entire universe fucking blows. Everything. There's not an iota of solace to be found across the face of time and space. As such, I discovered my tickets were chilling atop my dresser only after myself, buddy Steve, and buddy Logan exited New York, traversed the entirety of Piece Of Shit (New Jersey, colloquially), signed in at the reception desk, nabbed a few grams of Bolivian marching powder and a cheap trick, and began walking up the block to the festival.
IN SHORT: after waiting in line for at least 15 minutes, wracked with fear that their would be no 3-day passes available and Steve high-fiving the dude from Cannabis Corpse, some true American hero and his buddy shot past us offering up an extra ticket, fellatio was performed, and I entered the festival 100 lbs. of anxiety and self-loathing lighter.
Apparently there was actually a performance the night before the festival officially commenced, but due to our collective ignorance, we passed up Birdflesh, P.L.F, General Surgery, and fuckin' Iron Lung, consarnit. Fortunately, this was just the tip of the 'berg of stationary hydrogen molecules, as the preceding days contained as much ass-blistering madness as one corporeal body could endure before total deliquesence.

The adjacent snapshot illustrates just some of the effects of such exposure to such rocktensity.

(not pictured: concave buttocks from severe hindquarter-boot exposure)

Gorguts - Decent show from a great band. Probably would've helped if we could hear anything during the first half of their set.

Autopsy - Similar fate as the above, but we tunneled through the flesh wall to remedy this. Played the classics to get the honey's bumpin'.

Obituary - Ruled. Illustrated exactly how a live band should sound - amped-up, more intense versions of their studio work. Steve (center) moshed for Satan throughout the duration of the set.

Entombed - Sucked. They played "Crawl" from the EP of the same name, but the remainder of the set was devoted to the shitty powerchord "death 'n' roll" style that dominates the bulk of their releases.

D.R.I. - Sounded great and played some of their best shit, yet we turned in like a bunch of bedwetters. Whatever, I was too sluggish to brave their pit for more than a few minutes anyway.

Asphyx - Fucking killed the shit out of our shit. Mosh pits are especially brutal when performed on the side of a blacktop hill. Even when the material was unfamiliar, the thick, crushing, grooves and the full on blasting made it incredibly easy to get into.

Repulsion - Eh. I dig Horrified, but constant high speed assaults from a great enough distance to totally muddle the sound don't really get the blood pulsing.

Pestilence - Ruled. Stuck primarily to their gritty, crushing, straight-up death metal material with only one or two forays into the proggy sound of their later works.

Eyehategod - One of the highlights for me, which was especially satisfying considering their position among my favorite bands of all time. They played all their best shit, and played it with gusto.

Watain - Caught about 3 minutes of this. Just sounded like humorless, deadpan, melo-black metal to me, but I suppose I wasn't witnessing them in the best window of opportunity.

Incantation - Eh. I love Incantation on CD, but I can't say I remember a second of this one.

Sinister - Weak, lifeless, performance of their later, drier, material. Coulda lived without this one.

Deceased - Considering that I'm unfamiliar with pretty much all but their debut, Luck Of The Corpse, it was rad that these guys played quite a few numbers from said album, being it's somethingsomething anniversary. This one was a lot of fun, and super energetic.

Blood Duster - These guys were fucking awesome. Lots of inflatable shit being throw around (including a giant, smiling, penis) and the introduction: "This next song is about stomping in piss. It's called "Piss Stomper".

Impaled - Decent, but kinda underwhelming considering the hype I read up on regarding their live shows.

Coffins - Really great shit. I spent the show swaying to the crushing doom or full body rocking to the more punkish, up-tempo, numbers.

Capitalist Casualties - THE highlight for me. They played the second to last spot on the third night, so Logan and Steve turned in, unfamiliar with the band. I thrashed my ass off and ended up getting picked up by this monster truck of a man and thrown into a bunch of crusty girls. Fucking awesome.

Gride - High paced Czech grind antics made for a fucking spastic mosh pit. I'd forgotten about these guys, but the show inspired me to track down their catalog again.

Gridlink - These guys are ex-Discordance Axis, and as such, follow suit with the group's final sound niche, but advance the technicality to even more ridiculous heights. Unfortunately, they just sound like an amplified blender live.

Captain Cleanoff - Awesome, tight performance by the absolute best grindcore band running today.

Rompeprop - A fucking party of dumb, chunky, goregrind heralded in with an overlong intro of some goofy Dutch traditional number. A cover of Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild" sealed the deal.

Gorod - Missed all but a few minutes of these guys. Super high musicianship, lower competence in songwriting. Whatever.

Malignancy - Nothing I was too familiar with, but fun nonetheless. More pinch harmonics than Zakk Wylde imitating a laser blaster. Vocalistman brought the giggles.

So hey, that sums up the Deathfest. I hope the stragglers enjoyed quickly skipping over this mess to resume their everyday tasks. Stay brutal.

Meat Puppets - s/t

2010-03-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

You know what song F U C K I N G S U C K S ? "December" by Collective Soul.
However, it must be stated that such a song acts as a rather peculiar variable when unleashed upon the subject (ie my ears). As if introduction of the song induces a powerful, very particular emergence of internal chemicals, I find my larynx, tongue, lungs, and esophagus contort and spasm, and on the gust of my exhalation, an archaic and guttural maelstrom of primitively aligned consonants and vowels clump together and pulse through my gums and out my gaping mouth: "p... p... pantywaists...".
You remember Collective Soul, don'tcha? That agonizingly lame "post-grunge" band from the mid 90's? The one who's slogan was "grungey as a box of wet matches and a flaccid scrotum"?

In conclusion, Meat Puppets' first album.
I know I've toted this as my favorite Meat Puppets album in the past, but really now, how can I make such a claim when their catalog totes such visionary works such as II, Up On The Sun, and the great, yet non-visionary (even trashed) Monsters and Huevos?. Because I'm more unique than the most unique of us. dgvjhvbkdb.
I'm probably too scatterbrained to be writing this right now, ~~but fuck you, I play by my own rules~~ so I must offer up my sincerest apologies, my good sir or ma'am.

(ugh, even that strikethrough text gag was a lazy abortion)

Y'see, Meat Puppets The First is quite pretty much irrelevant to the rest of the band's works (if you exclude the preceding In A Car EP), and instead presents the band as a wildly idiosyncratic hardcore punk band with more sloppy twang than a pubfull of inebriated cowboys. Even this early in the game, Kirkwood was busting with clever riffage and compositional know-how, which fortunately was executed here as haphazardly as humanly tolerable in the midst of a 3-day LSD recording haze - rehearsal style; not to mention the Darby Crash with head trauma, making-fun-of-'tards, vocal style. In a way, it's similar to Flipper's Generic, but the with tight skinsmanship taking precedent over the anchor-like qualities the comparison's bass had beneath the drugged-up guitar slop. I'm honestly having a lot of trouble thinking up any albums that come close to the sound achieved here, so let's just settle on it's uniqueness as a piece that could potentially sit between your earlier Half Japanese, Thrown Ups, and Happy Flowers records (but not necessarily sound like any of those bands).

http://www.mediafire.com/?gq32mgzmyew

All in all, this is one of those rare albums that has to be heard without the band's more "accomplished" works in tow; the 21 sparse minutes of unhinged riff-slop and lunatic wailing teetering ever so gracefully atop the snappy drumming is goddamn ridiculous and makes for a massively enjoyable repeat listen. If you lose focus, just give it another shot - it'll sink in soon.

In conclusion, elephants are the heaviest land mammal.

Kimya Dawson - Remember That I Love You

2010-03-11T15:44:00.000-08:00

For startsies, the film Juno isn't how I found about the music of Kimya Dawson, The Moldy Peaches, or even Antsy Pants. You see, ~~all I care about deep down is the maintenance of my credit as a deeply subversive, blindingly hip outsider who enjoyed certain things "before they were cool"~~ back in high school, I was friends with a lovely little musky-aroma'd, axillary hair-unshaven, veggie-consuming, environmentalist lass with what I can tell now, a lot more maturity than I had at the time (as well as a lot more lofty idealism and conviction, but that's another matter for a more "bloggy" blog than this'un) and a great love of the anti-folk movement. After exchanging a few mix-tapes (that were actually CD-Rs, but I'm a romantic), she finally handed me one filled to the diameter's edge with her favorite Kimya Dawson songs. Being relatively unfamiliar with folk of any suit at the time, I was hooked instantly and proceeded to gobble up everything I could find of her's.

A few months later, the album on the left was released, and I immediately loved it from beginning to end. Come 2007, Juno features a few songs from here on the soundtrack and all the hepcats are shitting themselves over the infringement of their sacred territory. Listening to her catalog again for the first time in close to 2 years, I'm still impressed by what I hear. After the decidedly more hi-fidelity, full sound of 2004's critically acclaimed Hidden Vagenda, Remember That I Love You sounds like a retreat to the minimalism of her earlier works but still pulling the guest-instruments in tow including ukulele, vocal harmonies, mandolin, and chimey, unringing keyboards - all encased in a warm production style that's clean as it is claustrophobic.

Getting waaaay ahead of myself there, but if you've never heard any of Kimya Dawson's material, it's a pretty subdued and bare, acoustic folk sound (no scratched cords) accented by various low-key instruments and sweet, childish vocals bespeaking lots of clever, sometimes abstract, but mostly personal lyrics loaded with cultural references and commentary on the US's socio-political ongoings.

http://www.mediafire.com/?5xmuwmxtyvw

In my mind, Remember That I Love You is Kimya's best album for one simple reason: the songs are all great. Each one is memorable, sonically interesting and digestible, accessible and fully developed. Plus, it aces on a nostalgic level. A few tracks in and I'm sitting on the aforementioned girl's porch assessing our friend's descents into drug abuse and rehabilitation. RIP SNORTIN' FUN! I can see this stuff not being your thing if you're a fan of the more left field crazy shit I post here regularly, but if you're having an identity crisis, check this out.

Also: even if I hated Juno (which I can't say I do, despite it being eye-rollingly stylized indie dork fodder), Ellen Page is adorably boyish and looks sprite as a 12 year old.

(a comment that proved most insightful years later as a gangly, bloodied and battered Steve Hughes was escorted from his shelter in the woods to court on counts of homosexual pedophilia)

Sun City Girls - Dante's Disneyland Inferno & 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda

2010-03-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

Skimming through here, improbability of all improbabilities, I somehow avoided showcasing my love for everyone's favorite triangle of unclassifiable wankmaestros, the Sun City Girls. Dabbling and Wonka brand "Fun Dipping" in everything from improv, free-jazz, ethno-eastern traditionals, lounge sleaze jazz, folk Americana, and whatever else paints a target on itself, the 'Girls has one of the most fantastic and expansive catalogs out there - close to 20 full length LPs, an even greater slew of cassettes, an oodle-point-five of live albums (most of which fly under the Carnival Folklore Resurrection series), a wickerbasket of "7 inches, and a hammock of singles collections (one of which, Box Of Chameleons, clocks in at 3 stuffed CDs and is littered with prank calls the 'Girls made in the 70's (?)).
Anyhoover vacuum, today we're covered 1996's excursion into the uber-epic with the two double-CD full lengths, Dante's Disneyland Inferno and 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda. Unfortunately, like most of Sun City Girls' catalog, they were quick to vanish from the label rosters and the remaining copies made their collective way into the fat-pocketed collector dips. Then, come 2001, Locust Records kindly reissued the duo on monstrous triple LP formats - repressings of the most tasty and extravagant kind. Unfortunately (again), within a year or so, they disappeared back into the ether without a squeak since (like anyone would expect from a small label issuing such a costly, limited audience package).

