MONOSHOCK:
Runnin' Ape-Like From The Backwards Superman: 1989-1995 CD
(S-S RECORDS) I
knew about Monoshock when they were around, but I never actually
heard 'em. Years went by. Then, Comets on Fire started exploding,
and it was very good, but on the internet one music fan said
"Comets are great . . . but they're no Monoshock."
That was it, I had to hear these apparently mighty forefathers,
and I immediately rushed out to my favorite used record store,
where, as fate would have it, they had the Primitive Zippo
7-inch used for a whole entire two dollars. Back home listening,
I could definitely see where Comets might have been taking
some notes. After playing it on the radio a couple times I
filed away the 7-inch. Almost two more years pass, and I'm
listening to this new definitive Monoshock CD that compiles
Zippo (which turns out to be their debut release)
along with their other two 7-inches, 2 comp tracks, 2 tracks
from their demo (which I guess is their true debut release),
and another 5 tracks that are previously unreleased. And now
I can see where Comets might have taken ALL of their notes.
An important difference is that Monoshock can and do get as
full-on freaked out as Comets always are, but they can also
really lay back and get shaggy and let the weird stuff slowly
creep up all over you until you go to scratch an itch and
find that you're covered in some sort of weird sticky green
space-muck! Actually, the liner notes to this CD really put
the Monoshock sound in context by referring to it as "SoCal
beach grunge," pointing out that the band, who I always
thought formed in Oakland (California), actually were from
the "decaying beach town" of Isla Vista (California,
pop. 18,344). (Oakland came later, when they all ended up
there and started playing together again.) Right there it
all clicks: surf, decay, grunge, partying, and the result
is every bit as deserving of the 90s grunge freakout crown
as their more famous and slightly better-mannered contemporaries
up north, Mudhoney. S-S Records have worked pretty hard on
the mastering of this retrospective, and the songs jump out
and sound great and alive while (thankfully) still sounding
like they were recorded inside the world's smallest sardine
tin (i.e. a San Francisco basement recording studio called
The Insane Cat). "Nobody Recovery" really puts me
in the zone -- so in the zone that I didn't even notice it
was an instrumental the first two times I played it! "Halloween
Party" has funny vocals coming from all over the place.
"Burn My Eyes" is a Radio Birdman cover that scorches
more than the original IMO. "Soledad" has lyrics
so good they supply the comp's title and also are quoted at
the beginning of the liner notes: "Runnin' ape-like from
the backwards superman / Gunny sack in your gnarled hand /
Here comes the rocktus-cocktus otto-man! / Resurgence from
your slimy can / Livin' like a freakin', tweakin' meco-man."
Throughout the whole alb I'm diggin' Grady Runyan's "wall
of wah" guitar, for sure, but when you hear this many
songs in succession, Rubin Fiberglass's trance backbeat really
comes to the fore as well. Groovin' cover of "Psychedelic
Warlords (Disappear In Smoke)" with hilarious Casio-type
keyboard leads. Previously unreleased track "Terminal
Roctus" might have more animal noises than the entire
LP of Contact High With The Godz. The last track,
"Destination: Soil," is the youngest of their efforts
on here, from a 1989 living room Isla Vista demo session,
but it sounds pretty 'mature', almost 7 minutes of super-thick
and patient melodic drone rock that just never stops burrowing.
Well, that's a few highlights, hear the rest for yourself!
A truly great band. ("Hawkwind Show" is a current
hit on your local left-of-the-dial radio station.)
MONOSHOCK: Photo and caption from Gompers
zine (a/k/a Night Moves).
NO
DOCTORS: ERP Saints CD (NO
SIDES); FF You CS (FREEDOM
FROM) Blastitude’s
choice for "Best Band in Chicago" three years running
(yes, even better than Wilco and the Sea and Cake) are moving
to the San Francisco Bay Area, and we're gonna miss 'em around
here. At least they've left a farewell to this city that nurtured
them for three years, a 20-minute EP release called ERP
Saints. More specifically, ERP Saints is a tribute
to the Chicago neighborhood that nurtured them, the one and
only East Rogers Park, the gentrified ghetto by the lake,
far far away from Chicago's other far hipper Parks like Wicker
and Humboldt, somehow all at once a condo-happy yuppie neighborhood,
a low-rent hippie boho hamlet, a sleepy tree-lined university
town, a working-class beachfront community, an inner-city
artists colony, and a gang-related ghetto, and it's all happening
on every block. Throw in Gay/Lesbian, Mexican, Jamaican, Haitian,
Bosnian, Thespian, Hasidic Jew, Indian, Pakistani, Progressive,
Activist, Immigrant, Refugee, and you're almost there . .
