The Factory Press -- INTERSTATE [N D]

Zounds! Loud, bass-heavy Texans with... a Bauhaus fetish? From DENTON? This is truly a strange state. Seeing as how it's on N D, i was sort of expecting highbrow art or noise or something -- instead, it turns out to be a less- pretentious and harder-rockin' Bauhaus for the 90s. Which means that many will want to run screaming for the hills, but not ME... this is good stuff as far as I'm concerned.... This is actually an EP, not a full-length disc, with only five songs. From the opener "Severance," it quickly becomes obvious that the group has a fondness for deep, deep BASS -- the kind that makes your speaker shake. The big uptempo anthem-type number is "State of the Union," with plenty of crunch factor and a disjointed rhythm that lurches around big, big drums while the singer wails in dire distress, sounding maybe a bit TOO much like Peter Murphy for his own good. "Black Thorn Blades" has a nifty out-of-phase guitar sound and different instruments crash in out of the mix at strategic intervals, keeping you on your toes. "Sundown Radio" is apparently a leftover from their four-track days (although its sound quality isn't noticeably different) and takes advantage of the lowly four-track's narrow bandwidth to squeeze out some perverse kitchen-sink sounds over a waltzing bassline. Not earth-shattering by any means, but still worthy of your attention (unless Bauhaus and double-basses and cellos give you hives or something).

John Fahey -- THE TRANSFIGURATION OF BLIND JOE DEATH [Takoma/Fantasy]

Now that Fahey is suddenly a big deal again, his old labels are just falling all over themselves to release his every recorded utterance before his star fades again. This is a good thing, for Fahey has an enormous catalog and probably half of it (including, alas, OLD FASHIONED LOVE, the source of "Dry Bones in the Valley (I Saw the Light Go Shining Round and Round," most recently covered by Gastr del Sol) is horribly out of print. So now we have this back in print again, an album considered by many to be his best (from the first phase of his career, anyway, prior to his comeback with CITY OF REFUGE). I'd be hard pressed to disagree with them. Some of the numbers here, like "Orinda-Moraga" and "On the Sunny Side of the Ocean," are flat- out brilliant examples of orchestrated fingerpicking. It also makes for interesting listening on the level of determining the roots of his current sound. You can hear the beginnings of his weird WOMBLIFE-era slide moves on his interpretation of "How Green Was My Valley" and "The Death of the Clayton Peacock"; you can hear the embryo of "juana" in "Orinda-Moraga"; and the overdubbed guitar experiments are all over the place on this one. Along the way you also get country picking on "Come Back Baby," the obligatory hymn ("Saint Patrick's Hymn"), and the amusement of hearing him stop midway through "Poor Boy" to shush his barking dog.

Of course, the experimentation on this album was nothing compared to what would come later on albums like VOICE OF THE TURTLE and REQUIA -- in fact, this is one of the most traditional-sounding albums of his catalog -- but it's there, if you listen for it. Beyond that, it just plain sounds great. If "Juana" was the song that captivated you the most on WOMBLIFE, then this is something you probably should investigate.

Oh, and the cover is hilarious. Too bad they couldn't include his long, rambling liner notes, though....

John Fahey -- VOICE OF THE TURTLE [Takoma/Fantasy]

Think of this as Fahey's answer to the original Folkways Anthology. The sound is certainly weird enough -- moving from traditional fingerpicking rags to fucked-up dissonance and found-sound experiments, sometimes all within the same song -- and to make the point absolutely clear, the blackly funny, paranoid, and ironic liner notes (truly an epic, we're talking pages and pages, with photos to provide "authenticity" to the outlandish notes, all provided in charming eyestrain-o-vision) hold distinct echoes of Harry Smith's cryptic notes for the original Anthology.