SO: Movement The First -
Both a major departure from their previous work and an expansion of some of their earliest ideas, Dante's Disneyland Inferno is a strongly dialogue/lyric-cornerstoned album with yakking taking precedent over the tunes for once. There are a handful of full fledged songs on here (and GREAT ones at that), but for the most part, what we have is a mesmerizing collage of sickness, absurdity, and religious mockery delivered by mouth and propelled by background instrumentation. Lots of lounge jazz, screwed-up folk meanderings, bongos, ambiance, and whatever else fits. If you ever found Bishop's lyrics clever on past releases, this is a fucking shrine to these sensibilities, and all gold to it, as it's one of the most consistently disturbing and hilarious recordings I can think of. Plus, it's the return of the wizened Uncle Jim, has a comic adaptation of the song "The Brothers Unconnected", and contains the lines "Is that Prince Albert in a can? Or is it just Prince Albert in your mind?". Brilliant stuff here.

http://www.mediafire.com/?y0yo3mnndzh

THEN: Movement The Second -
330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda. Poignant. Deep. This is the perfect counterpart to the talkative aforementioned, as it's a monstrously epic music focused release with but a small handful of decipherable lyrics to be found. Presumably Dante's... parasitically drained this'un of mouth-jive. This is apparently considered to be the quintessential Sun City Girls album as it sounds more like a retrospect of the band's entire career rather than a singular vision cooked up for one release. Intriguing, no? The first portion of the album is made up of polished actual songs in the vein of the first 4 LPs, while the second half is a loose, beautiful mixture of ragas, free-jazz, and improv, including the hypnotic epics/epic (depending on whether you own the CD or LP version) "Ghost Ghat Trespass" and "Sussmeier"; the former being an incredible raga piece with Eyvind Kang on violin accompanied by the 'Girls drum 'n guitar antics, the latter being a huge, rattling improv that gets better on subsequent listens.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wnk2i2nnyck

Apparently, according to Richard Bishop, these two releases were supposed to be a spiritual follow-up to the notes and sentiments exhibited on their first handful of releases, which is pretty clear if you've heard the bulk of their work. Sadly, drummer Charles Gnocher died in the past few years, putting their career to an end. It's hard to imagine how much losing your bandmate of 20 years must suck, but Rick Bishop is still performing under his name today and offering up a slew of great albums. Summed up, these are two albums you need: two masterpiece triple albums from one of the best bands out there.

Stretchheads MEGAPOST

2010-02-28T17:24:00.000-08:00

OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE:

PART 2 OF THE NEWLY ESTABLISHED "MEGAPOST SERIES"

(patent pending)

So alright! Let's get this gravy train of lucrative endeavoring 'a chuggin'. Back about 10 hundred trillion seconds ago, I made a big-ass post about Scotland's Dawson in an attempt to make accessible a giant stew of fantastic releases rendered virtually impossible to acquire in their original formats (or unoriginal formats, at that... the Cheesemarket compilation released on Gruff Wit is just as off grid as the LPs it contains!). Dawson were part of an incredible regionally-relative scene back in the closing years of the '80s and early '90s made up of heavyweights like De Kift, Whirling Pig Dervish, Archbishop Kebab, Dog Faced Hermans (who stand strong as one of my all-time favorite bands), Badgewearer, Mug, Keatons, and today's rodeo sweethearts, 87' to '91's (the) Stretchheads.

While the above list contains a wide range of sounds and styles, Stretchheads still end up sticking out like ~~a clown's brutally defiled corpse laying just off the shoulder of I-80 with~~ a sore thumb in an implied sea of upturned thumbs. Instead of dabbling in funk-punk ala Minutemen/Pop Group like Whirling Pig Dervish and Dawson, anarcho or folk and free jazz aesthetics in the Dog Faced Hermans' case, these guys seemed to wrap up their Big Flame/Bogshed fanship in a whacked out, sped-up, silliness the Boredoms were championing simultaneously, littered with samples, effects, and electronic dickery of all varieties. As to whether they were even aware of the Boredoms' existence at the time I'm not so sure, but it's a hard comparison to avoid.

Anyhow, the band's debut LP Five Fingers, Four Thingers, A Facelift, And A New Identity is a bit different from the rest of their catalog with it's seemingly powerviolence-timbered, bass-heavy bleats of raw hardcore speed and aggression with militant, rolling drums. Definitely tough on the ears, but a great disc nonetheless. In the following years, 3 EPs that showed a much cleaner, less speed-oriented version of the band emerged which amalgamated to their swan-song and one of my all-time favorites, Pish In Your Sleazebag - a raucous epic of silliness, squealing vocal upchuck, great songwriting, and lots of tape-edits and sound manipulations.

Sound good?
On with the share!

1.) Five Fingers, Four Thingers, A Facelift And A New Identity LP 1988

http://www.media fire.com/?1iyy5eo3jgz

2.) 23 Skinner EP 1990

http://www.mediafire.com/?zthiuim340d

3.) Eyeball Origami Aftermath Wit Vegetarian Leg EP 1990

http://www.mediafire.com/?cn2eemfzzrj

4.) Barbed Anal Exciter EP 1991

http://www.mediafire.com/?ww4mmzzdgay

5.) Pish In Your Sleazebag LP 1991

http://www.mediafire.com/?gkgdeizidww

Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman

2010-02-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in previous entries (I think), I'm tunneling through the vast, dark, jungle of free jazz wackiness - the apparent truest showcase of black musical expression (as well as a trend Miles had no trouble shrugging off in favour of music that doesn't clear banquet halls in under 30 seconds). Hey did you catch the metaphorical use of "dark" and "jungle" in tandem with sentiments for black musicians in that last sentence? Dial 3 if you'd like to paint me a racist. Dial 4 if you're aware of the phenomenon known as 'unfortunate coincidences'.

Bullplopage aside, let's just say it's... challenging to find a foot hold in the murk of free jazz at times. There certainly is appeal, as I've found a lot of enjoyment is derived purely at the sonic force of these musicians, but for all that and a jar of dimes, Sonny Sharrock's '69 debut is in-fucking-credible. A total mindblower here, as well as a perfect balance of melody and blistering improv chaos, with wifey Linda Sharrock screaming, howling, and even singing all over this bad boy. The percussion is pounding and clattering away neat little rhythms and falls into the painfully abstract while the piano dips in and out of nonsense, complimenting Sharrock's fast picked tunefulness and improv alike.

As far as I can tell at this point, the ideal form of free jazz dips it's fingers into the traditional, but always reverts back to the sanity-damaging improv. No damages to Brotzmann and his particular vehicle - it's definitely a vision I enjoy - but man do the more traditional moments compliment the improv (and vice versa!).

Hey, did I mention how much this album rocks? 'Cause it's the bee's knees AND tibia. "Black Woman" sways and shrieks, "Peanut" clamours and smashes, and "Bialero", "Blind Willie", and "Portrait Of Linda" are all just beautiful. Reeks of hyperbole, but I could seriously see this album working it's way into an all-time favorites list some day. Totally awesome stuff.

http://www.mediafire.com/?mydzozye2my

Goma & The Jungle Rhythm Section - Rhythm And Breath

2010-02-24T09:42:00.000-08:00

Going for a post record this month!

I've been pretty much artistically devoid lately (and then some), but fortunately good ol' music and the inane, uninteresting ramblings she imparts with me keep this blog turd afloat. Before we get to that album on the left, though, lemme tell you about an album tying my knickers in a troop-leader impressing knot - Joanna Newsom's new full length, Have One On Me; a godblessed TRIPLE ALBUM of new material. What other modern artist can you think of released a 3XLP in recent years? I know it's already leaked (and released in stores, too!), but with my iron will, I'm holding out til' I can acquire it in it's most prim and prose incarnation - wax. This'll mark my 4th album exceeding 2 discs, with the other two being Sun City Girls' Dante's Disneyland Inferno and 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda, as well as Bastard Noise's truly monstrous 5XCD(!!) Our Earth's Blood IV (which I'll be covering in a future entry).

But enough about ridiculous excess, let's focus on that enigmatic album in the corner. To be honest, I don't know much of anything about these guys (and can't really find anything, either), so I'll keep this short. Goma & The Jungle Rhythm Section are apparently a side project of the band's leader and didgeridoo player, Goma, with this being the first of currently 2 full length albums. Urm... here:

In the 1998 Arnhemland Barunga Didgeridoo Competition, Goma received The Northern Land Council prize (judged by Galarrwuy Yunupingu), surprised audiences by being the first non-Aboriginal to be recognized. Since that time, as a solo player, session musician, and band member, he has steadily increased his audience by consistently striving to innovate and expand his musical horizons.

...that was posted on the JPOP Lover blog, and is only available information I could find about this dude in English. The music itself isn't much easier to describe, though... it's tribal. Very rhythmic and pounding, likely featuring lots of homemade percussion (again... "likely")with the didgeridoo warbling in it's earthy tones all over the record. It's all instrumental, and while I wouldn't call it "danceable", it's definitely moving. But ENOUGH weak descriptors: this stuff kicks some supple ass. It's certainly not the most varied, but it's got a lot of punch, and if nothing else, is a perfect oddity for your collection. Czech it:

http://www.mediafire.com/?zehmmmomudm

The Pop Group - We Are All Prostitutes

2010-02-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

I'm afraid this blog's got an expiration date - approximately 4 months away, too. Y'see, although you don't care, I'm going off grid. New York's cold, my job is monotonous, I've worked myself into an artless rut, and I'm chock-full of pent-up crust punk idealism. How does one break this strain of wide-eyed hopefulness? Likely by going into the muck of the U.S. with a backpack, a bike, and a friend or two. No date set for it's conclusion, either, so if I ever choose to revive this here blog, it might be 6 months to a year-plus away.

Anyhookers, I'm in the middle of a free jazz/70's prog odyssey right now, but since the former is still digesting and the latter's not delivering the goods as I'd hoped (Gentle Giant? Bleah), I figured it was time to whip out an old favorite of mine - The Pop Group's stupidly scare singles collection, We Are All Prostitutes; a bag of hits I started rotating back in high school and never looked back.
Now if you're unfamiliar with the music of said Pop Group, it's a bizarre, somewhat even composure of spacey dub reggae, funk, skeletal jazz, and noise, all weaved into a sweater of post-punk sensibilities and hard-as-tacks political staunchness - and a phenomenally ugly sweater at that. In fact, if I were pressed to describe The Pop Group's sound in a single word, it'd probably be "ugly". This compilation is essentially a split between the creeping, disjointed minimalism of their legendary debut, Y, and the undeniably danceable funk-punk of the follow-up and neglected classic, For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?, but the quality is consistent as either release.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BNVI2B8R

Another thing worth noting (but uninteresting to read, much like this entry as a whole) is the production, which is raw, scratchy and full - totally unlike the spaciness of the rest of their catalog. Makes Gang Of Four sound like total pansies.

Oh, and once again, my stupid laptop is still broken because everything sucks and/or should die.