. maybe you're even here, in which case you should stop by
some time! Through all this, the No Doctors walked for three
years and formed a bond they called the “ERP Saints.”
I asked them for a key to this mystery and their response
was simple: “Respect your neighbors.” Respecting
your neighbor and, um, sainthood are rather Christian sentiments,
and, although this band has always shown itself to be more
than conversant with the Devil’s Music, ERP Saints
clearly marks a new direction by No Doctors that is somehow
more elevated and enlightened than anything they have previously
done.
Not to say that
this album is more Christian, or even Christian at all, but
I will comment on three examples of this new direction. 1.
Here, the band does not utilize the murk and obfuscation of
the lo-fi and/or trash aesthetic (although it has previously
served them well) -- the No Sides label points out that this
is the band's first 100% professional recording (done at the
reknowned Key Club
studio in Benton Harbor, MI). 2. There is no bass player or
other auxiliary members, the band a lean and mean gtr/gtr/sax/drums
quartet. 3. Finally, and most importantly, the songwriting
is notably different. The second track is a true-and-blue
slow jam, a 1962-style doo-wop ballad with a hook ("It
always hurts . . . . so bad!") that has been
going through my head over and over and over -- and the CansaFis
sax break has been too! Then, the third and final track is
simply amazing, a ten-minute epic called "Future Awaken
Widen." Over an expansive, yearning musical setting that
sounds like the band has suddenly found themselves inheriting
their Van Vliet and Coltrane and Coleman influences all at
once, lead vocalist Chauncey Chaumpers lays down some intense
shit, addressed to a "sweetheart," while the guitars
and sax chatter emotionally above an eternal rock'n'roll precipice,
the very sound of a Tower of Babel of the mind being sculpted
and redecorated into a funky church spire in the name of love
-- which is sort of like a vision of East Rogers Park, come
to think of it.
Perhaps in the interest of the eternal dialectic, No Doctors
have simultaneously released a beautifully ugly grounding
gutter companion cassette to the elevated ERP Saints
that will really put you back down underneath the sidewalk.
It's on the Freedom From label and is therefore called FF
You. Side A is just one long jam. 20-30 minutes of extreme
free hard rock action. I think it says it was played live
to a film or something. Amazing vocals eventually bob to the
surface of the maelstrom -- or is that a guitar solo? Very
loud, very aggressive, hard to believe. Put this on after
the Monoshock CD and you might just think about something
called progress. I haven't listened to Side B yet, because
it doesn't need to be anything but blank for this to be an
excellent release.
A
REAL KNIFE HEAD: Thought Paint Control CDR
(SLOW TOE) I've
always thought of the gtr/drums duo as one of the archetypal
rock improv settings. Some of my favorite examples are, um,
let's see . . . . Daily Dance from the Ohio wilderness of
1972, Ascension from the wild streets of London or something,
and, also from yon olde Isle of Britain, the Han
CD by Derek Bailey & Han Bennink (probably filed under
jazz but it totally rocks) . . . . and, um, well, I'll probably
think of more later, but for now, add these guys to the list:
A Real Knife Head, also from Ohio (Cleveland!). On Thought
Paint Control they definitely put the rock in rock improv,
but there's actually something deathly still about the 7 tracks
and 30 minutes herein. Even though the playing is good ole
spirited freedom shrapnel attack, it's broken up by lots and
lots of dead space; the room is dead, the fidelity is dead,
and the vocals (they add some human voice to the mix on three
of the seven tracks and it has that choice crappy-mic-plugged-into-a-shitty-amp
quality) sound dead, and I mean all this as a great compliment
-- I can't get enough of the way this disc sounds -- I think
I'm on my seventh listen this week! The drummer's name is
David Russell, while the guitar & recitation is by Matthew
Wascovich, who poetry people might know as the guy behind
Slow Toe Publications,
and it certainly helps that the poetry is pretty fucking good
. . . may I quote at length from "Montreal Whispers"?