"Bottleneck Blues" is nominally a standard guitar blues, but midway through distorted sounds and odd riffs start creeping in, throwing you off balance. The normalcy continues through "Bill Cheatum" (which has a nifty fiddle sawing away), but things start getting a bit eccentric on "Lewisdale Blues," which opens with a weird flute aria and (way in the background) either tape noise or electronic hum; eventually a sprightly guitar joins in, but the lonesome flute always has the last word. This is followed by two wildly different versions of "Bean Vine Blues," then "A Raga Called Pat, Part III" -- where slide guitar and background noises give way to found sound, droning chant vox, and other weirdness that must have sounded extremely mutant when this album was first released in 1968. "A Raga Called Pat, Part IV" is even stranger -- it opens with a burst of echoed sound that fades away, then reverberates back to life again and again, eventually fading out into an actual song that finally ends in subterranean drones.

Tradition briefly reasserts itself on "Train," but then "Je Ne Me Suis Reveillais Matin Pas En May" is broken up with howling, half-drunken vocals and shouting, giggling, and other infantile background behavior. I can only imagine what the general reaction was to this when the hippies heard it the first time. (This song, incidentally, sounds remarkably like an outtake from the Anthology, which was no doubt intentional.) "The Story of Dorothy Gooch, Part I" is broken up by jagged bursts of dissonant piano (or heavily treated guitar, i'm not sure which), and while his reworking of "Nine Pound Hammer" is essentially traditional, it's still plenty eccentric.

This album, as it turns out, was merely a taste of the avant before proceeding in the full-blown weirdness of REQUIA....

John Fahey -- REQUIA [Vanguard]

This actually starts off in innocuous fashion as prime fingerpickin' Fahey with "Requiem for John Hurt," a raglike folk blues in open C modeled (in its own weird fashion) after Charley Patton's "Jesus is a Dying Bed-Maker." (Of course, since this helpful info comes from Fahey's liner notes, and since Fahey has always been a sardonic trickster of the highest order, this may or may not actually be true.) Then "Requiem for Russell Blaine Cooper" opens with single, drawn-out chords before turning into a more regular tune with a guitar sound reminiscent of WOMBLIFE's "juana," even though the tune is totally different. "When the Catfish is in Bloom" is a slow (but not dirge- like) fingerstyle experiment in volume and dynamics, but otherwise not too far removed from the more traditional bits of his oevure. So far, so good.

Then he moves into the four parts of "Requiem for Molly," where bits of symphonic found sound and intercut with sounds of traffic, slowed-down bits, other effluvia, and wild reverb sound effects. At some point a traditional song begins to happen, but it's almost drowned out by the sonic weirdness. This is the most concrete sign pointing to the direction he would eventually return to with his "comeback" on CITY OF REFUGE thirty years later. The second part even incorporates looped snippets of speech and farm sounds (appropriate, given that this is an homage to Knott's Berry Farm Molly), along with a completely unrelated fiddling marathon that fades in and out against the actual song (it's down there somewhere). This pattern of sonic experimentation with sound and loops continues through the third and fourth parts as well, before the album concludes with "Fight On Christians, Fight On," so slowed down that it is pretty much unrecognizable.

Interesting, this mix of the old and new... the traditional and the experimental... very interesting indeed....

John Fahey -- THE MILL POND ep [Little Brother Records]

This is an odd li'l double-single thingy, all right. Four sides, four songs, all apparently recorded during the sessions for CITY OF REFUGE. First up is "Ghosts," whose name is taken from the sound of the eerie, wailing slide guitar that punctuates the slo-mo steel-string strumming at regular intervals. About halfway through Fahey himself joins in with deep, lonesome wailing of his own. A creepy-sounding dirge suitable for scaring off the candy-seekin' tots at Halloween, all right. The flip side is "Garbage," an urban-disaster collage of sorts full of processed sounds, guitar doodling and nattering so thoroughly drenched in reverb that the guitar hardly sounds like guitar anymore, chittering loops, and lots o' dissonant rumble. This must be the track intended for the haunted house.