Organisation - Tone Float

2010-02-20T19:52:00.000-08:00

If there's a better example of a band with "classic" status I'll never find an affection for, it certainly hasn't topped Kraftwerk on my list. Both critically lauded and perpetually glorified by music buffs of a far too similar persuasion to mine, I can't help but feel bewildered whenever I catch a fragment of the praise heaped on them in my periphery. Am I overlooking some key historical principles that make them anything but the progenitors to a genre as personally maligned as synth-pop? Or maybe that's where the problem lies...
Either way, after the 'Werk's 4th LP, the better constraints of krautrock all but dissipated, leaving a cheesetoothed, starched suit pop band of the "dorkiest" variety. But hey, enough about corny keyboard progressions, lifeless, processed vocals and simple melodies that ramble on and on longer than the universe is vast - let's talk about Organisation!

Who are actually Kraftwerk.

For whatever reason, the RCA decided the relatively phonetic Kraftwerk moniker ("Kraaftverk") had less of a hook for U.S. audiences than the plain-as-toast British variant on the the word "organization". But whatever; at this point, Organwerk was a totally different entity: almost entirely acoustic and stationed firmly in the krautrock territory with nary an electronic bloop or bleep to be found. The group's sole recording under this name is a bit like the 2 following releases from Kraftwerk - Kraftwerk and Kraftwerk 2 - and stands as a colossus of the hippie-dippie magic we all ashamedly enjoy.
The title track is a 20-some minute spiritual epic of flute, organ, bass and bongo with a particularly meditative, eastern-vibed, and almost Pharoah Sanders-esque quality, followed by the high density, Miles Davis-indebted fusion murk of "Milk Rock". From there, the tiny, creepy interlude "Silver Forest" pops in and out to allow my favorite track on the album, "Rhythm Salad" to bongo the fucking house down. It's a seriously great piece that grows in intensity over the course of 5 minutes with a whole slew of unorthodox percussive devices clattering and bopping their brains out. The album closes with an extension of the title track's sonic terrain, but pulling a scratchy electric violin in tow to a bongo/cymbal backdrop.

http://www.mediafire.com/?okz0kkz2tm0

All in all, a solid, enjoyable release. Probably nowhere near as groundbreaking as Kraftwerk's later material, but it also doesn't sound SO AGONIZINGLY OUTDATED. Here's the ideal usage of Kraftwerk's material:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58OabCRCx_Q

Pigbag - Dr. Heckle And Mr. Jive

2010-02-19T18:21:00.001-08:00

Say! How about a/an hilarious anecdote from the ol' grind? Alright, so this one time - oh, by the Wayans Brothers, I'm a cashier/cart-pusher/merch-handler/tire-salesman at BJ's Wholesale Club ("Felatio's" for short). Anyhoo, there was this one time not so long ago where I came to a run-in with the law at my humble, paycheck-dealin' dojo. I was standing at register, thumbs a' twiddlin' and tongue a' tonguin' when this dude walks over to my station giggling and chattering with his standard, middle-class, nuclear family, presumably aiming to purchase a full boat of high-mass groceries at a low, low price. We exchange greetings, everything's going along fine, when I suddenly interject: "May I scan your member card?".
That was the first Domino brand domino to fall.
If you're unfamiliar with Blowjob's Wholesale Club, shoppers are required to purchase a membership card we scan at the beginning of each transaction and return at the conclusion of each fast and courteous checkout - sadly for the man and his family, such was not the case.
I glanced down at the man's extended hand and beads of sweat began to accumulate on my steadily furrowing brow. My stomach turned. My hands trembled. A darkness took hold as I studied the faint, well-worn lettering on the Sam's Club Wholesale Club card he extended to me.
"...you son of a bitch."
Needless to say, things got ugly from there, and perhaps more needlessly to say, I ended up beating the man into years of relearning to feed himself using the corpse of his victimized son as a bludgeon. A night or two of food court probation later and I've got myself a little story to share.

Anyway, Pigbag.
Pigbag comes from a relatively short lived scene I've been slowly re-familiarizing myself with over the course of the past 2 weeks. In tandem with both the post-no wave "mutant disco" scene and the funkier side of post-punk, these dudes ripped out a beautiful instrumental mix of smart, somewhat straight-faced brass-heavy disco pomposity, pronounced funk, hints of world music, and just the right amount of dissonance to fit snuggly into the "post" half of the "post-punk" equation.
Btw, if you're unfamiliar with the term "mutant disco", it's basically a post-mortem term for the bands that popped up after certain tangents of post-punk got rooted heavily in the funky, decidedly less Caucasian roots of rock music and typically performed a parodist form of disco (think James White And The Blacks' Off White or anything by Kid Creole And The Coconuts).

The barely-amusingly titled Dr. Heckle And Dr. Jive is the first full length and followup to the chart storming (really!) instrumental and shameless play on James Brown's "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" (which is actually considered a classic single nowadays in England... apparently even making it's way into the stadiums at sports events!) and sounds as forward-thinking as it does ironically retro. Slap on a seal of credit via Simon Underwood of the Pop Group's presence and a deal with Y Records, and you've got a recommendation packed full of teeth-grinding hyperbole.

http://www.mediafire.com/?5trumhjui1j

Need a list of contemporaries? : probably somewhere in line with Lizzie Mercier Descloux, ESG, Liquid Liquid, and Simon Reynolds-appointed Pigbag imitators, Konk. All good, all worth checking out.

Unrest - Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation

2010-02-18T07:30:00.000-08:00

I feel my entries have become a little too formal as of late, or at least, a little too reserved for me to be comfortable with at an expressionist level. No foolin', either. I started this blog for fun, first and foremost. The desire to connect with other musical nutjobs across the interbutt is definitely in the mix, too, but personal amusement has always been the target.
So then you might ask:
"Where are the strike-through text gimmicks, Steve? And what about those delightfully irrelevant accounts of your daily toils? I'm beginning to think you sold out to contextual clarity and ramblings that actually pertain to album in the spotlight... for this, I weep."
- You, Presumably 2010
My reparations are as follows:

Anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus ~~anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus~~ anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus ~~anus anus~~ anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus anus ~~anus~~.

Self-absorption aside, let's say we were to cover today the Unrest album that approximately no one in the entire universe likes - Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation.
If you're unfamiliar with the band, here's a brief, 10th-hand history lesson: Unrest started off as a sub-punk, everything-including-the-kitchen-sink, indie rock band formed in Washington, DC circa '82 as sort of a rejection of the newborn hardcore punk scene for no disclosed reason. While largely directed by Mark Robinson (later of Grenadine and Air Miami), the band had two distinct phases - the experimental, constantly genre-swappin', line-up shiftin' early run ('82-'89) and the heavy-duty yet minimalist romantic pop phase initiated by the inclusion of bassist/vocalist Bridget Cross in 1990 that would carry on 'til the break up in '94.

Kustom Karnal Blaxploitation is the band's third full-length LP (probably 7th or 8th release overall), and the last album of the aforementioned first phase. What we've got here is an uneven mix of punky indie rock, fuzzy, sub-metallic riffage that hearkens back to the first two Melvins albums, as well as a couple pop 'n' folk remnants ("Teenage Suicide" and "She Makes Me Shake Like A Soul Machine" are particularly enjoyable), the funky "Foxey Playground", and even a dirge-metal track reminiscent of well... later Melvins material ("Kill Whitey").
Unlike the band's sophomore album (the equally good Malcolm X Park), this 'un is rooted much less starkly in poptones, and is typically regarded as an inessential piece of their discography. I don't really know if I could argue the relevance or impact this release had (it probably didn't have much at all), but it's certainly worth a listen, and I go as far as to say it's my favorite of their first era.
Czech it oot:

http://www.mediafire.com/?omh2n4u4tnd

Personally, I love both phases of the band equally. The first is certainly less accessible than the second, but it has that rare hook of being just out of comprehension that makes me return to it over and over again.

Hey, did I mention it also feature a 12 minute spoken word piece about Sammy Davis losing an eyeball in a car accident? SOLD!

Public Image Ltd - Flowers Of Romance

2010-02-16T09:39:00.000-08:00

I'm beginning to think that the initial intrigue behind the bulk of my music library is planted a widdle more firmly in the culture's birthing of these niches than the actual aural components. That's not to say that these artists haven't created wonderfully engaging tunes out of these "uncouth posturings", but unlike your standard rock 'n' roll act, stuff like krautrock, psych, noise, IDM, rock-in-opposition, free jazz (etc) seems to be attractive on a cerebral level first, a gut level second. I gotta wonder - is this how the artists intended their vision to be absorbed? Like pieces of conceptual artwork to be pondered and slowly digested rather than enjoyed on a throbbing primordial level? Furthermore, at this junction in time, is it even possible to create music of an instantly accessible, perfunctory nature that simultaneously goes against the pop grain? Or has time made the majority of music buffs too reactionary as a whole to accept the unchallenging as high quality? Maybe I'm thinking too much on this - more likely, I'm not thinking hard enough. It's hard to say anything cohesive or constructive when you're a monolithic dumbass, though.

So whatever. To start, this is an album I'm constantly at odds with concerning my favoritism towards a certain Public Image Ltd affair - sure, this one is forward thinking as fuck and the sole album of this style in Lydon's catalog, but c'mon - Metal Box/Second Edition is not only monstrously enjoyable, but is a monstrously enjoyable DOUBLE ALBUM. Hard to one up for quality and quantity.
Anyway, what would you do when your bassist who was formerly the cornerstone of your band's sound gets canned for recycling tracks for his solo project and you're not a Rhode Island based noise rock band called Arab On Radar? Why, you totally overthrow your pulsing, dub-heavy dance-punk style to produce an album of incredibly dense, percussion-centric ugliness that dabbles in musique concrete, ragas, a few skrankly-krankly guitars, and a lot Lydon's horrible wailing!

HURRR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT DURRR FUCK THE RIAA THIS ALBUM PROBABLY SELLS A DOZEN COPIES A YEAR

As strange and inimitable the descriptor might make this album sound, it's actually totally apparent from first listen on what sort of impact this stuff must've had on the industrial genre what with it's hard, locked-in beats, bizarre background noises and the untamed, ugly-as-shit vocalesce. I hate to be "this guy" who tells you to "PLAY IT LOUD, BRAH", but really, play it loud, brah. This is one of those albums I can state without hesitation sounds a whole lot better when it's pounding grooves envelop you - the kind of heaviness you can feel in your chest when a fire truck sounds it's alarm 10 feet in front of you.
I don't know. Check it out

King Missile - Fluting On The Hump

2010-02-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

Y'know, it's a funny thing about the marijuana plant - it turns college kids into drop-outs, drop-outs into King Missile, and The Beatles into The Better Beatles.

Also, in unwittingly oversized doses it has a tendency to make every minor injury a mindscorching descent into agony, a constant struggle to keep one's tongue from retracting into one's esophagus, and breathing terrifyingly arrhythmic to the the erratically shifting sands of time. On the flipside, in doses proportionate to the host's tolerance, it's a boring, easily replicable sense of detachment and hunger that costs way too much.

In conclusion, I am literally the D.A.R.E lion.