"no more tales of your bad calculations / every other
label to the pious is drizz licks / wrestle the kings / ever
ready heretic / elastic minutes / nominal salvation / yank
at the hanging sky / over hear sirens / understand softcore
/ re-enter like a shooting / exit without second thoughts
/ all music made by the revered sucks dick / so it's historical
and it's plastic." Right on?
GROWING:
The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light CD (KRANKY) Hardcore
Blastitude readers might be familiar with the Larry Dolman
"Tangerine Dream" Award. It's only been given out
twice so far, to the first release by The Moglass (from the
Ukraine, can't remember the title, but it was really good),
and to the RH Band's 122701 LP on HP Cycle. I guess
it's not that often that a new album comes along that really
has that same truly committed sci-fi mystery-drone aesthetic
that you can find on the Tangerines' double LP Zeit,
but this issue has a winner, this new CD from a little Olympia,
WA duo with a very big sound. I guess they're carrying the
torch for Pacific Northwest heavy earth-drone music since
the Melvins moved away and Earth themselves aren't too prolific,
leaving Growing as the only ones in the region to bring the
true scary-heaven entire-silent-forest drone-jams that are
like 35 minutes long. But lest you think this is just some
low-end stoned metal dude stuff, there's some real variety,
and elevation, and airiness to the sound as well -- hence
the Tangerine Dream award. [also check the
brainwashed eye and click on "Growing" to see
some of the self-produced visuals they've been showing when
they play live . . . one of the most Herzogian understandings
of landscape I've seen from someone other than Herzog!]
CAMBODIAN
CASSETTE ARCHIVES: Khmer Folk & Pop Music Vol. 1 CD (SUBLIME
FREQUENCIES 011)
Okay, so I knew about Cambodia and that Pol Pot was a very
bad man and that a lot of people died a while back and they
made a movie I never did see about it with John Malkovich,
but it wasn't until hearing this music that I researched exactly
what happened. And really, it's like some totalitarian sci-fi
horror movie, Saló a hundred thousand times
over, except that
it totally and completely happened in the very real calendar
years of 1975 through 1979. In 1973, after the Vietnam War
spilled over into Cambodia, the U.S.A. bombarded their countryside
with more than the entire tonnage of bombs dropped on Japan
during all of World War II. Apparently this was some tragically
bizarre attempt to "assist" the already feeble Cambodian
government, but since the U.S.A. had no intention of sticking
around or anything, the devastated nation was easily taken
over by a radical communist cell known as the Khmer Rouge.
Using outright brutality, slave labor, torture, and brainwashing
in the name of an "agrarian utopia," they proceeded
to murder approximately 1,500,000 people in the next four
(real calendar) years, with particular targets being teachers,
intellectuals, journalists, musicians, artists, and poets
-- the educated, the skilled, and the expressive. Tonight,
inspired by this CD, I finally learned about this on the
internet and looked at chilling photos of the Khmer Rouge
leaders and the sites where it happened, my mouth literally
hanging open in media horror, and then I go back to this CD
and hear real Cambodians from the late sixties and early seventies,
most of them soon to have their lives destroyed by their own
insane leaders, for now fully alive and wailing on modern
polyglot pop-rock-club-dance music clearly influenced by (among
many others) Keith Emerson and Ritchie Blackmore, and it makes
it all the more real, recent, and tragic.
Which isn't to say that
this release is some somber memorial wall with a long list
of names on it; this is very joyous music and it's yet another
great Sublime Frequencies release. The liner notes and artwork
reveal an underground celebration-music culture in which cassettes
were the preferred medium, and how this culture thrived in
small pockets worldwide as the musicians who survived the
genocide expatriated. Only 6 of the 20 tracks on here were
recorded in Phnom Penh, the major Cambodian city, before the
Khmer Rouge takeover. The rest come from "...Thailand,
Rhode Island . . . Long Beach and points in-between,"
and all were found, on cassettes in the permanent collection
of the Oakland (California) Public Library, by the one and
only Mark Gergis (the man behind the monumental I Remember
Syria 2CD, also on Sublime Frequencies, and a member
of the band Neung Phak, who have clearly been listening to
a lot of Cambodian cassettes). The rest is (a deeper understanding
of) history!
