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JUNE 1 2007 (DAY OF THE ROSE)
JUNE 8 2007 (DAY OF GAMMADION)
JUNE 9 2007 (DAY OF COLUMBA) LIVE
ON WBLSTD (777.666 FM CHICAGO) JUNE 11 2007 (DAY OF THE HEARTS RELEASE) FOUR SUMMER TOURS..... 16 Bitch Pile Up and Warmer Milks, the co-stars of the Blastitude #19 cover, are both starting tours on June 12, La Otracina (great new CD on Holy Mountain) is starting one today, and the mighty Avarus is coming to the States from Finland in a couple weeks: LA OTRACINA Monday 11-Jun Floristree (6th floor H&H building 405 w. franklin st), Baltimore, MD with PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND, VINCENT BLACK SHADOW, WOMANS WORTH Tuesday 12-Jun Marvelous Record Store (208 S. 40th street), Philadelphia, PA with BURRS, MOUNT FUJI Wednesday 13-Jun Cakeshop (152 Ludlow St) , NYC, NY cake-shop.com/ with CHARALAMBIDES, GHQ, SUGARBEATS Thursday 14-Jun Velvet Lounge (915 U Street), Washington DC with BLOWFLY (seriously!), PLUMS, and more Friday 15-Jun Spazzatorium Galleria (807 Dickinson Ave), Greenville, NC with DD/MM/YY, OICHO KABU, PONIES AND FLOWERS Saturday 16-Jun Secret Squirrel (766 West Broad), Athens, GA with MUGU GUYMEN, 63 CRAYONS, SMOKEDOG Sunday 17-Jun The Whig (1200 main street), Columbia, South Carolina with Jeff South Project Monday 18-Jun TBA Nashville/Murfreesboro, TN with CJ Boyd and more Tuesday 19-Jun Murphy's (1589 Madison Ave), Memphis, TN with TRUE SONS OF THUNDER, and more Wednesday 20-Jun Spooky Action Palace (e-mail venue for location), St. Louis, MO spookyinfo@gmail.com with Ataraxic Ataxia, Sum Of Heroes Thursday 21-Jun Lazer Mansion (133 54th street), Moline, IL with MONDO DRAG, LAZER MOUNTAIN Friday 22-Jun Hideout (1354 W Wabansia), Chicago, IL with PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND, Matthew Wascovich, DRUIDS OF HUGE Saturday 23-Jun South Union Arts (1352 S. Union), Chicago, IL with Matthew Wascovich/PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE Duo, PLASTIC BONER BAND, FOLK & VIOLENCE Sunday 24-Jun Basement Show (216 E Hillside Drive), Bloomington, IN with RESTING ROOSTER, HOT FIGHTER #1 Monday 25-Jun Skull Lab, (271 W McMicken ) Cinncinnati, OH with Ryan Jewell, and more Tuesday 26-Jun TBA, Columbus, OH with Ryan Jewell, more Wednesday 27-Jun Pat’s In The Flats (2233 West Third), Cleveland, OH with MOOTDAK, 9 YR OLD MUDFLESH, THE FLAT CAN CO. Thursday 28-Jun House Show (114 1/2 Erie Street), Edinboro, PA with DROOPY SEPTUM, TUSK LORD, FOREST DWELLER Friday 29-Jun Garfield Artworks (4931 Penn Ave), Pittsburg, PA with TBA Saturday 30-Jun Test Pattern Gallery (334 Adams Ave), Scranton, PA with THE MARSHMALLOW STAIRCASE, THE ULTRA VIOLET RAYS Sunday 1-Jul Helderberg Palace (96 Sycamore St) Albany, NY with BURNT HILLS Monday 2-Jul Brilliant Corners (163 water street), Keane, New Hampshire with KENDRA, Ian Joseph and The Toys Tuesday 3-Jul Grow Room, Providence, RI with XERXESX, BARNACLED, CINNAMON ANEMONE Wednesday 4-Jul off Thursday 5-Jul Soundfix Records (110 Bedford Ave), Brooklyn, NY in-store performance 16 BITCH PILE UP Tue June 12 ROCHESTER @ A/V SPACE with Pengo, more TBA Wed June 13 TORONTO @ Smiling Buddha Bar w/ Disguises, gastric female reflex and the Flynns. Our first show in canada EVER!!!!!! Thu June 14 MONTREAL @ Au Friendship Cove w/ the TDK C 90 Analogue Summer Ensemble and Hyena Hive (our second show in canada, EVER!!!!!!!) Fri June 15 BROOKLYN @ Glasslands with Monotract, Religious Knives, Alan Licht Sat June 16 NEW BRUNSWICK NJ @THINISU 138 Easton Ave New Brunswick, NJ 08901 w/ deep fried radio static for a new american century, ASPS and Panther Modern Sun June 17 PITTSBURGH @ Belvedere's w/Natura Nasa, Cock Scene Investigator (edgar um, joe roemer) MON June 18 LEXINGTON @ the frowny bear with cadaver in drag and caves Tue June 19 CINCINNATI @ Skullab with Kevin Shields, Tik///Tik, Hentai Lacerator, Jor Dan, DJ Thumper, Evolve Wed June 20 CHICAGO @ ENEMY with burden and magic is kuntmaster Fri June 22 COLUMBUS @ skylab with Sword Heaven, fat worm of error WARMER MILKS 06/12/2007 - LANCASTER, Pennsylvania - KEPPEL BUILDING W/TBA 06/13/2007 - BROOKLYN, New York - SILENT BARN W/ BLUES CONTROL, NONHORSE, PURIRI, WEIRDING MODULE 06/14/2007 - MONTAGUE, Massachusetts - MONTAGUE BOOKMILL W/ MV/EE AND CHARLAMBIDES 06/15/2007 -BOSTON, Massachusetts - TWISTED VILLAGE W/ SUNBURNED 06/16/2007 - BALTIMORE, Maryland - CURRENT W/ HUMAN BELL 06/17/2007 - WASHINGTON DC - WAREHOUSE NEXT DOOR W/ TBA 06/18/2007 - CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia - TWISTED BRANCH TEA BAZAAR W/ NED OLDHAM (ANOMOANON) 06/19/2007 - COLUMBUS, Ohio - CAFE BOURBON ST. W/ SWAMP LEATHER, TIME AND TEMPERATURE+TBA 06/20/2007 - CHICAGO, Illinois - S. UNION ARTS W/ TBA 06/21/2007 - LEXINGTON, Kentucky - THE FROWNY BEAR W/ CAVES, WALTER CARSON AND EVERYONE LIVES EVERYONE WINS AVARUS 06-29 Ridgewood/Queens,
NY - Silent Barn 06-30 Philadelphia,
PA - Johnny Brenda's 07-01 Baltimore,
MD - Floristree 07-02 Asheville,
NC - Harvest Records 07-03 Knoxville,
TN - The Pilot Light 07-05 Nashville,
TN - Springwater 07-06 Louisville,
KY - Lisa's Oak Street Lounge 07-07 Cleveland,
OH - Parish Hall 07-08 Chicago,
IL - The Hideout 07-09 Cincinnati,
OH - Skull Lab 07-10 Pittsburgh,
PA - Belvedere's 07-11 Washington,
DC - Velvet Lounge 07-12 Point
Pleasant Beach, NJ - Om Baby Yoga Studio 07-13 North
Adams, MA - Robot Mansion at Mass MoCA 07-14 Providence,
RI - Foo Festival at AS220 - Annual FREE street festival with
20+ JUNE 28 2007 (DAY OF THE HEARTS BLOOD)
Goddamn John Bender rules....listening to the I Don't Remember Now album from 1980....like a Midwestern Suicide, sure, but with a distinct 'gentle German' influence tinging through that cold and bitter Clevelandness.... Harvey Pekar fronting Harmonia?? Robert Crumb (greeting card era) fronting Cluster?? On deck are Bender's two followup LPs, Plaster Falling (1981) and Pop Surgery (1983), and no, none of these are originals, strictly .rar..... but the real reason I'm posting is to answer a challenge. In the latest newsletter to the No Doctors mailing list, Elvis DeMorrow claimed that their new LP Origin & Tectonics "has already caused Larry Dolman to stop updating his BLASTITUDE site in sheer awe." Well, it's not the ONLY reason I've stopped, but there's no doubt that the advance copy I've received has left me rather speechless, and at first it was because it sounded so slick. It took 'em awhile to put this thing out (their first release since moving to San Francisco in 2004), and it sounds like they spent that time meticulously learning to be a massive, clean-cut, and undeniably pro-sounding rock and roll juggernaut. They've also learned how to really sing melodies and enunciate their lyrics, and I'll be honest, these were unexpected developments. Remember the non-stop yowling garbage-fi chaos of their last full-length, Hunting Season from 2003? Those blighted and decrepit streets have been completely cleaned up, as if some kind of pro-rock Rudy Giulani took over and redeveloped the neighborhood into a futuristic metallic factory complex that slowly crafts a high-tech and burnished reamalgamation of the history of rock. I'm telling you, sometimes they sound NORMAL on this album, like South by Southwest or Kemado Records normal, until you listen closer and realize that's precisely why they are now weirder than ever. Again, their always bold and wiggy lyrical concepts are now clearer and more pronounced, which can be especially disconcerting on acoustic numbers like the extra-catchy campfire song "For You," which goes "Wishing on a woman / wishin' she would strip / Take me to the ocean / wanna skinny-dip," seriously, and then asks a "fire-breathing lady" [sic] to "smoke me like a peace pipe / If you wanna end the war" [sic!]