But anyway, a few months back, I covered King Missile's first long playing record-vinyl-wax-disc-audio document and heaped on the praise for not only They, but their debut extended playing record-vinyl-wax-disc-audio document Fluting On The Hump. Despite this, I feel like the latter is just too good not to cover in an entry of its own. What we have here is a pretty similar experience to They, what with the poppy, bedroom psych-folk-pop and the bevy of cheesy instruments, but while the LP's humor is silly and momentarily chuckle-worthy, Fluting is generally laugh out loud funny in it's lyrical earnesty and vocal innocuousness. For example, listen to the insane, gruff screams surfacing at the end of "Sensitive Artist", or the dialogue between John and Dogbowl in the bridge of "Muffy", the term "residual wussiness" in "Wuss", and [further evidence to back up the initial claim].

http://www.mediafire.com/?fmxe39qew9z

Unfortunately, this isn't my upload, so the link actually brings you to some other dude's upload of the compilation released by Shimmy Disc that features not only Fluting, but the band's post-Dogbowl exercise in mediocrity known as Mystical Shit. So really, you can either skip through the first 16 tracks, or you can take advantage of the opportunity to gauge the enjoyability of their remaining catalog.

THE POWER IS YOURS.

The Gerogerigegege - Tokyo Anal Dynamite

2010-02-13T12:22:00.000-08:00

Hey, you like abundances of things, right? Just great quantities of items or concepts or aural commodities like in this case, songs? If you nodded viciously at the idea of procuring a profusion of product, well here's a whole sprawling mess of noisy garbage.

Now that wasn't the best hook, but when you're dealing with anything in the vein of Japanoise legends The Gerogerigegege (an apparently onomatopoeic title for puking or shitting or something scatological and whogivesashit) that also doubles as the "Japanese Ultra Shit Band", it'd be pretty dishonest to describe them as anything but "noisy garbage". This release is the followup to the historically (in)significant epic, 1988's Showa - an LP only release composed of two side-long tracks of the sweet, supple sounds of two Asians getting their fuck on bookended with the Japanese national anthem and a portrait of the recently-deceased Emperor on the cover - and is a live performance from '87 cut into 75 tracks of hardcore-punk formatted noise freakouts ("1-2-3-4!).

Despite the quantity, the album clocks in just over 30 minutes, but if the cover art is any indication, you're in for a senseless blitzkrieg of mindnumbingly distorted anti-rock, anti-art, or maybe just a snapshot of a couple dudes freaking out and having a blast while apparently revolutionizing the Japanese underground. I'm not too well-read in noise, but I'm going to have to assume it was primarily this album's 'brutally simple and harsh' aesthete that really made an impact on artists like Masonna, The Incapacitants, and Hijokaidan, but then again, what do I know?
If anyone could reccomend me some literature on the subject, I'd highly appreciate it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?bzsgawfejmx

The rest of Gerogerigegege's catalog actually falls in all directions from noise-inflected rock music, to ambient, and tape loops - and from what I've taken in thus far, is par enjoyable. Again, the link isn't mine due to the laptop situation, but check out the Blunt Vision blog in the meantime.

Shut Up - Hell In A Handbasket

2010-02-13T12:07:00.000-08:00

Shut Up is a band I would have enormous difficulty even pretending to exhibit expertise in. After an hour of scouring the crusty bottom of the internet dishpan with a steel wool of learning volition, all I could find on them was that they acted as a precursor to post-rock kings Cul De Sac and tied in with unknowns the Girls and Combustible Edison - and no, not the current Girls, but another, equally-mystery-quilted act whose moniker creates quandaries regarding the everyman's search engine.
Anybutts, Shut Up as far as I'm concerned, were a collective of musicians that strung together many aural components in a phenomenon dubbed "music" in this day and age. They sit somewhere in the eyebrow-raising murk of later, synth-squiggle-saavy Pere Ubu, prime-era Public Image Ltd, a punked-out electro-fuzz with homage to Neu!, and mebbe even with the electro-sludge of Dylan Pickle And The Chaperones debut EP*.
Considering I just nabbed this dittie at the semi-local Rhino Records shop (that no longer has any connection to the namesake label), I can't say I've given it a thorough grind yet, but from the few exacted revolutions I can tell y'all, it's purty good. Nothing enormously original or groundbreaking, but undeniably solid, listenable, and fun.
HAVE AN AURALGASM:

http://rapidshare.com/files/38574561/up-hellinahandbasketboston86.rar.html

To clarify, this isn't my link. My laptop's fried, so I'm just borrowing from other blogs until I can rectify the smushed LCD situation.

*...which doesn't exist. I wasn't feeling qualified to draw further comparisons, so I lied.

Therion - ...Of Darkness

2010-02-13T09:04:00.000-08:00

From the tail end of 2003 to early 2006, I was a death/grind/crust connoisseur and purist, poo-poo'ing just about everything that wasn't heavy and brutal as a wrecking ball of clawhammer studded bismuth. Luckily, the pedantry eventually voided from my mentality bowels, and I started to branch out into more "adventurous" territory; starting with punk rawk, tunneling through 80's and 90's "emo" (see fourfa.com for a basic intro) and indie, noise rock, and settling where I am now as your dime-a-dozen "eclectic" avant-dada-art-noise-terrorist - an ancient hipster disposition provided courtesy of Mr. Internet, in other words.

But anyhoo, while my br00tal music binges are mostly a thing of the past, there's no denying how freakin' excellent much of my old favorites still sound today. Therion's mighty debut was actually an album I refrained from even acknowledging until around a year ago (in which case, the entire intro is irrelevant but fuck off - it's poorly edited or sits in my draft box for another month). Therion back in the güüd olde days were a bit of oddity - a Swedish band that neither sissified the death metal sound nor worked within the midrange-laden parameters established by Entombed, Dismember, or Grave. For all intensive purposes, the music captured on ...Of Darkness is pure early American death metal goodness, but with the crunch of Swede-distortion and a few inflections of epic-doom atmospheric keys.

Unfortunately, they quickly got bored with the idea of playing enjoyable music, so their next two are an increasingly uneven mix of the debut's death metal and excessive proggy keys and instances of operatic vocalization which gives way for a temple built around the latter in releases to come. I know how little weight this carries outside of the metallic haven, but when a band enlists a female keyboardist or two, it's typically a sign of trouble. No sexism from me, just a simple correlation.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8rttnjm9dl2

Of course, that opens up a whole new can 0f worms: sexism in metal. Fortunately, I've got the saran wrap of laziness to stretch over that particular annelid vestibule so to ensure freshness for a further discussion when I pull out a porngrind album. Stay tuned!

(btw, this isn't my link. I'll upload my own later)

Fly Ashtray - Clumps Take A Ride

2010-01-27T11:49:00.000-08:00

So today I was planning to defecate on my keyboard and - HA HA, OH my, I'm sorry... what I meant was: "type up a spankin' new blog entry", but if you've been subject to the canon of past entries, you may be able to forgive the error in diction.

So anyway, I was planning on detailing (pft!) the varying qualities of the 3rd-5th Public Image Ltd albums, but ugh, it appears the long-delayed entry about Fly Ashtray's debut LP declenched it's "content sphincter" and unleashed all but the goddamn TITLE and DATE into the internet black hole. As such, here's an enormously underwhelming redux:

Formed from the condensation of intergalactic dust way back in '83, the Ashtray's been going sporadically strong for close to 3 decades now. While I can't say I've been a follower through all their sonic trails (being a twinkle in the heavens for a good 6 years of their existence), I can state with confidence that these dudes certainly have a bevy of strong releases and a lot of talent. Fly Ashtray's sound is a bit difficult to describe, but it lurks somewhere in the murk that I associate primarily with the Thinking Fellers Union and the extraneous/surface aspects of Sonic Youth (ie not songwriting) - a temple of obtuse guitar noise and songs built from strangled sub-riffs barely forced into rhythm with a sprinkling of 60's pop and whatever else crossed the band's creative path. For instance, ______ forays into a country-bumpkin bounce before dissipating into strains of feedback-laden minimalism, while _____straddles between an offbeat indie chug and a sinisterly distorted climbing riff and

I'm sorry, I really don't remember the songtitles and I don't have the album in front of me right now. My LCD sorta gotta squished.
With my foot.

http://www.mediafire.com/?5jynnnymzt0

AND THAT ABOUT SUMS IT UP. TUNE IN ERRATICALLY FOR PiL, THE UNTOLD ACCOUNT OF THE THIRD THROUGH FIFTH ALBUMS FROM SOMEONE WITH 6th HAND EXPERIENCE.

Operation Rhino - Musique Improvisee

2010-01-15T19:39:00.000-08:00

"Operation Rhino was a raid launched by the 3rd battalion of the75th Ranger Regiment on several targets in and around Kandahar, Afghanistan during the early stages of the Afghanistan War. On the night of October 19th, a group of around 200 Rangers parachuted from four Lockheed MC-130 aircraft onto a desert landing strip south of the city in an operation codenamed Objective Rhino. After securing the landing zone, the Rangers and special operations forces raided a number of locations around Kandahar.

The raid was met with little resistance from the Taliban. Although some documents were captured, the raid did little to change the overall situation on the ground. In November 2001, the United States Marine Corps would establish a base on the landing zone called Camp Rhino.

Although the raid was of little military significance, it had a significant propaganda impact as the American public was hungry for a concrete military victory after the September 11 terrorist attacks, after weeks of aerial bombing were yielding few readily apparent results."

- Wikipedia

Also, they were a crazy-ass improv collective with horns 'a bleating, percussion instruments a rat-tat'ing and fantastic crescendos rising from the murk just when you're about to drown in the complex layers of rhythmic noise. The internet really features no information about these guys, and with the current state of deletion this release celebrates, the best I could get is my own interpretation: it's good. Also: I enjoy it a whole lot. It's free-jazzy and kicks the rump. I don't know, find a copy and e-mail me the details.

Also: this link was from NWW List's blog; I'll upload my own later.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CZ2XHJW6

Ash Ra Tempel - s/t

2010-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

Hey, did you know that Krautrock is considered a sub-genre of Progressive rock by almost everyone in the known universe? 'Cause I may have been the only person immersed in the music who bobbed around in eye-popping stupidity with the languid notion that krautrock was apparently the product of NOTHING. How did I become aware of this ? Ever had one of those moments where you blissfully and confidently recite your beliefs about one thing or another to get a blank response and have that person hesitantly ask you whether you're jerking them around or not? Worse yet, that you're an insufferable hair splitter??
Here's an impression of a recent dialogue of mine:

Me: I've been diggin' the avant-prog silliness lately. Any suggestions?
Record Store Owner: Is silliness the key word?
Me: Not necessarily, although it's certainly not a trait I'd distance myself from...
Record Store Owner: Well, you could check out Magma, Van Der Graaf Generator, all the Twink-relative bands, Faust-
Me: DUH, FAUST ARE PROGRESSIVE? HUH HUH, MOAR LIEK KRAUTROCK LOL XD (takes an enormous shit on the counter)
Record Store Owner: ...

NEVERMIND THE NUMEROUS STYLISTIC SIMILARITIES AND MY AWARENESS OF KRAUTROCK'S ARRIVAL WITHIN THE PROGRESSIVE/MINIMALIST/PSYCHEDELIC BOOM, KRAUTROCK CONDENSED FROM THE CHILD-LIKE CURIOSITIES BURIED IN THE HEARTS OF GROWN MEN, THE TOILS OF THE POST-WW II GERMAN NATION, AND THE INTANGIBLE PRESENCE OF AN OTHERWORLDY HIERARCHY.

