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)

Fly Ashtray - Clumps Take A Ride

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

"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

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

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