. But then after each one of these preposterous verses they pull out a sweet instrumental turn-around, driven by guitar filigree and melodic bass, and we are reminded that their motives are utterly sweet and pure. And there are other songs on here that are just plain monumental -- "Invisible Clopes" and especially "AAO" take the tempo and weight of doom metal and apply it to some new style that is just as slow but poppier, proggier, and stranger, driven by CansaFis's 'saxophone army' designs and yet more of those bold lyrical concepts. (Apparently the track sequencing reflects "the path from earth to jewel to love at the circus," and I think I'm almost getting it -- definitely getting the "earth" part because some of these lyrics, like "Yardin" and "Tuning the Sundial," are just plain eco, and around here that's a GOOD thing, OK?) "Lost in the Fog" takes the 1950s balladry that was overtly referenced on "Floating Woman" (from the ERP Saints CD EP, 2004, No Sides Records) and makes something more covert, yearning, and intense out of it, a seriously heartfelt lament for a stupefied leisure society. And that's the key -- even with all the goofin' and yardin' and perceived slickness on display, this is a seriously heartfelt record, which is why I keep listening to it. JUNE 29 2007 (DAY OF THE SMOKING PLAIN) An Unholy
Fountain of CD Albums From HOLY MOUNTAIN JULY 1 2007 (SECOND DAY OF THE CAT)
JULY 3 2007 (DOG DAYS BEGIN) Pink Reason
Pink Reason breathed new life into underground music last summer with their debut single, Throw It Away. The homemade seven-inch appeared out of nowhere and dominated turntable time around the United States, filling speakers with basement-recorded gothic post-punk. The slab of vinyl contained within the photo-copied girl-picture sleeve seemed to be constructed by a local scene vet finally breaking into the national underground limelight. When the needle hit the grooves, a classic-model seven-inch blasted through speaker cones with the A-Side sporting a catchy-as-hell lo-fi post-punk burner and the two B-Sides showcasing weirder but just as compelling gothic-industrial tunes. Along with Cheveu, Car Commercials, Home Blitz and Tyvek, the band spearheaded the comeback of the seven-inch single, as christened by Blastitude. One would think the masterminds behind Throw it Away had released many singles before hitting a stride this glorious but, in truth, it was the first release from one man, Green Bay native Kevin DeBroux. Though DeBroux stockpiled his four-track recordings throughout the years, self-doubt and general indifference from the local scene kept him from releasing the recordings to the public. He received minimal local support throughout his four-year career under the Pink Reason moniker. Promoters refused to book Pink Reason; partly because of DeBroux’s rumored antagonistic behavior but also because his music was, in their eyes, “too difficult.” This paired with an ever-rotating, unsteady cast of bandmates stirred self-doubt deep within DeBroux. Friends say DeBroux’s notoriety in the local hardcore scene caused negative local attitudes towards Pink Reason. As he waded his way through the ranks of fucked-up teenage thrash bands, psychedelic noise outfits and straight-1980s hardcore groups, he developed an outsider’s mindset and a friend group comprised of “the real fuck-ups.” In bands like Zone 13 Rejects, a band DeBroux claims was “more conceptual in nature,” he provoked and attacked audience members, earning him lifetime bans from some clubs. Todd Kellner, operator of Trick Knee Records and DeBroux’s friend, relates the first time he met DeBroux was at a hardcore gig where DeBroux kicked one audience member in the face. “He had an aura about him where people were kind of afraid of him,” said Kellner. “It’s kind of funny, especially looking back now.” During a show with hardcore punks Hatefuck, DeBroux and company traveled to Winona, Minnesota. After a five-hour drive to the town, wasted locals, angry punks and gnarled three-legged dogs greeted them by leading them into a commandeered park. Inside the park, DeBroux found “the ultimate punk rock experience” with townies huffing rubber glue and mohawk-brandishing kids starting fights with crusties. The show ended and the locals gave the band three dollars for their troubles. A few kids asked DeBroux and company to chip in the three dollars on a keg. Soon, the crowd dispersed and left the band with no money or place to stay. The band wound up sleeping on an island between Minnesota and Wisconsin and breaking up soon thereafter. He wrote the first Pink Reason song, “Winona,” about this experience. DeBroux began to write and record songs on four-track soon thereafter and embarked on three unsuccessful years of creating CDRs and trying to rouse local attention. After the town towed the car he lived in and crushed it, along with his personal possessions, he decided to move back in with his parents. He acquired a construction job, saved $500 and exacted his revenge on the local scene. He plotted to send his three favorite songs to United Pressing Plant and retire from music altogether. The resulting seven-inch would be a testament to and a panegyric for the power of Pink Reason. He cannot remember the exact date he received the records but he said it took the record a short while to gain attention. He gained distribution through S-S Records, a label and distro center for a small niche of obscure art punk records. Within a couple weeks of sending copies of Throw it Away to S-S Records, the distribution’s operator, Scott Soriano, asked for more copies. Eager bloggers sang the praises of the 7” and his MySpace friends doubled. He said he felt vindicated, as people finally recognized his talent. He believed critics should like his record but, at the same time, one of these reviews humbled DeBroux. The Siltblog entry, written by Siltbreeze records associate Roland Woodbe, praised Throw it Away as “The best record of it's ilk to ooze outta Wisconsin since Hollywood Autopsy slithered into exile...” “That was the first review that really blew my mind, to be honest,” he said. Soon, Siltbreeze head Tom Lax sent DeBroux e-mails asking if Pink Reason would like to record for the label. DeBroux spent days sifting through recordings, listening to masters and picking the perfect song sequence. Still, he felt timid about sending the songs to Lax because of Siltbreeze’s storied history with bands like Dead C, Strapping Fieldhands and Harry Pussy. “I was afraid to send him the masters,” DeBroux said, “but he kept on e-mailing me and saying, ‘Yeah, dude, whenever you’re ready, just send the masters.'” Pink Reason embarked on a summer tour with Dear Astronaut in late July of 2006. Self-booked and financed, the bands often played in front of small crowds at art galleries, house parties and dive bars and generated enough gas money to slough to the next date. DeBroux pulled double duty, donning an acoustic axe and iBook accompaniment with Pink Reason and plucking a bass in Dear Astronaut. The tour stretched from Green Bay to Missouri and back to Maine. In between, DeBroux finalized the Siltbreeze deal during his Philadelphia date, even acquiring $20 in drinking money from Lax. (I think that's what they call an advance! -- ed.) He planned on handing Lax a CD of material for the Siltbreeze album but the label’s reputation daunted him.