Ash Ra Tempel is/was a power-trio (as well as a self-titled 1971 debut) featuring members of Tangerine Dream and Cosmic Jokers I've been enjoying immensely ever since I pressed Lex-Devil's Dave Lang for reccomendations. Much like krautbuddies Guru Guru, Ash Ra was a sort of rock'n'roll blitzkrieg unit that hinged their sound on crazy-ass guitar freakouts and lusciously spacey ambience provided by effect-pedals and urm, "electronics". Look, that's what it says on the sleeve. "Electronics".
Like every subsequent Ash Ra album I've conquered up to this point, side one ("Amboss", in this case) is a vinyl-side monolith of powerhouse riffin' and noisemakin', while side two is a more ambient, psyched-out affair replete with a huge percussionless stretch of atmosphere and some ethereal, near operatic howling.
Oh. Which is entitled "Traummaschine". Forgot to parenthese that 'un.

http://www.mediafire.com/?enmvz5mwbxz

By the way, I always upload the albums in 128kbps. I have pretty limited disc space and wish to conserve it as long and heartily as possible. Just in case any of you were audiophiles, huh.

Discount - Crash Diagnostic

2010-01-07T13:57:00.001-08:00

Now here's an entry that won't appeal to any semi-regular of this blog, but hey, I'm sure all of us have certain fixes of less than eccentric pop to keep us sane between AMM and Gerogerigegege rotations. Don't be too judgmental, a'ight?
Today's principal textual and aural dish is the swansong of Florida punk/pop unisex overlords Discount, and more importantly, an album so chock full of nostalgia for yours truly, it's biochemically saturated with those emotions for all outsiders to partake. That's how sentimental attachment works, right?
Anyway, this was a bit of a sonic detour for the group (possibly a dead end) who up until this point grounded their sound primarily in the Crimpshrine, J Church, and East Bay territories. Crash Diagnostic is pretty evenly split between the sparkling, adorable pop-punk of yesterday with an angular, subtle, post-hardcore coldness lifted straight from the guts of Fugazi and Fuel. I'll admit, the stylistic divide can be a little rough on the ears at first, but the songs themselves are just appealing enough to have sent me back for another listen. Perhaps you, the deadeningly unintrigued reader might agree!

The main attraction for me has always been the playful, untrained vocals of Alison Mosshart (later of the primordial garage dumbness of The Kills and associate of Jack "Musically Gifted" White), whose lyrics have always diced me up despite basically being stream-of-consciousness ramblings I'm probably unqualified to be touched by. A masculinity compromising formula I've discovered seems to be the track "Math Won't Miss You" paired with the scent of peach-deodorant. Suddenly, I'm flooded with angsty Junior-year and have shamed my bloodline with public weeping.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dm2mon4t4yt

If you like this, which you don't because you're this blog's demograph (if you exist), then their first two albums are pretty swell, too.

Also: I just found out today that the owner of my semi-local record store finally kicked it after a way-too-lengthy bout with fuckin' brain cancer. I feel indebted to this dude for introducing me to everything from the Deviants and Simply Saucer to Albert Ayler and Sun Ra. He was a genuinely interesting and personable guy, and I'll miss the rambling conversations and accounts of live Beefheart shows and the like.
RIP Jack

Earth - Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions

2010-01-05T19:27:00.000-08:00

The internet is a truly magnificent tool for the burgeoning muso - a vast, aggrandizing, jungle of history, subjectivity, and enough illegal audio to consume a lifetime or two. The latter in fact, is exactly my problem, as I've owned the paragraph-adjacent album for over 1 1/2 years now but have only in the past weeks given a proper listen. On one hand, I feel like a spoiled grifter with my complete Residents and Current 93 mp3 discographies; on the other hand... let's face it - I missed out on tasting any hint of accessibility these records may have had in their original run at ye local wax shoppe. Beyond that, I'd probably be a bit more than bitter and jaded had I spent the small fortune necessary to acquire the stockpile of nuclear horseshit you may know as "inessential Residents". Need a head on that brew? Whatever Happened To Vileness Fats, Our Finest Flowers, The Tunes Of Two Cities, Diskomo 2000, both American Composer Series albums and plenty more. Yeck.

But anyway, I digressed a while ago, and the point is: while the internet is a fantastic (albeit overwhelming) resource, all too often it leads me to utterly neglect some of the tastiest pies on my windowsill - on this occasion it's drone-doom heroes Earth's 3rd full length, the aptly titled Phase 3. About 3 years back, I decided to give drone-doom a chance, and with my love of chronology, started with the Extra-Capsular Extraction EP and the Earth 2 full-length only to be slam-fucked in the face with boredom. I couldn't imagine how anyone could enjoy this stuff and moved onto Sunn O)))'s White 1 with a slightly better outcome. Skip ahead another 2 years and I've garnered up quite a bit of patience through extended Merzbow and Khanate sessions - enough to get through Earth 2 without a nod of the head or a droop of the eyelids. As for enjoyability however, I can't bite my tongue for indie-cred, it's a boredom sandwich with average condiments; the meat of the affair being the song "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine": 27 minutes of fuzzy nothingness. Why? Regardless, I was intrigued by a few reviews on metal-archives.com for Earth's followup, the decidedly more "rockin" Pentastar, so I picked up that and the aforementioned Phase 3 for cheapsies at a barrel scraping rec-shop upstate.

BUT THEN. The Nurse With Wound list rolls into my life on it's bodacious 2-wheeler and consumes my life with bad-boy sex and wild nights lit by the glow of my monitor.

And here we are today, talking about the greatness that is Phase 3. If you skipped every bit of text up to this point, I should advise you that we have reached THE SLIGHTLY MORE IMPORTANT SECTION OF THIS ENTRY: the descriptor!

If Earth 2 was a monolithic block of fuzz and Pentastar was rockin', then Phase 3 is what we could solely consider a monolithic block of rock. Essentially, this record combines the weight and droning atmospheric touches of the debut with the plodding, fuzzed-out rock tendencies of the sophomore release to completely blow my mind with awesomeness. Seriously, the mix of primordial sub-Sabbath riffage with the noise of Skullflower and the panged contemplation of Fushitsusha makes this disc an aural cake frosted with guitar fuzz par deliciousness.

http://www.mediafire.com/?xzejnddmxjz

Hey, is it just me, or has my writing become a lot less anarchic and a lot more stuffy than it was when I started? Have I sold out? I'll hold a poll later.
In the meantime, both Lexicon Devil and DAR took their final bows just a day apart, so I suggest you give 'em both a look. They both gave me a lot of good reading, albeit of entirely different varieties.

Dawson MEGAPOST Addendum

2009-12-31T07:17:00.000-08:00

I have impending blisters on my heels. Or my... lower calves? The area of foot-relative flesh adjacent to my wayward toes. I can't remember whether the term "heel" is in reference to the bottom of the foot or the you know what no one gives a shit I'll start over.

I have new boots! They're 20-eye towers of excess from legendary podiatrist Dr. (Acronym) Marten himself - currently digging their crisp, plastic-y folds into the aforementioned mystery regions of my feet with a tireless abandon only patience and big, horribly infected blisters will tame. With that, I feel obligated to imbibe from the text reservoir to bring to your attention how overtly punk rock this boot transition has been. Y'see, my last pair were purchased at the semi-local Army/Navy shoppe a week prior to beginning my first semester at the community college I haplessly agreed to enlist in after discovering I was too damn poor to afford any of the top-tier art colleges I was accepted to (40K grants notwithstanding). Little over a year and a half later, those 150 USD kicks built to protect America like foot-condoms for our chillun' on foreign soil fucking SPLIT from the soles like I'd spent the past year on a rocky plane of heightened gravity. So then I was like "SO MUCH FOR AMERICA, HUH?", dropped out of school, began working full time and picked up these working man's boots to conquer the remainder of my life with. Oi!

S'anyway, I just realized yesterday what a disservice I did to the few readers I have by not including this delicious little morsel of scratchy, vaguely funky, crispy, post-punk perfection in my Dawson MEGAPOST of a few months prior. "MEGAPOST"?? YEAH, MORE LIKE MEGAFRAUD!!! I don't know, shut up. This EP is great, albeit arguably inessential if you own the holy trinity of Dawson lengthy-players already. What I didn't realize until recently however, is what the missing ingredient from my Scot-Punk equation was - the UK's bIG fLAME. If I'm not just 100 years late to figuring this one out, I urge any fans of the Minutemen, The Ex, or Dog Faced Hermans to give their post-humous compilation Rigour a listen - I'll probably give it a place here in the near future, even.

http://www.mediafire.com/?52wiajygmwk

Romping Egos is a not-so-hefty 6+ minutes, so it may confuse you that it required such a surplus of text to introduce it, but on the other hand, most of you just skipped directly to the link. YER SCROLLING FINGER ACHE, HUH? FUCK YOU! Listen to that insane guitar tone, though. Sounds like it would lacerate your fingertips and give you tetanus, no?

Rites Of Spring - s/t

2009-12-13T19:17:00.000-08:00

So you might notice that I haven't updated in forever.

As such, here are a list of things of unfortunates you may attribute to the reasoning behind this:

1.) Detoxing
2.) Friend dying a pointless and abrupt death
3.) Dropping out of college
4.) Working constantly
5.) Having my license suspended for not obliging to a court date I was never informed of through the reliable ol' postal service
6.) Having that court date as a result of an extraordinarily rare production anomaly that wouldn't allow my car to pass inspection via the computer that reads my odometer since last battery replacement
7.) General disillusionment, loneliness, and unrest due to distaste for the tradition of American life, ongoing lack of companionship, and the sloshy, ugly, mess that defines a New York winter, respectively

NOW MIX AND MATCH FOR MERRIMENT

Needless to say, I'm not really prepared to deliver my usual stew of lame wordplay and awful strikethrough-text based jokes - but wait, here's one that would've predated this sentence if I hadn't called attention to it's absence beforehand:

Needless to say, I ~~wonder if anyone has made a lame pun involving the word "needless" and the phrase "needle-less"~~

So we're all really anticipating the next round of those ever-rib-tickling strikethrough text gimmicks, but today you'll just have to settle for one of those albums I feel is topical at the moment - Rites Of Spring's s/t album. 13 songs of disillusionment, longing, nostalgia, hopefulness, introspection, sentimentality, and heartache, all conceived with a gorgeously undated sound that "kicked off the now glamourized "emo" subculture".
- Me, 2006

No one actively participates in the "emo subculture" anymore, do they?

http://www.mediafire.com/?ncu3ynnno2y

Oh, and if it makes any difference to you, this goes up on my figurative "top numeral of all time" list since it's been keeping me company since I was 16.

Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender

2009-10-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

I've been planning to detail and share the exploits of early Shimmy Disc quynamic quintet Fly Ashtray and their first long-player, Clumps Take A Ride for a week or two, now, but when one ~~witnesses a multitude of mud wasps take up residence in a grown man's urethra~~ finds a deliciously engaging new album saturating his earbuds, one is obligated by the laws of human nature to cancel any prior engagements to share word of one's find on one's shitty, inconsistent music blog. Anyhoo, today's star is the less-than-obscure, likely Pitchfork approved, Jimmy Kimmel Show-guest-starring, and certainly less eardrum battering debut by Joanna Newsom - a harp strumming 20-something lass ~~WHO CAN STRUM MY HARP ANYTIME YOUKNOWUDIMSAYIN' HEUHVFHf~~ with a mouthful of wonderfully poetic lyrics and a throatful of Betty Boop's vocal chords. Sound like an unappealing trait? Try braving The Crucifucks' discography beforehand. It'll certainly make her unconventional timber and cadence a walk in the park or at~~I'D TAKE A WALK IN HER PARK IF Y~~ - alright that's quite enough blue commentary masked with strike-out text.
The music itself alternates between beyond delicate harp picking world music-esque folksy numbers to noisier, oddly tuned piano and harpsichord based songs (if that gives you any indication of the harp tracks' fragility) without a dabble or a venture into the percussion realm.
So why the EXTRAORDINARILY SOUGHT AFTER place in my blog?
The songwriting, maaaaaaaaaaan. Totally top-fucking-notch songwriting here. As much as I love being Mr. Subversive To Mainstream Culture, there's not a sour note on here. Brilliant little shards of harp twinkles and vocal/lyrical hooks get caught in your cranium on first listen like little aural thistles and help anchor the listener (me) down for future listens, during which the full majesty (hyperbole) of the songs come to light (penis).
Without further uh-dew:

http://www.mediafire.com/?dcimyojmrym

Also: I urge you to slap down a few greenbacks to pick up her catalog. Newsom's an active artist with an easily obtained handful of albums to ingest - you'll have no excuse when the ePopo bash in your head with internet justice if you don't use my upload as a sampling, then be rid of it. Saying these things will lift my responsibility in the matter, right?

Alsoalso: the entirety of the web is seemingly obsessed with her hindquarters.
Yep.

The Thrown Ups - Melancholy Girlhole

2009-10-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

Before we begin, I have a little experience I'd like to share. Like anyone who's ever scoured the internet for sessions of brain-expansive acculturation, I opened youtube and headed for the Linkin Park videos. In my quest to befriend kindred spirits across pre-teen America, I accidentally let slip what I now know is a particularly unpopular opinion amongst Linkin Park fans. Observe, if you will, my stance on the song "Hands Held High":

Ha ha ha ha ha... this is the cheesiest heap of bullshit I've heard in a looooong time. AHHHHHHHHHH MEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNN AHHHHHHHHHHHHH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNN - Are you fucking serious?

Now instead of kindly agreeing to disagree, those who were near unfathomably at ends with my harmless comment rebutted with libelous claims about not only my intellect, but my sexuality, interpersonal relations, and even my psychosomatic development! What shame I felt! But it was the following that lanced my heart with truest aim:

god you must one of the f*****s that cash their check at the back laughing asking for respect

As well as:

shut the fuck up you must be one of the bitches that cash their checks and sk all the others for respect

Two individuals distanced by miles - one accusation skimming across their souls. Maybe I'm just a tad outside of the Linkin Park hip-mispelling-fluent fan club, but what the fuck am I reading? Shouldn't insults be somewhat universal when directed at strangers purely for retort? Or at least, be topical enough to make sense of? I mean, if it weren't for the context, I'd find it pretty damn impossible to to feel derided by these words at all. What's even more unsettling to me is the fact that I have - believe it or not - cashed hundreds of cheques at the bank (where else?) and mayhaps, once or twice, emitted a bemused chuckle or two at the fact that I have money to do stuff with. But "respect"? If by "ask" they're implying that I verbalize my desire to be treated in a dignified manner by the clerks, than no, I have never hit the spirit. Of course I expect courtesy, and as far as I'm concerned, the tellers deserve the same.

But enough puzzling over life's greatest mysteries, let's talk about The Thrown Ups.

What we have here is the sole LP-size recording of the band best known for assembling the prime components of Mudhoney - Melancholy Girlhole. Now everyone in the entire universe knows that Mudhoney was a monotonous waste of time for the majority of their career, but don't let that chafe your keister - the Thrown Ups were an entirely different breed of punk-reactionaries, caught up somewhere in the primordial murk of Harry Pussy, the first Meat Puppets album, and the retarded blues-rock of Jon Spencer and Pussy Galore. Throw in some Happy Flowers-esque psychosis, too while you're at it also as well if you'd prefer. Melancholy Girlhole is 13 songs in little under 26 minutes of prime-cut, scatological rock-slop garbage that sounds a whole lot more fun and listenable than you'd expect from a collective whose initial goal was to "be a band that never practiced or wrote songs".
See for 'yaselvz:

http://www.mediafire.com/?nmyngmnnow3

Oh yeah, I also added an entry for Noothgrush, but since I started writing it in September, it didn't show up right after my post on Universal Congress Of. Shucks.
Oh, and here are the boys in adorable flower costumes:

Universal Congress Of - s/t

2009-09-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

It's pretty rare that an album totally floors me upon first listen, but as far as exceptions go, this is the peat and the moss all in one. Little did I know when I ILLEGALLY DOWNLOADED THIS ALBUM FROM WITH NO INTENTION OF DELIVERING ROYALTIES TO THE LABEL OR ARTIST RESPONSIBLE that it was in fact, Saccharine Trust axeman Joe Baiza at the helm, laying down some fantabulously non-Greg Ginn-esque jazz-fuzz-noise madness. The selling point? Saccharine Trust is in the running for the "Steve Hyewz Top 10 Favorite Bands" list (of which I have not composed, nor have any immediate plans to), and by the end of their reign in '86, they'd never hit a sour note. And of course, I mean the "selling point" for you: my dear readers who take every bit of my internet indoctrined armchair-hipsterisms with blind faithfulness that could only described as "of biblical proportion".
Bullplop aside:
Universal Congress Of oddly enough, don't sound like much of logical progression for the Trust's awesome parting gift, 'We Became Snakes', but perhaps like the mythical 5th or 6th album if they were to continue their progression in the avant-jazz-rock vein sans Brewer's nasally weirdo vocals. In essence, Universal Congress Of was from the future!!! Like 1990 or something. I don't know.
But anyway, this album is an epic if I ever saw (heard) one. Composed of one mammoth sized track and a shorter, calmer exit track, to give you an idea of just how ridiculously epic this album is, the former -"A Certain Way"- looks the limitations of the 12" format right in the eye and mutters "I say fuck no to rules, man" before doing an hardflip 360, chugging a gatorade, and continuing its reign of awesome on the B-side. Aurally, it's pretty difficult to pigeonhole, with a dense, spaced-out, quasi-improvised jazz rock feel and a whole lot of crazy-ass soloing from Baiza and a cold, contemplative (yet groovin') atmosphere advanced strongly by the murky (not muddy) production values.

http://www.mediafire.com/?mm2ezk3xexx

Prior to this entry, I had no idea Universal Congress Of continued to put out albums after the followup EP, 'This Is Mecolodics', so expect an update concerning the remainder of their catalog's quality at some point. Next on the list: Noothgrush's Erode The Person LP

Noothgrush - Erode The Person

2009-09-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

PRESENTING:
The "My Most Loathed Song Of The Day" feature!
Today's winner: The Heights - How Do You Talk To An Angel Lyricist Stephanie Tyrell: "Well! Now that I've penned some of the absolute most repugnant and posed lyrics of all time, who wants to croon them in an embarrassingly pussy manner?"
Vocalist Jamie Walters: "Ooh! I do!"
Lyricist Stephanie Tyrell: "Great! How's the music coming along husband Steve and composer Barry Coffing?"
Composer Barry Coffing: "Oh, just fantastic. We've already thrown in a bunch of sax to give it a caucasian r'n'b air the kids are sure to adore, but it still feels a little too consistent..."
Composer Steve Tyrell: "I think I've got it: why don't we strew emotionally irrelevant cock-rock guitar solos throughout THE ENTIRE SONG??"
Lyricist Stephanie Tyrell: "Great idea, honey! Just make sure they sound like stock sound samples that pay no mind to the overall composure."
Wikipedia: In 1993, the song was nominated for a FUCKING EMMY for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music and Lyrics".

In other news, Noothgrush were a Californian sludge-doom band who formed in 1994 and according to research from the finest institutes on the East coast, phuckin' rawked. If you've ever been subject to the filthy, druggy, frowning antics of sludge Machiavellis Eyehategod, you've essentially heard a less contemplative version of Noothgrush with far fewer odysseys into uptempo punk rock riffage. Despite treading through a bunch of rubble (ie 'broken ground' hurrrr...), these guys did a damn good job of taking a relatively limited style, honing it into something fresh and powerful, and then releasing it to the blessed in ridiculously limited quantities.
Erode The Person is 5 tracks of king-tier sludge truckin' it like molasses through the fog of the distinctive New Orleans sound (ie ugly, plodding, drug-influenced punk-ish doom metal with raspy screams and southern tinged riffage) in a way I'd rate above even the primordial soup of Buzzov*en and 13. In other words, prime Sabbath
But not Grief. Those dudes are a forkin' goldmine to themselves.

http://www.mediafire.com/?iwzzznmn24j

@ Señor N∅: I scooped up the Extreme Music From sets up to Women, and they're all pretty excellent! I'd say the Africa set is probably my favorite thusfar, but I haven't been able to find a download of Russia yet. I think I'll end up buying 'em all by the end of the week, though.

@ Everyone else: [conclude post]

Whitehouse - Total Sex

2009-08-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

...so yeah.
It's been a while, but well... I've been preoccupied as of late. Primarily because my hands have been tied up in not updating. Also: wow, has anyone seen the 1998 version of "Psycho"? Anne Heche looks like sheer human perfection despite the gaudy outfits she seems to be adorning in every scene - a seriously astounding bit-for-bit incarnation of my "ideal female". I'm not vapid enough for my "ideal" of the opposite sex to rest in the purely physical realm, of course, but if pressed to put a face to it, I have a pretty established concept that happens to look a lot like Anne Heche in this movie.

Also: this remake isn't very intriguing. How could anyone with a soul put so much time and money into creating a frame-by-frame remake?

Say! Speaking of treating women like objects, I've relapsed into another harsh noise phase in the past weeks, and so far, Whitehouse is still sweatin' in the ring. I sort of figured the listenability of a bunch of histrionics alternating between eardrum rattling whistling noises, warbling lows, and gurgly sloshes would get stale by the third cycle, but whuddyaknow, it holds up better than ever. Total Sex is the group's second LP release I believe, and while not quite as brainsquelchingly harsh as "Dedicated To Peter Kurten; Mass Slayer And Sadist", it's still pretty friggin' good, and definitely a great gateway into the power-electronics genre.

http://www.mediafire.com/?vjyufyrixm5

As an aside, this is one of the few albums I can listen to with some sense of coherence whilst mowing the lawn (something relatively difficult to do with say, The Necks or Steve Roden), so if it's a disturbingly dark, headache-inducing grass-trimming you need to get your gears 'a turning, feel free to thank me (with your social security number).
LASTLY:
I feel like a 2 month plus hiatus is long enough, so expect regular updates from this point on.

No, seriously this time.

Crass - Stations Of The Crass

2009-07-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

The following is a mock-up dialogue offering ABSOLUTELY INDISPUTABLE proof that Crass has been wrongly maligned by dumbass mowhawk dips :

- Naysayer: I've listened to 3 freakin' tracks of this Feeding Of The 5K nonsense, and the scratchy, thinly produced, minimalist guitar noise is weird and VERY DISSIMILAR TO THE CLASH!!
- Generic 20-somthing "punk": Oi, it's all about the LYRICS, maaaan. (recites an interpretation of "Banned From The Roxy") Sure, they're just an accessory to my punk aesthete, but those lyrics, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. That's what it's all about. (consumes shitty beer)
- Naysayer: Whoa! I guess it's just one of those bands too punk rawk for me! I will not bother letting their music sink in and tell everyone who doesn't "get them" immediately that there's simply nothing to "get"! (resumes rocking the casbah)

...and that's what Don McLean was referring to in "American Pie".