BUSH
TAXI MALI: Field Recordings From Mali CD (SUBLIME
FREQUENCIES 012) Another
Sublime Frequencies release, another trip to the atlas. Let's
see, I know that Mali is in Africa . . . ah, there it is,
an inland nation in the northwestern part of the continent.
I see it's the home of the actual city of Timbuktu -- no wonder
I didn't know where it was, the only place that gets cited
more often as a metaphor for the middle of nowhere is Bumfuck,
Egypt! I have also learned from this Sublime Frequencies release
that Mali is home to the mysterious sub-Saharan people known
as the Dogon, who you might know from the Ancient Africa wing
at your nearest art museum, or from the SCG standard "Space
Prophet Dogon." So, what about the actual sound of the
CD? Well, it's all acoustic music and it seems like it's all
played outdoors, featuring instruments like the ngoni (a sort
of banjo), the balafon (a sort of xylophone), the tambin (a
sort of ancient woodwind instrument), and this one crazy African
instrument known as the guitar. Bush Taxi Mali is
easily the softest and most laid-back of all the Sub Freq
releases so far, a long slow dance of interlocking, casual
modal guitar-string-percussive melody, pleasantly buoyed by
the sounds of the great outdoors and living villages. Even
though recordist Tucker Martine went in and around six different
Mali villages to get these recordings, they all sound like
they could've been played under the same nice shade tree out
in someone's yard.
BROKEN
HEARTED DRAGONFLIES CD (SUBLIME
FREQUENCIES 013) Also
recorded by our man (who was) in Mali, Tucker Martine. This
time he was in Thailand, Burma, and Laos, recording "insect
electronica from Southeast Asia." That's the subtitle
of this one, printed right on the cover, and it's right, this
ain't no machine electronica, this ain't even electronic electronica,
this is nocturnal insects softly humming on 4 different tracks
totalling 32 minutes. Mastered kinda quiet, but turn it up
and you'll get there. Certainly one of the most dependable
Sub Freq releases -- you always know right where this one
is going even as it contains chirping and clipping subtleties
that are always slightly changing. Liner notes by Hakim Bey!
RADIO
INDIA: The Eternal Dream Of Sound 2CD (SUBLIME
FREQUENCIES 014) Man,
I don't know what to say. I'm truly awestruck, and with all
the raving I'm doing about Sublime Frequencies releases in
every issue, I feel like that person you sometimes listen
to records with who won't just shut up and smile and nod.
So instead of describing at length how gorgeous and deep this
2CD is both sonically and visually, I'll just . . . . aw forget
it, I was still thinking of Hakim Bey (see above) and therefore
gonna try and write something about his concept of immediatism,
and how Sublime Frequencies, by removing most or all musician
credits and essays by experts, are able to peel back that
many more of the traditional layers of mediation that compact
discs place between you and the original. In other words,
it's practically virtual travel, and you're on your own without
a tour guide or even a guidebook, and you're loving it even
though you don't fully understand it because the sounds and
visuals are blowing your mind. But again, I won't really go
into it, so just go
here and buy Radio India and then while you're
listening to it click
here and read Mr. Bey himself and you'll TOTALLY see what
I mean!
PAY
TOILETS: Freedom Rock or Wet & Wild U.S.A. LP (WHITE
DENIM) Man,
White Denim always has the best colored vinyl! This time it's
pure milk chocolate brown, absolutely gorgeous! In fact, the
graphics are great for this whole LP. Just check the A-side
label graphic and the back cover band photo, both of which
I couldn't resist scanning and putting at the bottom of this
review. And, just look at the cover, all you USA-lovers! As
for the music, it's wild and slightly slow gnarl-punk that
makes me think of Drunks With Guns! Lots of bands cram tons
of really fast short songs onto one side, but Pay Toilets
cram tons of really slow short songs onto one side. Well,
twelve songs anyway. And, they're not all slow, and even the
slow ones aren't like doom-metal slow or slow-fetish slow.