The second single is essentially two devolved renderings of "The Mill Pond" from CITY OF REFUGE, where Sunny John reveals his bright-eyed view of life via the titles "You can't cool off in the millpond, You can only die" and "The Mill Pond Drowns Hope." Both are reworked, heavily-reverbed versions of the original song (the first is noisier; the second tosses in mountains o' delay as well so it sounds like ping-pong balls bouncing across the strings). They're both kind of interesting, but only as an aside to the original album track. Which makes the EP an intriguing curiosity, but hardly an essential item (good thing too, since i'm not sure how easy it is to find the damn thing). "Ghosts," however, really should have been on the album....

John Fahey -- CITY OF REFUGE [Tim Kerr Records]

Captain 4-Track ripped open the secret coded cable and stared at the creamy paper with an intensity that TASCAM-Girl found quite odd. As he continued to stare, his eyes growing wider and wider, her curiosity got the better of her. "Well, come ON," she said. "What's it SAY?"

"I don't know. It's in code."

"Oh for Christ's sake." she ripped the flimsy cable from his hand. "Oh, look, it's an MIA report. Apparently John Fahey is still among the living and even putting out records again."

"John who?"

She looked at him with raw disbelief. "You've never heard of him? My God, what kind of heathen are you?"

"So tell me about him, then."

"Sure. He's been making records forever -- close to forty years -- operating on the fringes as a largely unclassifiable talent because he's tremendously avant-garde yet plays an ordinary six-string guitar. He once recorded a 'country' album with songs about Bhudda. He calls himself Blind Joe Death and once tried to solve a major health problem by drinking heavily. He's minimalist without being a minimalist, a folk artist who doesn't play folk songs, a bluesman who doesn't play the blues, and he just basically mystifies the hell out of a lot of people. He's also quite cranky and has a low tolerance for fools. He's basically Tony Conrad with a guitar, really. Well, not really, but you know what I mean."

"So who can vouch for him?"

"Well, Jim O'Rourke coaxed him out of retirement and Table of Elements not only gave him a juicy slot on their last festival, but will soon be putting out another album of his. So he has some hep people on his side."

"I see. So what's he done for the world lately?"

"Released a fine disc called CITY OF REFUGE that's sure to confound all the expectations of old-time Fahey followers and win over a new generation of listeners. The only thing on here that really falls in line with his previous work is the vaguely countryish finger-picking ditty 'chelsey silver, please come home'; the rest is either stop and start dirges of strumming and fingerpicking like 'city of refuge i' and its companion 'city of refuge ii' or swirling, efx-laden tracks like 'hope springs eternal,' where he slides and picks over a looped bed of swirling guitars run through an avalanche of reverb and chorus. The album's long final track, 'on the death and disembowelment of the new age,' sounds almost like a low-key answer to Swans -- splices of reverbed guitar loops compete with aching drones, mechanical noises, snippets of conversation, otherwordly guitar, and even a Stereolab sample."

"Stereolab? STEREOLAB?"

"Yah. Funny world, ain't it?"

The Captain scratched his head. "So... so what's it all MEAN?"

"It has something to with the paranoid urban dream and the onslaught of of technology that's driving away the old country and his undying hatred of the whole New Age trend, which he apparently inadvertently started when he recorded an album with Leo Kottke many moons ago. Or maybe he just likes making funny noises. It's hard to tell and I'm sure as hell not going to be the one to ask him...."

John Fahey -- WOMBLIFE [Table of the Elements]

Let's be frank here: Fahey is a folk musician. But not just ANY folk musician; no, Fahey is the stealth bomber of folk. He's on a mission, you know. He's come to reclaim folk from its current state of wimpiness, much in the same way that Dylan forced the doe-eyed longhairs to wake up and smell the coffee when he strapped on his electric guitar and made everyone piss in their pants at the Newport Festival in 1965. Give ol' Blind Joe Death credit here: he is even more cryptic, elusive, mysterious, and (apparently) misanthropic than the Jokerman himself, no small feat. Plus he looks WAY more intimidating. No fucking fey boots and scarves for Mr. Fahey, who on the cover of WOMBLIFE looks like he just got through loading hundred-pound crates on a loading dock for eight hours in the bad part o' town. I'll bet no one tries to stiff him for his cash at the end of a gig.