You see, Crass - while thematically punk as fuck - were only really geared musically towards the punk kids in their earliest incarnation. While they were still perfecting their scathing, painfully strict moral codes (which were apparently a little too strict for the band, even), they were also breaking out the berets and shifting their sound into noisy art-rock for the pretentious demographic - like me! That said, Stations Of The Crass is by no means their most inaccessible work; if anything, this features all the wiles of a pop album! A considerably noise-raped, art damaged, ridiculous take on a pop record, but nonetheless packed with catchy vocal arrangements, hooks both lyrical and instrumental, and all the smarts that Crass were known for. How could anyone who's heard this album denounce these guys as a purely idea/lyric-oriented band?

Oh wait. Yes Sir I Will.

For the sake of completion, I didn't schlep off the muddy, worthless live material at the end. I LEAVE THAT IN YOUR HANDS. Hey, do you think Crass themselves would be okay with all this filesharing? I like to think so, being the commie liberal hippy bastards/bitches they are.

http://www.mediafire.com/?titzm2dzyyn

(awaits dozens of retarded responses from people who can't detect sarcasm)

Big Star - Radio City

2009-07-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

...and now for something completely different: a 3rd-hand Monty Python reference based on the skit comedy show that I've never enjoyed enough to sit through more than half-dozen episodes. Seriously, why the miss-or-miss-or-miss-or-hit? It felt like they were purposely holding back their best gags to pull in the full-length films. Anyone else feel this way? I mean, I'm no Monty Py -

Anyhow, Big Star's 1974 full length, Radio City is the album we'll be covering this evening-so-late-it's-technically-tommorow-morning. If you're familiar with Pavement (who isn't?), Big Star is what I consider the second largest quantity of reanimated flesh in the Frankestein's monster we know as Pavement's sound. The first (including most of the torso and limb-meat) would be The Fall, and the third could be Swell Maps (the toenails).
This theory isn't nearly as logical as I made it seem. Sorry for wasting your time.

But "anyhow", if you were ever intrigued by the idea of the quintessential 70's power pop record, LOOK NO FURTHER, BECAUSE HERE IT IS AS FAR AS I KNOW.
But don't my platitudes feel comforting?
If you dig slow-mid paced, pretty, organic melodies and high-register dude vocals, this album is completely fantastic. The guitar has that twanged-out, scraggly southern rock sound, and mood never dips below slight-melancholy.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dycxb6a2hf1

This actually isn't my upload. I just nabbed it off google, so wear protection when you thrust deeply into it's audio canal. With your ears.It intrigues me for some reason.
By the way, does anyone know what movie this is from?

Th' Faith Healers - Lido & Imaginary Friend

2009-07-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

Th' Faith Healers were an "underrated"* UK shoegaze act who picked up the slack at the very end of contemporaries (and current 'untouchable-hipster-god-figures') My Bloody Valentine's career, but being the kindhearted guys & gal they were, decided not to release borderline worthless paste for 5 years before contemplating worthwhile material (ala aforementioned 'untouchable-hipster-god-figures').

~~Which brings me to the happy little asterisk (*) HAGHAHAHA AN UPTURNED BREAST HAHHuo]nj~~

Which brings me to the happy little asterisk * : Honestly, I have no idea whether Th' Faith Healers ever got the attention they deserved - I wasn't exactly doing drags in a London cafe with these guys spinning in the house stereo circa '93. Based purely on observation though, these guys so rarely get namedropped by critics and forum-going shoegaze enthusiasts, I have to assume they simply fell off everyone's radar after their break-up in '94.
Yes, I know that's a weak basis - YOU SAW THE QUOTATIONS, STOP ROLLING YOUR EYES DAMMIT - but so what? Both "under" and "over" with a suffix of "-rated" have been bastardized into meaningless buzzwords, and these guys certainly aren't getting loads blown whenever their name is mentioned.
For example:
Me: Dude, I just saw the remake of My Bloody Valentine and -
You: UHHHNNN LOVELESS IS A MASTERPIECE UHHHHNNN *SPLOOGE*

For the record, I like both MBV's full-lengths, but Loveless doesn't touch Isn't Anything with a 5-foot pole for sheer listenability. I know! How subversive of me! (pats self on back)

Anyway, Th' Faith Healers. While certainly a shoegaze band, this quad-squad was a lot more manic and a lot less ethereal and whispy than their peers, partially due to their lack of keyboards or synths - which strikes me as odd considering how much krautrock influence is mixed in with their guitar noise-driven style, BUT ENOUGH TEXT NO ONE IS READING:

Th' Faith Healers - Lido (1992)
- This is the less-subdued, more brash half of Teh F@yth Heelorz sound, with plenty of crashing, looped-riffs, churning noise, and with just enough hook and melody to keep it from being completely inaccessible. The cover of Can's "Mother Earth" is probably as good as the original, if you can believe it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?l2t2mn4mzm2

Th' Faith Healers - Imaginary Friend (1993)
- This is the calmer, more restrained follow up that The Healers Utilizing Faith decided on, and it's every bit as good as Lido, if not more listenably versatile. The poptones are in full swing here, from the catchy "Sparklingly Chime" to the epic dirge closer, "Everything, All At Once Forever". Which reminds me, if you're ever stuck in a psych ward, this here is an album to bring. No further questions.

http://www.mediafire.com/?aohmeghtthn

They have a bunch of great EPs as well, but I'm tired of sitting hunched over my computer desk, so fuck you.

Merzbow - Noisembryo

2009-07-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

Ugh. I feel like ______________
_____________ or even ___________
______________________.

What I wrote was actually more creatively disgusting than an implied blank space, but I feel nauseous and would rather not leave that sentence there in plain sight while I complete this stupid post. Consider it a relic of better, non-nauseated times.

Anyway, I chose this album because it's not only one of my favorite Merzbow releases, but it requires little/no effort on my part to describe. It's noise. Sheets and sheets of densely textured, terrifying noise that doesn't actually appreciate in enjoyability with each additional decibel. In fact, the limit becomes pretty clear once you pop this fine diskus in on 7 and find your brain leaking out your nose. It's a fuckin' bulldozer, alright, and just might be the best of the harsh-analog phase.
HUMOROUS ANECDOTE:

"A while ago I had a Mercedes 230 that I didn't drive much. The police told me that I had to move it or they'd tow it away. Well, I didn't want to keep it and I didn't have anywhere to store it so I decided to use it for something else. I rigged the cars CD player with our latest release of Merzbow's "Noisembryo" CD so that the music started when the car was turned on and it was impossible to turn it off. I put it up for sale as an extremely limited edition of the "Noise Embryo" CD but no one ever bought it, and in the end the car broke down. So we took out the CD and got rid of the car. Now I'm thinking about if its possible to release a record in a Boeing 747..."
- Anders, Releasing Eskimo Records

It's a true shame that no one on Earth can claim ownership of the fabled Merzcar.
Likewise, it's a true shame that no one but FINANCIALLY STABLE RECORD COLLECTING ASSHOLES can own a copy of Noisembryo that ISN'T entombed in an automobile. Everything in the Merzcatalog up to the early 90's is not only out of print, but so difficult to come by, you might mistake the HA HA HA HA HA I OWN A COPY OF THIS ALBUM ALREADY HA HA HA HA scarcity for nonexistHA HA HA FOR ONLY 15 BUCKS WITH SHIPPING AND HANDLING HEE HEE HUUUence.

In conclusion, ebay.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ednnq3mwzza

Other Merzalbums worth merzing (checking) merz (out):
Rainbow Electronics 1 (1990) & 2 (1996)
Music For Bondage Performance Vol 1 (1991) & Vol 2 (1996)
Batztoutai With Material Gadgets (1993)
Venereology (1994)
Green Wheels (1995)
Pulse Demon (1996)
Hybrid Noisebloom (1997)
1930 (1998)
Doors Open At 8 AM (1999)

For the sake of agreeability, the above are all available on CD. Not readily available, but nonetheless... '99 wasn't the cutoff for Merzquality just so you know, but since the man has more releases than there are bones in the human body (perhaps two! Or one and a triple amputee), I haven't quite gotten that far yet.
Merzbow is an AGONIZINGLY prolific unit.

King Missile - They

2009-06-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

Hay, remember when King Missile wasn't just an innocuous novelty act?
I don't.
In fact, I don't even remember when King Missile was just an innocuous novelty act. Hell, "Detachable Penis" debuted when I was friggin' 4 - a time when the horror of misplacing my genitals could have permanently damaged my psyche. I didn't have 22 dollars to save my life, let alone 17 to toss around into the red for the return of my manhood. Some people could've put a lot of pressure on me to get it permanently attached, but I wouldn't know - even though sometimes it could be a pain in the ass -
I could've liked having a detachable penis.
DUNT DUNT DUNT DUNT DUNT DUN
DUNT DUNT DUNT DUNT DUN DUN
DETACHABLE PEEEEEEEEENIIIS
DUNT DUNT DUNT DUNT DUN
etc.

Seriously though, the last significant mainstream movement fizzed out when I was entering Kindergarten. I never "lost my hero", and not surprisingly, never felt any attachment to a genre based primarily on not sounding like hair metal.
But you didn't come here for my delightful observations, you came here to not pay for music created by the band King Missile!

King Missile's golden era was unfortunately short lived, much like a butterfly (that's also on fire), due primarily to founding member Dogbowl's contributions and (apparently) musical directive leaving when he left.
That sentence wasn't very well written.
I wrote the bulk of this post when I was heavily intoxicated with sleepiness, but I refuse to edit since I'm all about giving you the REAL, RAW, UNINHIBITED AND UNCENSORED STEVE HUGHES BLOG EXPERIENCE/EXTRAVAGANZA. I mean, otherwise I'd have to repackage the rough copy on the final copy as a "rehearsal bonus track" or some hokey shit.
What I was basically trying to get across:
OOG, DOGBOWL LEFT BAND AND THEN KING MISSILE NOT SO GOOD EVEN THOUGH EVERYONE THINK VOCALIST JOHN'S LYRICS WERE THE CORNERSTONE OF THEIR APPEAL. THEIR NEXT ALBUM FULL OF BORING, BUT THEY ALMOST AS GOOD LATER. UNGA!

"They" is a wonderfully mellow, silly, and ironic batch of catchy little acoustic ditties that somehow never lose their appeal despite their 3-chord simplicity. The melodies are nothing groundbreaking, but there's something oddly unique about their presentation that elevates this lineup LEAGUES above their contemporaries at the time!
Or not. What the fuck do I know? Did KM even have neighbors of stylistic semblance? Doesn't it seem ludicrous to drop the word "contemporary" into a review without isolating the traits that made these so-called contemporaries RELEVANT?
"Just like contemporaries Big Youth and The Human League, King Missile recorded instrumental arrangements accompanied by vocal emissions!"

The lesson here is: learn to pick out the music-reviewer cliches and ignore them.