The singer does dress up as a gun-wielding red-white-and-blue
arab though! Lyrical content is crusty but funny, anti-Bush's
America ("i didn't want a war shoved in my face / especially
on a day as beautiful as this / media cockfight -- gimme a
break / and wipe that blood from my teevee screen / take that
flag for a walk in the park / and show the stupid bastard
the rest of the world / then we'll see if he flies so proud"),
anti-punk ("Black Flag tattoo / How punk rock is that?"),
anti-hype ("I can't believe / what you bought"),
anti-life ("She fed the baby grain alcohol and watched
that bastard try and crawl"). My favorite song is "Acid
Trip '88." ("My nerves got fried / and Jesus lied
/ a crown of thorns / the devil's horns / it's all the same
/ I lost the game / in acid trip '88.")
VARIOUS
ARTISTS: Babyhead LP (S-S
RECORDS) The
thing I like about this record is that it's not a punk comp,
it's not a garage comp, it's not a trash or thrash comp, it's
not a noise-rock or no-wave comp, but is indeed a punk trash
garage noise thrash gnash rock wave comp (add your own hyphens),
with just a toe or two dipped in the neighboring ponds of
poppiness and straight experimental. In other words, it's
all just happening, baby, and no one here pre-registered for
a style before they had their first practice. Or, like the
label says, "we were thinking of the great comps of the
past that defined punk as an unstatic, multi-dimensional universe."
Anyway, it's going by so fast I can barely even tell you highlights,
and I don't need to cuz it's all good. I guess standouts from
the first spin-and-a-half are Blutt (from France!), Sexy Prison
(from "Northern California"), Antennas Erupt (from
the city of Sacramento, where S-S Records calls home, also
in Northern California) . . . . . . . let's see (side two),
The Blowtops are from Buffalo, NY and lurch and yowl pretty
heavily. Guinea Worms are from Columbus, OH and sound pretty
retarded. Crash Normal are also from France and do a song
called "Quit Looking At My Tits." Country Teasers
(from the UK!) are on here with a song called "I Like
The Cock"! I don't even know what it sounds like, and
I've listened to it twice -- maybe some sort of electronic
wall-of-sound power skiffle. Klondike & York (also from
Sacramento!) contribute a nutty track that is a free-form
aggressive drum solo joined at the last minute by some shredding
Borbetomagian sax, recorded "in the ladies room at the
Crest Theater in Sacramento." The vinyl is very white!
I say that if you're out there looking for more open-plan
punk-etc action, check out S-S Records! (They also put out
the Monoshock CD reviewed above, if you didn't notice....)
I
knew about Monoshock when they were around, but I never actually
heard 'em. Years went by. Then, Comets on Fire started exploding,
and it was very good, but on the internet one music fan said
"Comets are great . . . but they're no Monoshock."
That was it, I had to hear these apparently mighty forefathers,
and I immediately rushed out to my favorite used record store,
where, as fate would have it, they had the Primitive Zippo
7-inch used for a whole entire two dollars. Back home listening,
I could definitely see where Comets might have been taking
some notes. After playing it on the radio a couple times I
filed away the 7-inch. Almost two more years pass, and I'm
listening to this new definitive Monoshock CD that compiles
Zippo (which turns out to be their debut release)
along with their other two 7-inches, 2 comp tracks, 2 tracks
from their demo (which I guess is their true debut release),
and another 5 tracks that are previously unreleased. And now
I can see where Comets might have taken ALL of their notes.
An important difference is that Monoshock can and do get as
full-on freaked out as Comets always are, but they can also
really lay back and get shaggy and let the weird stuff slowly
creep up all over you until you go to scratch an itch and
find that you're covered in some sort of weird sticky green
space-muck! Actually, the liner notes to this CD really put
the Monoshock sound in context by referring to it as "SoCal
beach grunge," pointing out that the band, who I always
thought formed in Oakland (California), actually were from
the "decaying beach town" of Isla Vista (California,
pop. 18,344). (Oakland came later, when they all ended up
there and started playing together again.) Right there it
all clicks: surf, decay, grunge, partying, and the result
is every bit as deserving of the 90s grunge freakout crown
as their more famous and slightly better-mannered contemporaries
up north, Mudhoney. S-S Records have worked pretty hard on
the mastering of this retrospective, and the songs jump out
and sound great and alive while (thankfully) still sounding
like they were recorded inside the world's smallest sardine
tin (i.e. a San Francisco basement recording studio called
The Insane Cat). "Nobody Recovery" really puts me
in the zone -- so in the zone that I didn't even notice it
was an instrumental the first two times I played it! "Halloween
Party" has funny vocals coming from all over the place.