After the tour, he sucked up his fear and send Lax the six songs which would become the 2007 LP Cleaning the Mirror. DeBroux constructed the songs on record during a “tough period” in his life; one that saw him living out of cars, on floors and in friend’s closets. He attributes the length of the tunes from these sessions to his speed habit. When he could access recording equipment, DeBroux often stayed up for days at a time, perfecting each song’s sound by recording and rerecording guitar solos and bridges while jacked on crystal meth. Seven-minute recordings felt like pop songs to the geeked DeBroux. “[Cleaning the Mirror] represents a pretty rough time in my life,” said De Broux. “It’s kind of weird that sometimes, when I think about what I want to do next and shit like that, I’m just in a completely different place than I was in when I was recording that stuff, you know.” Darkness infests the album and DeBroux lowers his easy-going Midwest vocal tone when relating tales from the period. One of his many stories involves grabbing a few friends and some possessions and heading to New Orleans in an attempt to forge a career for his hardcore band. On the way, the only people with money spent it on truck stop beef jerky and other “nonsense,” so the crew sold most of their belongings to survive in the Big Easy. DeBroux worked temp jobs in the day and eventually saved enough money to travel back north. The band broke up soon after. Another finds him spending six months living with and apprenticing under a meth cook and practicing guitar in his vast amount of free time. While moving the meth cook’s heroin-addled girlfriend into a new apartment, DeBroux stumbled upon her diary. Unable to restrain himself, he flipped through the pages. Some of the words stuck with him and reworked versions of the diary passages slipped into a few lines on “Up the Sleeve.” The gothic-folk feel of the song reflects the bleakness of the lyrics, its tar-pace steadily creeping along until it reaches a lackadaisical boiling point. “It doesn’t make me feel bad, listening to it,” he said. “I don’t regret my experiences or anything but, when I hear that, it takes me back to times I don’t necessarily want to relive at this point in my life.” “Up the Sleeve” also demonstrates his instrumental approach, as it was orchestrated on the spot using whatever instruments were available at the time. He varies his attack on the song, thrashing about on banjo, saxophone and organ as opposed to the usual cheap Casio and guitar attack. After recording the song, he quickly forgot its chords. DeBroux, who taught himself to play guitar by playing along to Russian punk songs, wings it with many other instruments on his recordings. On “New Violence,” he bounced a big exercise ball for percussion. DeBroux constructed the rhythm guitar line on “Sleight Train” by strumming on a broken toy guitar he found while dumpster diving. “A lot of the instruments I use on the recordings I don’t even technically know how to play,” he said. “Once you’ve been fucking around with shit as long as I have, even if you’re not playing it right, you’re still getting what you want out of it.” Though recordings mainly feature DeBroux, Pink Reason concerts feature an ever-rotating cast of musicians. As of May 2007, he claims six members left the band, including Shaun Handlen, an original Pink Reason member who moved to China. He seems to snag whoever is around for each tour. Before the spring tour with Psychedelic Horseshit, DeBroux assembled a band from friends who had moved back in with their parents or were living in cars. At a Cleveland show in March, DeBroux drafted Alex Teder to fill in on drums after his drummer abruptly quit a few dates into the tour. “A lot of people, I don’t think quit. I just think they play with him for a couple of weeks and then go back to their day jobs,” said Teder. “It’s not like a conflict of interest with anyone not getting along with anyone else.” DeBroux recently shipped off to search of a backing band in Columbus, where record stores already stock Pink Reason records in the “local” section. His success with the LP generated a need for a permanent band. To support his self-professed “transient nature,” Kevin embarks on a national tour this summer with a full backing band in support of Hue Blanc’s Joyless Ones. He will have a rotating cast of characters in tow for the trek. DeBroux could not tell whether his new supporting band will rock with the loose garage feel or his recordings’ structured basement groove. “I never consciously set out to do anything specific,” he said. “It kind of just happens.”
PINK
REASON w/HUE BLANC'S JOYLESS ONES 7.12
Fargo, ND 7.13
Missoula, MT 7.14
Seattle, WA 7.15
Olympia, WA 7.16
Portland, OR 7.17
Oakland, CA 7.18
SF, CA 7.19
Sacto, CA 7.20
Salt Lake City, UT 7.21
Denver, CO 7.22
Omaha, NE (For more by Steve Kobak see his Apples and Heroin blog at satanrulez.blogspot.com) JULY 4 2007 (DAY OF EIKON)
JULY 11 2007 (DAY OF HELLGATE) Date: Wed,
11 Jul 2007 14:49:19 -0700 (PDT) Hey Larry -- sorry you couldn't make it to the Avarus show. It was pretty good. The openers Manbeard were...I don't know. They were 'goofy'. They were one of those bands that thinks their band name is really funny, you know what I mean? They said it about 200 times from the stage. In fact, they had a loop going throughout the set of an eerie woman's voice saying "Maaaaaanbeeeeeard" over and over. They were a pretty large band, with two guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, and a guy who did all kinds of things like flute, violin, sax, handclaps, interpretive dance, he actually was a good musician. They were all pretty good musicians. Their first song was pretty cool, it reminded me of Raymond Pettibon and Supersession! Kinda tranced-out garage-y groove that went on a long time, the recorder flute actually worked well, I think it was Jeffrey Alexander of the Secret Eye label on guitar with a really big beard and he was playing excellent wah-wah guitar... but it kinda got sillier as it went on, theatrical and vaguely operatic 60s-ish psych rock, sorta like trying to do really early Mothers of Invention Freak Out-style pop songs, but it coulda used more Absolutely Free-style extended jamming in my opinion. I did chuckle a few times, I wasn't NOT entertained, but ultimately I just couldn't share the band's enthusiasm over how funny their name was and stuff. Spires on the other hand played a pretty fantastic set. Haven't seen them in what, four years now? Damn. I'd say they're toning down the "shrill harpy" aspect, it's still there but in just the right amount. They were doing things with like looped cello and guitar feedback that I couldn't believe, really otherworldly scraping sounds and judders that accented the acoustic stringed stuff they've always done, with great vocals, really strong stuff... I would close my eyes to listen and just about fall over every time, and I only had three beers the whole night. I don't know, it was rad. And then Avarus came on (it's pronounced ah-vah-ROOS by the way) -- while they were setting up, two of the guys from Manbeard played a wild sax duet on the floor in front of the stage while another one of 'em played percussion on a folding chair -- it was actually really good and, I'll be damned, the show felt like a HAPPENING for a few minutes there. Then Avarus played, 30 or 40 minutes straight, I'm guessing entirely improvised except for maybe the first few minutes, and then they stopped, no encore, all done. The Arttu guy was on drums the whole time -- a very good 'free rock' drummer. Well, he did stop for awhile to play some weird toy electronics, and I think he did some vocals too, but he never left the drum chair. Not much vocals at all, what they did was pretty tentative or just really low-key growling kinda stuff. I think the bassist was the same guy who played bass with Islaja a couple years ago when they were at the Bottle, but now with buzz cut instead of really long hair. I think he's also Sala-Arhino, who did that great CD on Last Visible Dog a couple years ago. He looked pretty fuckin' tough up there, he really dug in and WORKED on that bass. It was him and Arttu bringing the heft all the way. Other than that there were two guitarists and an electronics guy, and everything those three did was kind of... shy? Well one guitarist was pretty good, he would play actual riffs and melodic bits, and he combined with the bassist for some good low end droned out stuff in the middle, but the other one was practically inaudible -- he fiddled with his amp knobs a lot and seemed to play mostly scrapes and noisy twiddles, quietly, and I'm not sure I heard the electronics guy at all. Maybe I'm clueless, maybe they're just that good at blending (hiding?) into the sound and adding something intangible -- I mean, it was definitely more than just bass and drums and one guitar... or was it? Like I said, weird. After the set the bartender put on Ege Bamyasi by Can and it was just like, "Wow, THAT's how you jam with a bass and drums and guitars and electronics" -- like there was so much space and room for articulate subtle chatter in the Can music and there was NO space in the Avarus jamming, just big thick walls of bass that the timid guitar and electronics couldn't penetrate. Or how about this, if the bass and other low end sounds are the SOIL, the role of the higher-end stuff like guitars and electronics is to work as a TILL, to get in there and aerate those thick slabs of earth so the imagination of the players and listeners can seed and grow together. Like wow man, but seriously, I feel like that should've been happening a little more. BUT at the same time I've been thinking about their set a lot, obviously, and admiring it -- they definitely have a spirit and a drive that you don't see every day, something that's unique to them. I liked the way they dug deep into themselves and brought out these walls of heavy psych-drone-groove, there was a real PHYSICAL aspect to it. But it might not have been one of their best shows on the tour. Who knows?