It's not much of a stretch to guess that this album is out of print currently, but I'll give you the benefit of the whogivesashit.

http://www.mediafire.com/?m3q2y0vqnzr

If you dig this, seriously check out Dogbowl's solo discography. I'll probably be posting "Tit! An Opera" or "Flan" (which has an accompanying novel I've never read) sometime in the near future, but I'll also probably not be posting it in the near future because I'm worthless.
Cheers!

Dawson MEGAPOST

2009-06-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

So for the last week, I've been lurking on 4chan's /mu/ board and

(page views dip into negative integers)

(prospective followers hack huge wads onto their monitors and go outside)

GODDAMMIT, LET ME FINISH

So anyway, for the past week I've been lurking on 4chan's /mu/ (the music board) almost constantly as a sort of social experiment (despite having little to no way of gauging the social aspects of the so-called "experiment" and

Y'know what: let's start over, 'cause I'm not feeling all too intellectual today and have one simple observation to share.

If /mu/ is a relatively accurate core sample of the current base of music-enthusiasts on planet Earth, I have a nervous feeling everyone has "wised up" too much for anyone to be able to state their appreciation for decidedly more "left field" music without being deemed an ironic, posed-eclectic, hipster douchebag whose only interest in their respective branches is the heightened sense of status. Come on, now! I'm as cynical as the next guy, but this is AMERICA YOU AND ME AIN'T THIS AMERICA SOMETHING TO SEE BABY AIN'T THIS AMERICA HOME OF THE FREE AND THEN SOMETHING SOMETHING EFFEMINATE HOUSES

I sensed an easily debunked incomplete statement encroaching, so I handed the keyboard over to John "Jaguar" Mellencamp. Hope you didn't mind.

If you aren't familiar with Dawson, then where have you been? Above a rock? With close to 100% of the Earth's population? For the uninitiated, Dawson are a criminally unknown Scottish punk-esque band in the vein of their neighbors, the Dog Faced Hermans, Whirling Pig Dervish, De Kift, The Ex, Archbishop Kebab, and a quarter-oodle of other bands who are often pegged mysteriously as "anarcho punk". Dawson existed from [date] all the way to [later date] and released three incredibly good albums with such shit-awful distributing skills that you're more likely to stumble upon a used bin WITHOUT 3 copies of [disappointing topical album]!!

Oh yeah, did you hear that Michael Jackson's dead?

[insert overdone quasi-offensive joke "too soon" to be tasteful]

Dawson played noisy, scratchy, funk/dub/jazz/eclectica-laden punk rawk that was difficult to pigeonhole, especially since they progressed heavily from one album to the next.
1.) Barfmarket: You're Ontae Plums

http://www.mediafire.com/?2ydhritimei

2.) How To Follow So That Others Will Willingly Lead

http://www.mediafire.com/?tx40nvnytmj

3.) Terminal Island

http://www.mediafire.com/?nd3twnm0zzo

To give credit where credit is due, Mr. Dave Lang of Lexicon Devil introduced me (impersonally) to these guys, Barfmarket was originally uploaded by Nothin' Sez Somethin' and How To Follow was originally uploaded by X-Ray Barbeque. Czech 'em out, as they're mostly superior to my watered-down imitation blog and self-deprecating self-deprecation of self etc. The rest came from my good 'ol pal, soulseek.

As an aside, Velvety Sheath Glistening Sword uploaded Terminal Island as well, if that's any indication of the content surrounding it (hint hint).

ALSO: check out this bullshit. For a bunch of fuckin' millionaires, Metallica sure is protective of their "art".

Cows - Taint Plurbis Taint Unum

2009-06-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

If you're one of the 5-10 internet-goers who haven't become completely desensitized to the concepts of 'theft via file sharing', this is an album with no honorable strings attached: the Cows' Taint Plurbis Taint Unum.

If you've already established a fan-status for Minneapolis' Cows' more readily available material, it's unfortunately probable you not only haven't heard this album, but likely weren't even aware of it's existence until recent years. Y'see, way back in '87, the Cows released this debut full-length on Treehouse Records, only to switch over to Amphetamine Reptile in '89. According to Amp Rep's Tom Hazelmeyer, Treehouse's main-man was a bit irked by this transition, and in return, refused to allow Haze to reissue the album. Skip ahead about 20 years, gazillions of old people have croaked, and Treehouse's owner is still distributing the album, but over ebay for ridiculously jacked up prices instead of his own label.

Doesn't that "get your goat" or some other cliche I know not the etymology of? THEN HEY - give it a steal:

http://www.mediafire.com/?zmtyejmyfle

Aurally, this is probably the Cows' most noisy and abrasive release, with a fantastically raw, scratchy quality that would later be outsourced for a more bass-heavy, full-bodied production (and even later, a moog-based cornerstone of rave-pop). As uninviting as it may sound at first, give it the benefit of the doubt - it never traverses the valley to Amorphousblobofrhythmicnoiseville or shakes hands with the mayor of Obnoxiousfeedbackdickery City.

I was kidding about the moog thing.

They use casios.

Contortions - Buy

2009-06-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

I PURCHASED THIS RECORD ALBUM BECAUSE I AM EASILY SWAYED OUT OF MY HARD EARNED MONEY BY ICONIC ARTWORK INVOLVING SCANTILY CLAD WOMEN. I GUESS THERE'S ALSO SOME MUSIC AND SHIT BUT I'M AN OVERSIMPLIFIED PARIAH FIGURE THIS BAND IRONICALLY TARGETED BY PARODYING SEX APPEAL IN ADVERTISING ON THEIR SOLE LP.

That wasn't as funny as I hoped. Can I offer you a vile of clown sperm in retribution? That's like distilled hilarious.

In less pressing news, The Contortions were perhaps the most significant (albeit least representative) of the New York No Wave scene blooming in the late 70's-early 80's. By "least representative" I mean the glut of No Wave bands are atonal, wailing, racket, while the Contortions actually had a well-practiced, tight groove that happened to be just as noisy and confrontational as their peers. It's not that Teenage Jesus and DNA don't appeal to me (they do), but with all their gusto, it was rare that they turned their idiosyncrasies into anything memorable that your everyday Joe might stumble upon (in NYC on this fine day in 1980)..

Buy is 9 tracks of rigid drum patterns, scrappy jazzy guitar, funky basslines, and the skronkin' sax and high energy yelps of James Chance - all within a half-hour; perfect for someone breaking into the genre to stomach. The album is out of print (I think?), but if you’re excited by the idea of an unfairly large transaction with some douchewad on ebay, by all means!

For the rest of us:

www.mediafire.com/?y1wmznolme1

KUKL - The Eye

2009-06-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

Say, you like vaguely folkish avant-rock parading under the guise of anarcho, right? Of course you do. And who doesn't? Aside from me a few years ago who expected this to be a ripsnortin' punk RAWK album, but hey, that guy was a dick anyway.

Y'see, KUKL (or sometimes turned inexplicable acronym: K.U.K.L) is a rare breed of band that more often than not gets referred to as an "anarcho punk" band despite have little to no stylistic connection to punk rock. Instead, we get a highly unusual grab-bag of ethereal keyboard swashes, shambling "gothic" guitars, horns, whistles, flutes, the kitchen sink, and Björk wailing alongside some -

Oops. By the way, KUKL is singer Björk's second real band after Tappi Tíkarrass and before Sugarcubes and the solo stuff. I forgot to mention that earlier.

- guy named Einar Örn Benediktsson who's vocals resemble severe asthma. Together, they form a happy family and record two fantastic albums - the first of which, is right here for you to enjoy:

http://www.mediafire.com/?tzzz1wdiyiz

Lastly, don't pick this up expecting anything like the Sugarcubes' alterna-rock or Björk's dancey left-field pop - this is an entirely different beast that'll sit snuggly between your old "anarcho punk" albums by Chumbawamba and Dog Faced Hermans.

Lastlylastly: you can pick this up on amazon surprisingly cheap. Hint hint.

Sebadoh - The Freed Man

2009-06-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a treat for all you purist assholes out there - Sebadoh's The Freed Man with the original tracklisting and none of those pesky bonus numbers interspersed shamelessly throughout!
This was actually a bit of a challenge to assemble, since many of the tracks only seemed to exist in the soulseek microcosm, but it was totally worthwhile.

If you're new to Sebadoh, or have only familiarized yourself with the post-Gaffney albums, The Freed Man is a gigantic heap of somewhat silly, somewhat sloppy, weed-cl0uded bedroom recordings with the audio clarity of a 4-track wrapped in cellophane. At this point, it was just Lou and Eric screwing around, but the ideas presented on this album are fantastically catchy and entertaining as anything they would go on to write on their "classic"III a few years later.

Except not. Because I like this album more than III.

Anyway:

hxxp://www.mediafire.com/file/o3tdznndri3/the freed man.rar

OBLIGATORY COMMENT ABOUT BUYING THIS ALBUM IF YOU ENJOY IT

On an unrelated note, The Tragically Hip might be my least favorite band. Good god do they slurp on donkey pole.

INTRO

2009-06-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

FIRST OF ALL:
Observe the title of my blog.
HOW HILARIOUS AND BOLD OF ME, RIGHT? WHO ELSE IN THIS SOMBER DAY AND AGE WOULD PARODY THE WORKS OF ESTEEMED MUSIC CRITIC ALEX ROSS IN SUCH A DELIGHTFULLY IRONIC MANNER? YOU SEE, WHILE ESTEEMED MUSIC CRITIC ALEX ROSS SINGS PRAISE TO THE DYNAMIC, SHIFTING TEXTURAL SOUNDSCAPES THAT DOMINATE THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, I ACCLAIM TUNELESS BULLSHIT THAT

Oops. Apparently the title of Alex Ross' collection is "The Rest Is Noise", not "The Rest Is JUST Noise" as I had believed prior to uncovering the bottomless vistas of possibility that search engines offer.

Anyway, gut-busting shenanigans aside, my name is Steve Hughes, and I created this blog (like I assume most people have) presumably out of overflowing egomania, but also because I've become pretty passionate about music in the last 5 years.

To prevent any future bullshittery, I will be upfront RIGHT IN THIS VERY BLOG: I'm only 20. I figure stating this now will help me resist all future temptations to miraculously age myself 5-10 years in order to attain credibility in arguments that might ensue or platitudes that might topple off my tongue like a shitty metaphor I don't feel like thinking up.

Last thing:
Here's a swell trick I figured out in the past year or so that I'd love to share with the 0% of individuals currently reading this blog:
1.) GO TO FUCKING GOOGLEDOTCOM OR SOME SHIT
2.) TYPE IN THE NAME OF THE ARTIST FOLLOWED BY THE ALBUM TITLE
3.) FINISH IT UP WITH THE WORD "BLOGSPOT"
Ex: artist album blogspot
4.) HIT 'SEARCH'
5.) ????
6.) PROFIT!!!*

*By performing this simple string of actions, you'll most likely find some keen blog-owner has uploaded the album you're looking for with the intention of you (the lucky treasure hunter) downloading it to enjoy and ultimately, purchase a physical copy of to support the artist.

...unless of course, the album in question is rare as shit, and you realize giving some asshole on ebay a hundred bucks for it won't help the band feed themselves.

MY ADVICE: perform the 6 steps showcased above for any given Metallica album - even if you have no desire to listen to Metallica. Just download their entire discography and delete it. Trust me, the band is totally chill with you doing this.

ACTUAL CONTENT COMING SOON