"Burn My Eyes" is a Radio Birdman cover that scorches
more than the original IMO. "Soledad" has lyrics
so good they supply the comp's title and also are quoted at
the beginning of the liner notes: "Runnin' ape-like from
the backwards superman / Gunny sack in your gnarled hand /
Here comes the rocktus-cocktus otto-man! / Resurgence from
your slimy can / Livin' like a freakin', tweakin' meco-man."
Throughout the whole alb I'm diggin' Grady Runyan's "wall
of wah" guitar, for sure, but when you hear this many
songs in succession, Rubin Fiberglass's trance backbeat really
comes to the fore as well. Groovin' cover of "Psychedelic
Warlords (Disappear In Smoke)" with hilarious Casio-type
keyboard leads. Previously unreleased track "Terminal
Roctus" might have more animal noises than the entire
LP of Contact High With The Godz. The last track,
"Destination: Soil," is the youngest of their efforts
on here, from a 1989 living room Isla Vista demo session,
but it sounds pretty 'mature', almost 7 minutes of super-thick
and patient melodic drone rock that just never stops burrowing.
Well, that's a few highlights, hear the rest for yourself!
A truly great band. ("Hawkwind Show" is a current
hit on your local left-of-the-dial radio station.)
Blastitude’s
choice for "Best Band in Chicago" three years running
(yes, even better than Wilco and the Sea and Cake) are moving
to the San Francisco Bay Area, and we're gonna miss 'em around
here. At least they've left a farewell to this city that nurtured
them for three years, a 20-minute EP release called ERP
Saints. More specifically, ERP Saints is a tribute
to the Chicago neighborhood that nurtured them, the one and
only East Rogers Park, the gentrified ghetto by the lake,
far far away from Chicago's other far hipper Parks like Wicker
and Humboldt, somehow all at once a condo-happy yuppie neighborhood,
a low-rent hippie boho hamlet, a sleepy tree-lined university
town, a working-class beachfront community, an inner-city
artists colony, and a gang-related ghetto, and it's all happening
on every block. Throw in Gay/Lesbian, Mexican, Jamaican, Haitian,
Bosnian, Thespian, Hasidic Jew, Indian, Pakistani, Progressive,
Activist, Immigrant, Refugee, and you're almost there . .
. maybe you're even here, in which case you should stop by
some time! Through all this, the No Doctors walked for three
years and formed a bond they called the “ERP Saints.”
I asked them for a key to this mystery and their response
was simple: “Respect your neighbors.” Respecting
your neighbor and, um, sainthood are rather Christian sentiments,
and, although this band has always shown itself to be more
than conversant with the Devil’s Music, ERP Saints
clearly marks a new direction by No Doctors that is somehow
more elevated and enlightened than anything they have previously
done. 
Perhaps in the interest of the eternal dialectic, No Doctors
have simultaneously released a beautifully ugly grounding
gutter companion cassette to the elevated ERP Saints
that will really put you back down underneath the sidewalk.
It's on the Freedom From label and is therefore called FF
You. Side A is just one long jam. 20-30 minutes of extreme
free hard rock action. I think it says it was played live
to a film or something. Amazing vocals eventually bob to the
surface of the maelstrom -- or is that a guitar solo? Very
loud, very aggressive, hard to believe. Put this on after
the Monoshock CD and you might just think about something
called progress. I haven't listened to Side B yet, because
it doesn't need to be anything but blank for this to be an
excellent release. 