JULY 13 2007 (DAY OF MIDSUMMER NIGHT)
JULY 16 2007 (DAY OF THE TWO DAUGHTERS)
JULY 20 2007 (DAY OF THE FIVE LOST HAVENS WBLSTD
777.666 FM JULY 31 2007 (DAY OF THE MILLRACE)
AUGUST 8 2007 (THE MOVING HAND)
AUGUST 11 2007 (DOG DAYS END) WBLSTD
777.666 FM AUGUST 12 2007 (DAY OF MOSES)
NOW ON THE INTERNET: Funny interview with Kevin Drumm from 2003..... I haven't listened to the fearless and raw improvised music of LaDonna Smith for awhile but it was nice coming across her website (don't miss her psychedelic poems) via Susan Alcorn's links page...... There was an hour-long Parliament-Funkadelic documentary on PBS about a year ago and now the whole thing can be watched at YouTube. Slightly cheesy in parts but still awesome.... pretty much all the big names show up for interviews.... you can finally see what Cholly Bassoline looks like.... Billy Bass is fuckin' funny and somehow seems like he's still in his twenties.... I now have an even bigger crush on Dawn Silva.... Remember Shock G of the great Digital Underground? He gives a good interview and probably smoked a really big blunt about two minutes before filming.... lots more, of course, but no Pedro Bell interview! C'mon man, Jake Austen coulda hooked that up!..... Damn, look at all the Los Llamarada (Monterrey, Mexico weird-punkers as brought to you stateside by Ss Records) vids that this YouTuber has posted..... Damn, look at these crazy industrial landscape video loops that Viki made for the Museum of Contemporary Art (Detroit). Get all four of 'em going at the same time for a real American nightmare! Here's a bad-ass interview with Charalambides for a yoga magazine called Ascent. Heavy stuff, in a couple places Christina's statements actually read to me like the prose of Octavia Butler.... Pretty wild interview with the late great poet Robert Creeley, complete with a helluva LSD story! LOTS more to read in the Paris Review Interview Archive..... And speaking of LOTS to read, don't miss The Realist Archive Project and the Punk Zine Archive.... My old second cousins from New Zealand once blew my mind a little talking about the 1960s journey they took on the Hippie Trail, and here a Dutch guy, who also travelled it, has made a little online scrapbook about it.... and that's as good a place as any to point you towards the journals of someone who just took a Free Agent Trail of his own through the Middle East. Ladies and gentlemen, read all about the Kevekev.com No Politics No Religion Tour Summer 07..... and don't miss Kev E. Kev's 'podcasts' as The Radical Pessimist..... "Chocolate Rain" rules -- I wouldn't call it this generation's "Desolation Row" or anything, but Tay Zonday is a lot closer to Bobby D than he is William Hung, that's for sure. Check out these two killer interviews for insights.... and I can't help but think of this album.... AUGUST 17 2007 (DAY OF THE HIGH CITIES) 'OUTSIDER MUSIC'
Who is Irene Moon? A performance artist, a singer, an academic? Well she's all of those, but above all she's.... a travelling lecturer on entomology and director of an avant-garde theater troupe. For some time a resident of Lexington, Kentucky, friend and collaborator with the Hair Police crew, tangentially part of the American noise underground, but she doesn't really advertise what she does to that whole scene..... can it be that she is a Scene of One? I saw her put on a totally strange musical performance/surrealist lecture a few years ago on a bill with a bunch of noise acts and it was much more Laurie Anderson than Leslie Keffer. Barely heard a peep from her since, not because she hasn't been busy, just because she's truly outside of the usual underground channels. However, Blastitude has received a split LP with Warmer Milks that she has just released on her own Begonia Society label, and her side, with a group called Collection of the Late Howell Bend, is a total jaw-dropper. This improbably-named group seems to have been convened in order to accompany performances by another Moon concern, the Auk Theatre. Their membership is elastic; here Moon is joined by Ellen Mollé and Sara O'Keefe from Eyes and Arms of Smoke for a dark theatrical gothic ballad with spooky text that sits suspended and rotating in dream time, spacing out on Mollé's insistent cello sawing and someone else's moody piano. For the second track, which feels like an extended instrumental rumination on the first, O'Keefe's totally hypnotic multitracked clarinet really applies the osmotic tongue pressure. (On a side note, if you like psychedelic drone/dream jazz, you MUST hear O'Keefe's solo cassette as Ara, released in early 2006 on Rampart Tapes...... ) On the flip Warmer Milks change it up completely, as they always do, even from themselves. The style here is side-long tribal industrial goth squeezed through a highly personal filter, the kind of thing they were doing on their 2006 tour with Howlin' Rain. Those of you who have really been paying attention will be going "dude, Cprek-era Milks!" and that's totally another good reason to check this LP out. As is totally awesome 'great beast' cover artwork by former Hair Police member and current (?) Auk Theatre member Matt Minter.
