Pigbag - Dr. Heckle And Mr. Jive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)