The perverse part of this -- him being a folkie, that is -- is not just that he's gained a highly improbable second wind after nearly forty years in "the biz" (betcha didn't know he's released something like 25 albums, did you now?), but that he's done it by crossing over to a completely new audience, apparently by... by accident. A most peculiar turn of events for a man who spent most of the Eighties "curing" various health problems through the power of heavy drinking, being homeless, and supporting himself by reselling thrift-store classical records to naive collectors. So just how did a taciturn, sardonic guy with a beat-up acoustic guitar suddenly come to be worshiped by the avant-garde cognoscenti? Shee, things have taken a mighty strange turn when Jim O'Rourke and minimalist-noise label Table of the Elements are just the first in a mighty long line of people ready to pee in their pants over his every steel-toned guitar move....

The reason, of course, is because Fahey was never really a folkie, at least not in the accepted sense. Unlike the purists who view the voice and the unamplified guitar as the alpha and omega of all that is "folk," Fahey considers these merely two weapons among a limitless arsenal in his war against all that is tame. Hell, he doesn't even bother to SING much of the time -- in fact, he doesn't open his mouth at all on this album. What he DOES manage to do is smother his guitar in overdubbed overtones, ambient noise, tape collages, and all sorts of esoteric stuff that owes a hell of a lot more to the likes of Brian Eno and maybe Stockhausen than to Blind Willie Johnson or Howlin' Wolf.

The unlikely meeting of folk and avant-noise would be a stupefying disaster of epic proportions in most hands, but here it comes across as the product of sheer genius -- mostly because of a powerful dose of subtlety and restraint. (And really, he HAS had about forty years to gear up for this one, you know.) Probably the smartest thing he did regarding this album was to allow Jim O'Rourke to produce it -- a bold move for a guy who's used to producing himself, but one that works out extremely well. It works because O'Rourke is a shaper of sound; as a collaborator or producer, he brings a high degree of organization and formidable composition skills to the mixing desk on any given project. To get an inkling of the just how much difference his involvement makes, compare this to last year's CITY OF REFUGE; while that is hardly a bad album (i thought it was pretty hot shit when i reviewed it and haven't changed my opinion), this makes that effort look like the work of a man who's just woken up from a long sleep (which is metaphorically true, in a sense). This album is so focused, so dead-on, that it's absolutely crystalline, like a flawless diamond that reveals a new facet every time you study it again.

Of course, describing the album itself is not exactly easy. On the first track, "sharks," he opens up with jangling acoustic chords that are gradually supplanted by slide guitar, additional guitar sounds in the background, and tape noises. Ghostly slide and percussive guitar ride over a rumbling bed of what might be train sounds, all building to what sounds like the drumming of a steel can but is probably something else. Odd but engaging. These elements recombine in different forms, levels, velocities, and combinations over the next three songs -- "planaria," "eels," and "coelacanths" -- as if they are all essentially movements within one much larger piece. (This concept is reinforced by the fact that these four all run together on the disc; you can't tell where one ends and the next begins without checking the disc monitor.) This material is all considerably more structured than the pieces on CITY OF REFUGE, but nowhere near as blatantly weird as those on the subsequent EP of "remixes" and stuff, THE MILL POND.