And then there's the curious career of Gary Beauvais aka Mammal, the CEO of Animal Disguise Recordings. He came up in the early 21st as a kind of in-the-wake-of-Hanson harsh-noise sick-beat guy from the exploding Ann Arbor/Detroit nexus, but he seemed to split off from that particular scene-fest a few years ago and go a stranger, more desolate, and misanthropic route. The last thing I've heard by him was his second full-length, Double Nature from 2003, a brutal CD which really did sound like he was smothering his old style and scene under a pillow and recording its muffled howls and thrashings. Missed his 3rd LP from last year, but did note the rather grim title was Let Me Die, and now these years of grim isolation seem to have really coalesced into a monstrous manifesto, a CD and double LP called Lonesome Drifter. As the one-sheet makes clear, this is a "new chapter in the story of Mammal," described as "brooding, psychedelic, loner blues." That pretty much nails it, though it doesn't say how HEAVY this album can get -- it starts off with a slow, awkward beat that almost sounds like a nod to his sound circa 2001, but then guitar and bass kick in and pulverize that notion with a grinding destructive wall of sound that pretty much guarantees that you'll have to turn your stereo down (or way up if you're lucky and the set and setting are right). The song is called "Repulsion" and seriously, it's fucking awesome. From there the album pulls back somewhat into the brooding loner sound described on the one-sheet, a carefully programmed series of sparse and desolate songs of deep reflection, withdrawal, loneliness, depression, immolation ("Incinerator Ballad"!), and ultimately.... acceptance? Most of this information comes from the music itself, as the album is almost entirely instrumental -- there are lyrics and surprisingly clear singing on some tracks, but only a few terse lines here and there. I'm sure it will all get compared to the obvious doom metal reference points, but there's something truly unique about this music, in large part because Mammal has really learned how to pull back from the extremity of typical metal styles and say more with less. The best example is the last track "Cremation" (side 4 on the LP version), a 20-minute psychedelic masterpiece of a melancholy doom bass-led ballad, forlorn and strangely gentle as it winds its way out. It's got a spaced-out and heavy feel that actually reminds me more of certain vintage krautrock side-long downer epics more than anything contemporary. After all, the Beauvais drawing on the cover is like a strange and grim echo of the drawing on the cover of Ash Ra Tempel's 1972 album Schwingungen, and indeed all of Lonesome Drifter can be heard as a post-apocalyptic sequel to Schwingungen's epic scorcher "Flowers Must Die." There, heavily influenced by Funhouse and overwhelmed by the ongoing modern urban explosion, Ash Ra screamed, "I feel like an ill child from the universe / a Lost God in the dust of the city," and here, Mammal, with the stereo off and tumbleweeds rolling by past empty lots and empty buildings in a city that the urban explosion has long since abandoned, practically whispers, "I've been a drifter in the city / breathing in fumes and looking behind me / steppin on cracks and breaking my back / this city is unforgiving." Weird unique melancholy doom music from the new (dead) Detroit, Lonesome Drifter sounds like what's next on the continuum after post-industrial, a new American album that truly needed to be made. AUGUST 24 2007 (THE DESERTED GARDEN) WBLSTD
777.666 FM AUGUST 29 2007 (DAY OF CONLE) CHECK THESE OUT WHILE THEY ALL STILL WORK! SPARKS (from 1974) TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN LA (live in Detroit on their 2004 tour, amazing camera and editing by Time Stereo) DEMONS (hardcore synth noise with amazing visuals by Alivia Zivich of AA Records) MORE DEMONS VIDEO MADNESS (more from Alivia Zivich) MINOR THREAT (shown DESTROYING live and then skating -- maybe they should've just released this 5-minute clip in theaters last year as American Hardcore) RITES OF SPRING (fucking weird band) EMBRACE (don't know what to think about this -- watching this clip is actually the first time I've ever heard them -- weird to see Ian basically still doing his Minor Threat style of singing and moving, but now in front of a band that doesn't exactly kick ass -- his physicality and performance is now much bigger than the music, so it ends up being like weird Japanese theater or something -- this is cool though) ANTLER PISS SISSY SPACEK WHITE OUT SONIC YOUTH (total classic) SONIC YOUTH (incredible) MTV THE WHO ("Anytime Anyhow Anywhere," talk about "noise rock"....all band members rule, more respect than I thought for Daltrey's stage persona, good chill dancing and soul belting) THE WHO ("Who Are You," live in the studio in 1979 -- heavy!) INTERNET AUGUST 31 2007 (FIRST DAY OF QUEST)
SEPT 15 2007 (SIXTEENTH DAY OF QUEST) CHICAGO
SHOW REPORT SEPT 19 2007 (TWENTIETH DAY OF QUEST)
SEPT 21 2007 (TWENTY SECOND DAY OF QUEST) 7-INCH SINGLES, etc.
SEPT 30 2007 (DAY OF TRISMEGISTOS) LIVE
ON WBLSTD 777.666 FM OCTOBER 9 2007 (DAY OF THE BLOOD SUN) LAST VISIBLE
DOG
OCTOBER 29 2007 (ALL HUNTERS) CHICAGO
SHOW REPORT
|
#25
Wow,
can you believe I once said I was gonna do daily posts? I wish
I could tell you that this summer issue (#25) is going to be the
"Reviews Issue" and that I might even increase updates
to, I don't know, once a week. You never know
-- right now I'm getting myself psyched by listening to the new
Ex-Cocaine album on 
Holy
shit, this Futurians CDR with Mr. Spock on the
cover is fuckin’ great. It’s probably almost a year
old too, but you know sometimes it takes me a while. The first
two or three tracks are just totally tranced-out sci-fi garage
garbage rock -- I think each time they just pushed the button
marked 'retardo dunt loop', turned the knob marked 'tempo' down
until the sound got nice and fuzzy, and then kinda wandered out
of the room for awhile. Eventually they came back with some beers
and started yelling from across the room so it would be a ‘song’.
And it definitely is. In fact, I've been walking around the city
singing these songs all week. Strangers keep hearing me quietly
yelp the phrase "pure green blood" over and
over. You can imagine the looks I get, but it's well worth it.
At least I'm not singing the nutso last track, which sounds like
some boom-box outtake from the Flowers of Romance sessions,
special guest Yoko Ono... Anyway, it's called Spock
Ritual -- great black-on-silver silkscreen design
on this thing too -- kudos to the 
The
I
hardly ever listen to the Double Leopards and I think it's because
they're too good and I'm actually a little afraid. I don't know
if it's the fear that the sound will finally devour and dissolve
my mind completely, or a fear that it will all come crashing down
like a house of cards because after all aren't they mostly just
groaning through pedals? Either way, I really didn't know what
to expect when I warily put on this solo album by founding DL
member Marcia Bassett, recording as Zaimph, but
my first thought after the record started to sink in was, "Man,
no wonder the Double Leopards are so good." These are four
long soft hums of hymnal electricity, "live room recordings"
from 2006, and for each track it's amazing to imagine any mere
room, anywhere, ever sounding like this in real-time.
It's just too mysterious and gorgeous, but yet here it is, in
my room, somehow contained on 180 gram vinyl. It's called
Mirage of the Other, and sure enough,
I'm already a little afraid to listen to it again. Another new
hymnal electric album from the same label (
And
sounding pretty good on the stereo right now is some heavy way-out
free-rock destructo-jam action, lots of blubbering and rampaging
low end with attacking drums. A single 15-minute jam. Blue Humans
vibe, but coming more from the free noise tradition than the free
jazz tradition. If I was in a blindfold test I might even guess
this was 
Album
of the month(s) right now is Those Are Pearls That
Were His Eyes, by Charles Cohen and Ed Wilcox,
an edition-of-500 CD release on the 
1990s,
the phenomenally wrecked Bullet In2 Mesmer's Brain!
(
And
speaking of multiple performances layered and separated, crossfaded
with dubwise boldness, that kinda talk reminds me of this new
Excepter double-CD release called Streams
(
Monotract
has put out two albums less than a year apart. First in mid-2006
was the acclaimed Xprmntl Lvrs on Ecstatic Peace, which
I missed completely, but on my stereo right now is Trueno
Oscuro, their early 2007 followup on 
Great
split LP of solo guitar from the Belgium-based 
That's
right, so far in 2007, Blastitude HQ has received SEVEN brand
new CDs from the Portland, Oregon based 
ground
-- but it's the self-titled disc by White Lichens
that digs the deepest. This band is the Chicago trio collabo between
Lichens, the heavy drony solo guise of Robert A.A. Lowe, and White
Light, the absurdly heavy drone duo of Matt Clark and Jeremy Lemos.