I've
always thought of the gtr/drums duo as one of the archetypal
rock improv settings. Some of my favorite examples are, um,
let's see . . . . Daily Dance from the Ohio wilderness of
1972, Ascension from the wild streets of London or something,
and, also from yon olde Isle of Britain, the Han
CD by Derek Bailey & Han Bennink (probably filed under
jazz but it totally rocks) . . . . and, um, well, I'll probably
think of more later, but for now, add these guys to the list:
A Real Knife Head, also from Ohio (Cleveland!). On Thought
Paint Control they definitely put the rock in rock improv,
but there's actually something deathly still about the 7 tracks
and 30 minutes herein. Even though the playing is good ole
spirited freedom shrapnel attack, it's broken up by lots and
lots of dead space; the room is dead, the fidelity is dead,
and the vocals (they add some human voice to the mix on three
of the seven tracks and it has that choice crappy-mic-plugged-into-a-shitty-amp
quality) sound dead, and I mean all this as a great compliment
-- I can't get enough of the way this disc sounds -- I think
I'm on my seventh listen this week! The drummer's name is
David Russell, while the guitar & recitation is by Matthew
Wascovich, who poetry people might know as the guy behind
Hardcore
Blastitude readers might be familiar with the Larry Dolman
"Tangerine Dream" Award. It's only been given out
twice so far, to the first release by The Moglass (from the
Ukraine, can't remember the title, but it was really good),
and to the RH Band's 122701 LP on HP Cycle. I guess
it's not that often that a new album comes along that really
has that same truly committed sci-fi mystery-drone aesthetic
that you can find on the Tangerines' double LP Zeit,
but this issue has a winner, this new CD from a little Olympia,
WA duo with a very big sound. I guess they're carrying the
torch for Pacific Northwest heavy earth-drone music since
the Melvins moved away and Earth themselves aren't too prolific,
leaving Growing as the only ones in the region to bring the
true scary-heaven entire-silent-forest drone-jams that are
like 35 minutes long. But lest you think this is just some
low-end stoned metal dude stuff, there's some real variety,
and elevation, and airiness to the sound as well -- hence
the Tangerine Dream award. [also check 
Okay, so I knew about Cambodia and that Pol Pot was a very
bad man and that a lot of people died a while back and they
made a movie I never did see about it with John Malkovich,
but it wasn't until hearing this music that I researched exactly
what happened. And really, it's like some totalitarian sci-fi
horror movie, Saló a hundred thousand times
over, except that
it totally and completely happened in the very real calendar
years of 1975 through 1979. In 1973, after the Vietnam War
spilled over into Cambodia, the U.S.A. bombarded their countryside
with more than the entire tonnage of bombs dropped on Japan
during all of World War II. Apparently this was some tragically
bizarre attempt to "assist" the already feeble Cambodian
government, but since the U.S.A. had no intention of sticking
around or anything, the devastated nation was easily taken
over by a radical communist cell known as the Khmer Rouge.
Using outright brutality, slave labor, torture, and brainwashing
in the name of an "agrarian utopia," they proceeded
to murder approximately 1,500,000 people in the next four
(real calendar) years, with particular targets being teachers,
intellectuals, journalists, musicians, artists, and poets
-- the educated, the skilled, and the expressive. Tonight,
inspired by this CD, I finally learned about this on 
Another
Sublime Frequencies release, another trip to the atlas. Let's
see, I know that Mali is in Africa . . . ah, there it is,
an inland nation in the northwestern part of the continent.
I see it's the home of the actual city of Timbuktu -- no wonder
I didn't know where it was, the only place that gets cited
more often as a metaphor for the middle of nowhere is Bumfuck,
Egypt! I have also learned from this Sublime Frequencies release
that Mali is home to the mysterious sub-Saharan people known
as the Dogon, who you might know from the Ancient Africa wing
at your nearest art museum, or from the SCG standard "Space
Prophet Dogon." So, what about the actual sound of the
CD? Well, it's all acoustic music and it seems like it's all
played outdoors, featuring instruments like the ngoni (a sort
of banjo), the balafon (a sort of xylophone), the tambin (a
sort of ancient woodwind instrument), and this one crazy African
instrument known as the guitar. Bush Taxi Mali is
easily the softest and most laid-back of all the Sub Freq
releases so far, a long slow dance of interlocking, casual
modal guitar-string-percussive melody, pleasantly buoyed by
the sounds of the great outdoors and living villages. Even
though recordist Tucker Martine went in and around six different
Mali villages to get these recordings, they all sound like
they could've been played under the same nice shade tree out
in someone's yard.
Also
recorded by our man (who was) in Mali, Tucker Martine. This
time he was in Thailand, Burma, and Laos, recording "insect
electronica from Southeast Asia." That's the subtitle
of this one, printed right on the cover, and it's right, this
ain't no machine electronica, this ain't even electronic electronica,
this is nocturnal insects softly humming on 4 different tracks
totalling 32 minutes. Mastered kinda quiet, but turn it up
and you'll get there. Certainly one of the most dependable
Sub Freq releases -- you always know right where this one
is going even as it contains chirping and clipping subtleties
that are always slightly changing. Liner notes by Hakim Bey!