Which leaves the final song, "juana," the closest thing to traditional playing on this album. In some ways "juana" is a continuation of some of the sound and ideas from much earlier works like OLD FASHIONED LOVE; in terms of compositional structure and added guitars toward the end, though, it falls neatly in line with his more recent work. The piece starts out with an almost-familiar melange of arpeggiated melody and strummed chords, moving in a series of patterns that sound almost haphazard. In actuality, he is introducing all the bits and pieces that will be used in a more orderly fashion in the rest of the song, as we see when the first section ends, for as the last note dies away, almost immediately he begins playing a hypnotic riff that was only hinted at before as another guitar strums behind it. The tone shifts at regular intervals thanks to the second guitar, which moves from chords to high-note harmonic picking. This continues, with variations in form, until by the end the second guitar is picking harmonics so high that it sounds like the air is shimmering behind the hypnotic riff. Having already heard this probably a hundred times by now, i remain riveted every time i hear it again (and find something new each time). Brilliant.

Of course, this makes one wonder what he's going to do for an encore... but somehow i think he'll figure something out. Good for us.

John Fahey and Cul de Sac -- THE EPIPHANY OF GLENN JONES [Thirsty Ear]

I've never heard of Cul de Sac, who are apparently heavily influenced by Fahey (they covered one of his early songs on their first album), but this collaboration, as it turns out, is a pretty interesting one. Judging from the liner notes, it was a nightmare to make, but you'd hardly guess that from the sound of the album itself. The lazy, almost pastoral opener, "Tuff," is a great marriage between the two participants -- Fahey opens up with a slow fingerpicking guitar, and eventually Cul de Sac come in behind him in restrained fashion. By the middle of the song, strange sounds are twittering in the background, but never loud enough to drown out the main guitar itself. "Gamelan Collage" is a bit less traditional; the taped sound of birds cheeping is mixed in with almost random guitar percussion, slide riffs, and other weird sounds (like guitarist Glenn Jones pouring beans across the strings of his guitar). Others, like "The New Red Pony," manage to sound eerie, ghostly, and muscular all at the same time.

With "Maggie Campbell Blues," they return to what most will recognize as Fahey's familiar sound (he dominates this album, not surprisingly), to some degree augmented by the band acting as incidental sidemen. But this is only a prelude to weirdness: "Our Puppet Selves" is a forbidding wall of found sound, tapes, drones, and percussion that sounds both sinister and otherworldly. "Magic Mountain" also works a similar axis, opening with a monstrous bass sound, more taped noises, and moving to include only marginally recognizable guitar.

The two final pieces are possibly the most interesting. "More Nothing" is just a bizarre slice of surrealism: opening with the sound of running water, Fahey, picks at his guitar until someone (presumably Jones) begins to question him about what he's playing. A dialogue commences as the band roams around the room bumping into things; Fahey shares such words of wisdom as "you have a very... you have a very... you have a very complex mind." Pretty soon the conversation gets even more metaphysical ("I can't remember when the tune was not, but I do know the name of the tune... [picks] is it not pleasant? Is it not pleasant?"). The conversation just gets more demented as the piece goes on, with music happening only in the most incidental spurts from time to time. "I only know two things: my name... and that it is very late in the day. Very late." A very strange incident indeed.

"Nothing" starts out in an equally amusing fashion, although a droning sound on the horizon adds a sinister air of menace, with Fahey describing going out to look for something and finding only... yes... nothing. Every once in a while he picks at his guitar; in the background, the drone cycles on and on. Eventually the drone grows to a really powerful volume, the drummer hammers at a snare, and Fahey drones on himself in ominous fashion, shouting and droning like a wildman. You, the listener, may well find yourself on the floor going "Ack! What the hell's goin' on?" Great stuff, in other words. A decidedly eccentric yet enjoyable album.