Not that the results are summarily heavy on this disc -- the musicians
are smart enough to pull back a little and let the bombs detonate
in slow motion. Take the moment from the track "Stolas, or
Stolos" (don't ask, they're all named after demons from an
occult book, with entire pages reproduced for the track listing)
when, after almost a minute of huge silence, someone plays a chilling
and crawling slide guitar riff that kinda makes the whole album
all by itself as a sort of centerpoint, a locus of control for
everything before and after. Too bad the track is only 4 minutes
long, but at least opener "Cimejes, or Simeies, or Kimaris"
and closer "Bael" are both well over the 15-minute mark,
and both made up of exquisite low amp burn 
tone
blend, with more where that came from..... And for a whole different
way of mining the vein of extended heavy rock jamming, there's
the Zodiacs and their album Gone,
so raw-fi and obvious in its lack of pre-composed music that at
first I was surprised that an actual label released it. But on
my second listen, I could no longer deny that what the guitar
and organ were doing had some serious burn/fire/damage metaphorical
capability. The sound is basically maxed-out biker blues and who
cares if the players (James "Wooden Wand" Toth, Keith
"Hush Arbors" Wood, Clay "Davenport" Ruby)
actually ride motorcycles or not, there is metaphorical motor
acid in this music and it will fuck you up when you metaphorically
drink it..... The Shining Path (San Diego, CA) and La Otracina
(Brooklyn, NY) have also served up albums of fried and heavy mega-extended
jams for Holy Mountain this year, but where Zodiacs come at it
from 'biker rock' these 
two
are more 'krautrock' and 'fusion prog', respectively. The
Shining Path are the "rock"
guise of the experimental duo Monosov/Swirnoff (who have records
on Eclipse), and from the experimental world they import a lot
of twisting thickets of strange electronics. Of course it's mostly
backed up by plenty of pedal-to-the-floor highway-star drumming,
because this is a "rock" project. That's why the LP
edition also comes with a free copy of the CD inside, because
"it's what you'll want to listen to wielding a golf club
with your upper body outside the sunroof of your car as you steer
with your feet." Their music does fly the freak flag, with
memorably loud electronic settings driven by various rockin' beats,
edited into five or so medium/long crusher/scorchers, no problem
there -- it just errs on the side of 'great sounds, no songs',
without the frothing commitment of 
the
Zodiacs. La Otracina, on the other hand, have
got the sounds, songs, and the froth, and they've really
gone for something massive with their album Tonal
Ellipse of the One. Not only is it far more composed
than the Zodiacs and Shining Path CDs, it's composed in an extended/exploded
'fusion jazz' sense that ends up being just as wrecked. These
five long tracks are credited to the duo of Adam Kriney on drums
and Tyler Nolan on guitar and bass. They are joined on every track
by Ninni Morgia on guitar (if I'm understanding 
30
years. These are both very enjoyable albums, though The
Coast Explodes, the second album by Mammatus,
did take a couple listens to grow on me. At first I was
comparing 'em to their wild and loose neighbors Comets on Fire
and Residual Echoes, and they sounded a little stiff to me, their
long and weighty compositions requiring more rigor and patience
than I expected. But pretty soon I caught on to the intelligent
intricacy of their songs, and how they balanced it with a steady
beach-stoner rock undertone that stoked the familiar. And finally,
as you 
may
have guessed, the Cherrystones Word
compilation by DJ Cherrystones is tons of fun. His liner notes
are great fan testimony, like when he talks about playing some
Lard Free during one of his sets and making the on-tour Wolf Eyes
guys do double takes. There are also lovingly selected tracks
on here by Dead Moon, The Deviants, Chrome, Nosferatu, 1980s George
Brigman (just to prove that it's as good as 1970s George Brigman),
and other epic progressive bands that I've totally never heard
of before, like Fusioon, Roger C. Reale & Rue Morgue, Kontakt
Mikrofoon Orkest.... you get the idea. Hot stuff from one record
lover to many others, and the same goes for all of this generous
fountain from the Mountain. (And for some more Holy Mountain-related
record love, i.e. fan testimony, dig all the 'playlist' style
record reviews Mr. HM has been posting in the "news"
section over at 
The
latest from one of my favorite tape labels of all-time, 
Animal
Disguise
And
how about a tape that seems to be called or is by Puik.
(Maybe self-titled?) Cool art and sew job. Starts with an entertaining
collage of a whole buncha movie bad-asses saying “FUCK”
in various creative ways, and then it goes right into what sounds
exactly like a track off of the first s/t Alvarius B record, i.e.
raw go-for-broke solo acoustic guitar. I honestly thought it was
someone else who had the Alvarius B style down cold, until a couple
more killer pieces later when the musician started tuning his
guitar right there on tape while mumbling and monologuing about
it, and, shit, it was unmistakably the voice of Mr. Alan "Alvarius
B" Bishop himself, and you know he's always one
to do weird shit on wax (although I have NEVER heard him do the
'tuning up and mumbling about it on a studio record' bit before).
So, to get it right: the LABEL is called Puik, it's from Belgium,
run by visual artist (et al) 
Oh, and another thing, Sun City Girls 7-inches
rule. I randomly pulled out their 1993 double 7-inch 
I
too was avoiding them just because of their name, but a few people
I trust think they're pretty good, so I've finally given a few
listens to Raccoo-oo-oon, their acclaimed and
reviled album Behold Secret Kingdom.
No doubt they do amass a hell of a sound: swirling guitar and
sax and electronics, maxed-out wailing and heavily effected vocals,
stomping and swinging drummer(s), a weird and seething noise-punk
turmoil. Cool, let's see what's going on with the next track....
okay, swirling guitar and sax and electronics, maxed-out wailing
and heavily effected vocals, stomping and swinging drummer(s),
a weird and seething noise-punk turmoil. Okay, okay, what else
have we got here..... a decent Torch of the Mystics rip
on solo guitar, that's cool, and now the rest of the band is coming
in, turning the song into..... swirling guitar and sax and electronics,
maxed-out wailing and heavily effected vocals, stomping and swinging
drummer(s), a weird and seething noise-punk turmoil. Hmm, if you
don't mind I'm gonna jump ahead a couple tracks -- oh, what's
this? A solo electric guitar playing quiet chords for two minutes,
that's cool, a nice interlude, and oh, there's the hanging pause....
something heavy's going to happen right about HERE...... and it's
swirling guitar and sax and electronics, maxed-out wailing and
heavily effected vocals, stomping and swinging drummer(s), a weird
and seething noise-punk turmoil. Okay, I'll stop. It's not that
I think bands have to "change things up" every five
minutes in order to be "interesting," but if they're
going to do the same thing on every track (and interludes don't
count!), they should do it the way a river always does the same
thing, constantly regenerating itself from a greater source, distinguished
by side currents and various eddies, steadily evolving with the
terrain around it. Listening to this album is like being shown
a snapshot of a river, over and over. It's a mighty river, but
pretty quickly I realize that nothing's gonna change. The CD does
look and feel nice, in a gatefold digipak from 
For
example, there's Jakob Olausson, that guitar-slingin'
sugar beet farmin' folk-singer from near the town of 
and
don't forget that Olausson's pre-Moonlight Farm recordings
under the name Joshua Jugband 5 are just about
as good. Two self-released CDRs came out under that name, a self-titled
one in 2002 and one called Damascus Doldrum in 2003,
and both have been compiled on one new s/t CD from 
and
as if that wasn't enough, not only has Olausson just put out another
LP with his girlfriend under the moniker Sus & Jakob (has
anyone heard it? is it as good as Moonlight? Sus is on
two Moonlight songs, credited with flute and voice --
is it more of the same? Or did I really read somewhere that it's
an LP of.... free jazz?), he's also released an odd solo
LP of sci-fi instrumentals under the name Renegade Scanners,
on Finland's always-hairy 
And
speaking of 
And
as long as we're on Sweden, of course we have to mention 
This
article is starting to go on forever, but as long as I'm doing
this I might as well mention that I was at 
And
no, this article is never gonna end, because I just remembered
an album from Sweden I've been meaning to review for like four
years now. It's by The Spacious Mind, and it's
called Live Volume One: Do Your Thing But Don't Touch
Ours, Skogsnäs 26/10/99. I've always liked
the story of this album, the band travelling up to the commune
village of Skogsnäs, "in the middle of the deep north
Swedish forests," and laying down this endless slow and somber
heavy psych-rock jam, giving it a nice 'testy hippie' title to
boot. Compared to the austere aumgn of their obvious forebears
in Träd Gräs, the Spacious Mind play more solos and
use more e-bows and are more likely to dive into purple wah-wah
passages, but that's true of most self-proclaimed "psychedelic
jam bands," and very few of them have the stoic Träd
Gräs-worthy control that the Spacious Mind exhibit here.