Man,
I don't know what to say. I'm truly awestruck, and with all
the raving I'm doing about Sublime Frequencies releases in
every issue, I feel like that person you sometimes listen
to records with who won't just shut up and smile and nod.
So instead of describing at length how gorgeous and deep this
2CD is both sonically and visually, I'll just . . . . aw forget
it, I was still thinking of Hakim Bey (see above) and therefore
gonna try and write something about his concept of immediatism,
and how Sublime Frequencies, by removing most or all musician
credits and essays by experts, are able to peel back that
many more of the traditional layers of mediation that compact
discs place between you and the original. In other words,
it's practically virtual travel, and you're on your own without
a tour guide or even a guidebook, and you're loving it even
though you don't fully understand it because the sounds and
visuals are blowing your mind. But again, I won't really go
into it, so just 
Man,
White Denim always has the best colored vinyl! This time it's
pure milk chocolate brown, absolutely gorgeous! In fact, the
graphics are great for this whole LP. Just check the A-side
label graphic and the back cover band photo, both of which
I couldn't resist scanning and putting at the bottom of this
review. And, just look at the cover, all you USA-lovers! As
for the music, it's wild and slightly slow gnarl-punk that
makes me think of Drunks With Guns! Lots of bands cram tons
of really fast short songs onto one side, but Pay Toilets
cram tons of really slow short songs onto one side. Well,
twelve songs anyway. And, they're not all slow, and even the
slow ones aren't like doom-metal slow or slow-fetish slow.
The singer does dress up as a gun-wielding red-white-and-blue
arab though! Lyrical content is crusty but funny, anti-Bush's
America ("i didn't want a war shoved in my face / especially
on a day as beautiful as this / media cockfight -- gimme a
break / and wipe that blood from my teevee screen / take that
flag for a walk in the park / and show the stupid bastard
the rest of the world / then we'll see if he flies so proud"),
anti-punk ("Black Flag tattoo / How punk rock is that?"),
anti-hype ("I can't believe / what you bought"),
anti-life ("She fed the baby grain alcohol and watched
that bastard try and crawl"). My favorite song is "Acid
Trip '88." ("My nerves got fried / and Jesus lied
/ a crown of thorns / the devil's horns / it's all the same
/ I lost the game / in acid trip '88.") 
The
thing I like about this record is that it's not a punk comp,
it's not a garage comp, it's not a trash or thrash comp, it's
not a noise-rock or no-wave comp, but is indeed a punk trash
garage noise thrash gnash rock wave comp (add your own hyphens),
with just a toe or two dipped in the neighboring ponds of
poppiness and straight experimental. In other words, it's
all just happening, baby, and no one here pre-registered for
a style before they had their first practice. Or, like the
label says, "we were thinking of the great comps of the
past that defined punk as an unstatic, multi-dimensional universe."
Anyway, it's going by so fast I can barely even tell you highlights,
and I don't need to cuz it's all good. I guess standouts from
the first spin-and-a-half are Blutt (from France!), Sexy Prison
(from "Northern California"), Antennas Erupt (from
the city of Sacramento, where S-S Records calls home, also
in Northern California) . . . . . . . let's see (side two),
The Blowtops are from Buffalo, NY and lurch and yowl pretty
heavily. Guinea Worms are from Columbus, OH and sound pretty
retarded. Crash Normal are also from France and do a song
called "Quit Looking At My Tits." Country Teasers
(from the UK!) are on here with a song called "I Like
The Cock"! I don't even know what it sounds like, and
I've listened to it twice -- maybe some sort of electronic
wall-of-sound power skiffle. Klondike & York (also from
Sacramento!) contribute a nutty track that is a free-form
aggressive drum solo joined at the last minute by some shredding
Borbetomagian sax, recorded "in the ladies room at the
Crest Theater in Sacramento." The vinyl is very white!
I say that if you're out there looking for more open-plan
punk-etc action, check out S-S Records! (They also put out
the Monoshock CD reviewed above, if you didn't notice....)