Do Your Thing is one of several releases on the band's
in-house 
Wait
a minute, let's go back to 
Actually
maybe Oaxacan really are from California -- that's
what it says on 
Special
post to tell you that as soon as you're done wasting time at
work reading this, you should click on over 
It's
the summer of 2002 and I'm watching the Charalambides play a
show at Stormy Records in Dearborn, Michigan. At some point
in the middle of a beautiful set of music, the three members
each play an unaccompanied solo. Christina Carter goes first
with an absolutely stunning vocal solo, Tom Carter goes next
with chewy and gristly slide-guitar space-blues, and then Heather
Leigh Murray quite simply plays the most sublime spaced-out
avant-garde solo pedal steel guitar music I have yet heard in
my thirty-odd years of existence. I later learn that she had
a mentor on the instrument, fellow Houston, Texas resident 
Sorta
like hearing SWA before Black Flag, or the Jackofficers before
the Butthole Surfers, or, I don't know, Brides of Funkenstein
before Parliament, I
have heard 
casa
gameboy 7-23-05 (featuring Mike Shiflet)." As for Sword
Heaven, well, fuck. Soon after hearing Face Place,
I heard them too. Quite a few different releases, in fact: their
split LP with Lambsbread on the 
Here's
two new CDR releases from our friends at 
incrementally
change as the track progresses. Always different, always the
same.... speaking of which, the Warmer Milks
disc is called Driving With Diarr,
and it feels like a sequel to their previous WFOT side Aja
Braun the way it knocks around wildly from song to experiment
to goof-off to prayer. It starts out with a spooky staring-contest
dirge, and then a relatively normal song in Mikey's 'melting
Will Oldham' style, but quickly loses its shit completely into
who knows what. I can recall plenty of highlights, like the
whole "wild in the streets / runnin', runnin'"
thing, and the solo/zoned guitar-raga closer, but I'd have to
listen to it another 25 times to figure out half of the other,
uh, components to this one.... 
And
finally, I realize I'm not going to win any 'tough guy' points
for this, but this debut CD by Meg Baird (Dear
Companion on 
If
you thought the Group Doueh LP from early this year on 
New-to-me
label from Atlanta, Georgia called 
As
for Hoss Records 008, a split LP between Atlas Sound
and Mexcellent, I knew nothing until learning
that Atlas Sound is the solo guise of Bradford Cox, frontman
of Deerhunter, a band that I still haven’t heard, if you
can believe that. I do read 'the shit' out of 
When
I heard 
And
you know what other album slays? Fucking Fulfillingness'
First Finale by Stevie Wonder.
It was always Innervisions this and Talking Book
that around here, but all of a sudden I think FFF
is the one I'll take to the desert island. Y'see, just tonight
I was walking home from the grocery store up here in the 
And
back to 
Lotsa
synth action going around in today’s weird underground
and that’s understandable. It's a sound for the ages,
so alien, cold, and futuristic, but also somehow very human,
offering immediate translation of obscure brainwaves and the
deepest mental landscapes into sound/music/art. Still a lot
to accomplish there, but before you get all excited and record
a rad new CDR release every time you turn the damn thing on,
make sure you’ve checked out the source, like any of the
awesome first seven Heldon albums or Terry Riley's monumental
Persian Surgery Dervishes. There are probably a hundred
more examples after those, and probably the deepest of them
all is Wizards by J.D. Emmanuel,
a beautiful and relaxing album of driving and pulsing synth
and organ music, released in 1982 as a private press LP from
Houston, Texas. On the back cover it said "J.D. Emmanuel
may be contacted for live performances and to share workshops
on his research with music in relation to stress, meditation,
altered states, and as a medium for counseling and physical
therapy." I'm sure these workshops were (are?) interesting,
but it's amazing how much therapeutic and meditative value you
can get from the record alone -- in fact, just this week I personally
witnessed this album help to calm a fairly serious anxiety attack.
Just one of many reasons you should have this music in your
house, and Belgium label 
Also
new from 
Always
more tapes, like this split cassette on a Columbus-based label
called 
And
also from 
I
think someone said this new "proceeds go to Food Not Bombs"
7-inch by the Wooden Shjips is their best record
yet and I'm in full agreement (having not yet heard the brand
new full-length on Holy Mountain). It's the same kind of amiably
burning California trance rock they did on their first two records
and this is the most scorching example yet, the bass on a mental
wind-up "How Many More Times" repeato-riff that goes
and goes throughout both sides, at 33RPM too, so you get a pretty
nice 10-minute chunk. It's called "Sol '07 (parts 1 and
2)," and the sol flows over the bass-and-drums earth in
the form of submerged but crazy echo-vocals, possible farfisa
organ, floating psychedelic mariachi trumpet (!), ripping guitar
solos, 
as
is the Pink Reason "By A Thread" 7-inch
(Trick Knee Productions), every bit as essential as
his two perfect previous releases, the "Throw It Away"
7-inch and the Cleaning the Mirror LP. I mean the A
side here "By A Thread" might just be his single greatest
song, certainly his most upbeat and driving, his most pop-punk
if you will (not saying you should), but still with the crucial
gooned-out dark-cloud Pink Reason feel you've come to know and
die with. And the B side changes things up, to say the least,
with an a capella blues called "The Devil Always Wins,"
only to change it right back to square one for "Down On
Me," another pumping/driving/wavey love/hate song as catchy
as the first. These hooks are huge and this record is great,
right down to the cover photo of a show (or is it a practice?)
and the party photos on the labels.....
I
have yet to hear Robedoor hit a single bad
note. As far as I can tell from the 3 or 4 releases I've come
across, they're one of the finest 'moving stillness'/'haunted
stasis'/'superstoned drone' bands of the 2000s, and their piece
here on this split with Ghosting is just mesmerizing.
No speed marking (is there ever anymore?) but I play it at 33
so it'll last longer. Nice lock groove ending too. Ghosting
holds their own on the flip, also a static/drone/wall kind of
piece, but with more active ingredients, namely a loose crap-strings
Western-style raga that eventually gives up completely and lets
the wall take over as it begins to levitate and bend in slow
unbreaking waves. White vinyl, 
This
rather infamous single on Black Velvet Fuckere by
Louisville, KY garage punk ravers The Touched
really rips too. Doug Mosurock's negative review for 
And
yet another blown-out DIY psychedelic no-scene weird soul garage
single has showed up in the mailbox, the debut from Eat
Skull on the Meds label. Side A has
two blown-out nervous nerd-punk skiffle songs at 45RPM, both
with big hooks buried in scorching tones and very adventurous
mixes that place things like the unamplified ukelele (?) much
louder than the 100-watt-cabinet noise bass (??). Side B is
one song at 33RPM which gives 'em a chance to dive into an excellent
mini-"Sister Ray" for a few minutes. Apparently Eat
Skull is another Hospitals-connected band, as was the awesome
Sic Alps lineup that cut Pleasures and Treasures, which
reminds me that the Hospitals' Jocks and Jazz rec on
Load from waaaaay back in the day (2005) was a good one, which
makes me wonder if the Hospitals aren't some kind of collective-unconscious
cornerstone for this whole '00s no-scene DIY punk revitalization,
and if maybe Pete Frame should do a family tree. If they had
only released a 7-inch EP of some kind back in Year Zero (2006),
they'd be truly legendary, but I'm more than happy to settle
for Eat Skull in 2007.....
And
speaking of this whole '00s punk thing and its annoying but
sometimes cool older brother "garage," I can't believe
that my old town Lincoln, Neb. has a garage scene that is actually
good. But here it is, spearheaded by 
Howl called M-60. This songwriter
named Johnny Ziegler has got it, a gnarly voice and guitar style,
great drawling hooks, and a band that cooks. They've since put
out a few other 7's that I haven't heard (BTW, I am fully aware
that all of these records are incredibly old and everyone else
reviewed 'em at least a year ago, just sayin'), including one
produced by Jay Reatard, and 
And
speaking of incredibly old, why the hell did it take me like
two years to listen to this Big Nurse single,
"Who Wants To Kill The President?" b/w
"Electrocute Your Cock"? The A side is a
wrenching dubbed-out mental howl of a protest song, the singer
asking the title question over and over, continually sending
it through a meat-grinder of trippy effects while the rest of
the instruments just wrong the fuck out in some kind of unknown
rhythmic truth. The B side, as many of you have already surmised,
is a Vom cover. In it, the band turns what was actually a pretty
straight-ahead song into a feedback-laden cubist disaster that
somehow never stops moving forward. Released on their own 
I'm
ending up liking this Wicked Poseur 7-inch
more than I think I should. From Houston, Texas, the band (or,
actually, the guy) plays cheesy 1980s-style synth-pop that pretty
much has to be ironic, but the hooks are surprisingly good and
the rhythm hits just right. "Maybe Eliminator" has
got a soft kick, a deadpan vocal, and it's been playing in my
head off and on for about three weeks now. Would've been one
of the best songs on the Valley Girl 
soundtrack,
for sure. The label is called 
Finally
listened to this Silver Daggers 7-inch,
also on Not Not Fun, that's been sitting by
the stereo for probably TWO years now. It's pretty good, better
than their more recent New High & Ord
CD on Load. They're a good
band in an aggro post-Ex mold, but like the Ex they can sometimes
err just a little on the side of strident, and the sparkling
clean studio sound of the CD maximizes this pitfall, where the
garbage basement vibe of the 7-inch enshrouds it. I prefer the
latter, although the former has much better cover art (by Gary
Panter), so buy it on vinyl too if you're interested. Maybe
it sounds a little murkier that way too......
And
hey, I may like "murky," but that doesn't mean a band
can play mediocre pop-punk and pass their shit off as good just
because it's 'drowned in noise' or 'bathed in scum' or whatever,
even if they are from Ohio. Now, now, settle down -- I am not
referring to Times New Viking (they're really good), and I am
definitely not referring to Psychedelic Horseshit.
On their Who Let The Dogs Out? 7-inch
EP (on 
The
Last Visible Dog label has really figured out how to put together
a top-notch compilation over the last few years, and here's
yet another one called Somethings #1.
It was assembled back in 2004 by Ilya Monosov
(of Monosov/Swirnoff and The Shining Path) without LVD in mind,
but it is a perfect fit for the label as it collects long, spacious
tracks that give each artist a chance to really sink in. The
opening 10-minute-plus voice-and-erhu solo jam by Chie
Mukai is one of those worth-the-price-of-admission
deals, huge sweeping echoing notes carved out of the deepest
night sky. And that's just track one, so you get a lot more,
like live aggressive free improvisation by the sax duo of Andrew
Deutsch and Joe McPhee, a weird set
of field recording miniatures by Nick Castro,
for the likes of "items found in my pocket" and "various
fan motors from the 1940s" (you may know him as a new psychedelic
folk recording artist, but these tracks are a whole other kettle),
6 or 7 minutes of solo saxophone by Masayoshi Urabe,
a performance that is very quiet but also gets very loud for
seconds at a time (sometimes it sounds like not one but two
people are playing full blast, and other times all that can
be heard is the desultory shuffling of his feet on the floor),
an absolutely rich and deep 10 minutes of gorgeous drone by
Sarah Peebles that more than lives up to its
title ("Music for Incandescent Events no. 1, after sunset
with crescent moon setting over field"), a twitchy and
subtle piece by curator Monosov called "Untitled Performance
in Open Air" (for "trumpet, electronics, tape, field
recording and manipulation, mixing board with an attached microphone
and speaker"), and things are suitably closed out by Preston
Swirnoff with a rippling piano drone that echoes and
decays back into itself vertiginously for a good 10 minutes.
(Reminds me of side B of 
farfisa
organist for the Providence, RI psych rock organ trio Urdog,
and author of the great liner notes to LVD's Elegy Box,
Jeff Knoch is now recording solo for LVD as Eyes Like
Saucers. His debut CD is called Still Living
In The Desert (And Mostly Inside My Own Head),
and aside from some sparse instrumentation and two songs with
strange vocals, this is essentially a "slightly modified
Indian pedal harmonium" album, in the admitted spirit of
Nico's Desertshore. Droned out and elegaic, these songs/pieces/hymns
are not so much sonically heavy as they are philosophically
and psychedelically heavy, which really ends up being the same
thing, doesn't it? One of the songs with vocals is a great creeping
cover of Robert Wyatt's "Sea Song," the album closes
with a reading of "Desertshore" called "Desert
Song," and the long instrumental tracks in between are
tough high lonesome hardcore psych, one man pulsing both with
and against the universe and more than holding his own. Not
to mention that some of these solo pieces also remind me of
the solo kheng (bamboo organ) pieces on the new 
album
by Eric Carlson a/k/a Area C, on which he is
joined by Knoch and together they create patient New England
Kosmiche tracks played largely on keyboards, with guitar and
electronic embellishments. At first I thought it was a little
square, sorta like the geometric pattern on the cover, but the
more I listen the more it draws me in -- the album really does
build further on my 'pulsing with/against the universe' description,
via some kind of dark Riley/Glass/Vuh hybrid... taken together,
these two albums are a really heavy statement, the out-of-nowhere
front-runners of this new LVD batch, although Providence is
getting some serious competition (in what is not a contest)
from another fave LVD locale, New Zealand. Remember the Sandoz
Lab Technicians? They had a great (paper-only!) 
interview
in Opprobrium #2 and a great 1996 debut LP on Siltbreeze,
but something happened with NZ freenoise back around 2000 or
so -- either the musical activity slowed way down, or I just
decided to stop paying attention. Probably the latter, because
apparently the Technicians have been more or less extant the
whole time, and LVD has put out their latest CD The
Western Lands. On first listen it didn't click
at all, but from second listen on, there it was, hooking me
at first with suddenly sublime electric piano that now made
me think fondly of the Circle album Tower, another
LVD title I had just gotten into (one of the label's releases
promoting another, in a highly evolved manner, without words).
After that, The Western Lands began to reveal an overall
subtle and sublime approach to epic improvised psychedelic composition,
especially on the 31-minute title track -- deeper, richer and
more revenant than the shorter and more casual pieces I remember
from a decade ago. (Non-LVD SLT aside: Nathan 
Thompson
of Sandoz Lab Technicians has a solo project called Expansion
Bay and has put out a CD called Star Obsolescence
on the 
city of Auckland? Released an excellent CD on Ecstatic Peace
in, I don't know, 1999? And another one in 2000 on Corpus Hermeticum?
Speaking of which, have ya pulled out the 1996 comp Le Jazz
Non lately? I just did for the first time in about 7 years
and it rules, including the 8-minute RST track. And, to the
point, his new 2007 CD on LVD called Axes
might just rule over all of 'em. As with the Sandoz Lab Technicians,
he sounds like he's been working and honing nonstop for the
last few years, dialing away from the thicker and louder low-end
style of the 1990s into a quieter approach that seethes and
hovers and breathes more, living up to such sci-fi titles as
"Lords of Space," "The Gate of the Sun,"
and "Stone Circle Free." (One of the quietest and
best tracks is even called "L.A.S.E.R.," as in Light
Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, of course.)
Highly recommended, don't lose it in the shuffle..... and for
yet another New Zealand band showing up on Last Visible Dog
after a long 
absence
sounding like they had never gone away, can you believe that
The Terminals have put out their first album
in over a decade? It's called Last Days of the Sun,
and they sound just the same as they did circa 1995, the rolling
drums by 