Let me start out by saying that I CAN'T stop listening to this record. It has the kind of songs that stick in your head. Very melodic and at times the noisy / chaotic guitar work gets lost among the bass lines that never seem to end. Steve Albini engineered this one so you know the sound quality is the shit. This came out about eleven years ago so all the new emo / noise / math rock bands, let this be a lesson to you. [ttbmd]

I will admit right up front that I do not understand Jad Fair's appeal. I saw him live once, opening for Cindy Lee Berryhill, where he appeared with some other dude (I would guess that's Willett) and they... they... were the most fucking bizarre thing I've ever seen. I can't decide if Jad's serious about his antimusic approach to music, or if it's a new form of reductionist pop, or if he just doesn't know what the hell he's doing, or if it's all supposed to be a joke, but whatever it is, I... I just don't get it. I'm getting it a wee bit more on this release, possibly because he's left all the instrumentation up to Willett while he just rants over the top, and Willett is doing some interesting things here. He has a nice, grubby, distorted sound. The whole thing is sort of like noisy pop (a very devolved and repetitive pop, true) coming through a cheap transistor radio accompanied by the ramblings of a street lunatic. When they're not piling on the crunge, they have some intriguing moments (like the twanging guitar that opens "You and I" or the Cramps-style booming drums on "Big Star"), and I actually like some of the stuff that's not so blown-out and dronelike, such as "Diamonds and Gold" and the closing track "Superfine Pt. 2" (which has a really nice piano part to offset Jad's vox and a swell snare sound). I don't think I'm ever going to get used to Jad's "unique" vocal delivery, though.... If you're already hep to Jad and his mystic stylings (and people must be, because there was a surprisingly large crowd at that show, half of whom left when he and Willett finished their set), then you'll find this a swell slice of distorted surrealism. It's worth noting that in addition to the twenty regular tracks, there are a whopping 135 bonus tracks in MP3 format. If you're down with Jad, glomming this reasonably-priced disc (and this is an actual cd, possibly Public Eyesore's first, not a cd-r) is like picking up a box set. Good if you're down with the sound, kind of terrifying if you're not....

Very British sounding pop melodies and harmonies collide with finely tuned dark edged guitar angst. With poetic lyrical abilities that hold hints of XTC and a rhythm section that wouldn't sound out of place at a Pink Floyd concert, The Falling Wallendas manage to maintain a solid guitar driven whirlwind that circles around the utterly hopeless hipness that is alternative music without being sucked in. At times The Falling Wallendas attempt to flesh out various styles, pulling chords from their magical musical hats, and end up sounding either like an extremely mellow version of New Model Army singing with assorted members of Talk Talk in a Los Angeles bar. Other times they tend to come across like some obscure L. A. band doing a club crawl across Europe, picking up new sounds as they go. Still, the best part is that regardless -- The Falling Wallendas remain, in their strange way, consistent and true to themselves. [mf]

The Falling Wallendas -- BELITTLE [Imi Records]

I'll say this much: They do great harmony vocals. This is a little radio- friendly for my tastes -- it'll probably be all over MTV for the next several months -- but any band that pays respect to both Captain Beefheart ("captain beefheart," in which they unashamedly announce, "pleased to meet you, Captain Beefheart / you're my hero, Captain Beefheart") and hardcore pornography ("porn," possibly the coolest song on the album with the classic lines "i've got fat porn scat porn / dog and cat porn / but nothing's ever hard enough / japanese bondage candle wax torture / i've even got some venezualan stuff") is all right by me. (Which begs the eternal question of whether Captain Beefheart ever watches porn, but that's much too scary a thought to delve into right now.)

They seem to favor alternating between anthemic rock stuff like "plato's cave" and quieter, alomst lounge-styled (for the "alternative nation," that is) songs like "porcupine." They rock best, perhaps, on "eligible bastard," which features whirling dervish guitar and lots of heavy action from the rhythm section. The big jackpot winner is "clove oil and demerol," with its churning power guitars and wailing vocals, which may explain why it's apparently the lead single. Another heavy (well, relatively speaking) one is "homecoming queen," a cryptic song apparently about homecoming queens being real people, which is news to me. I'm amused that the introduction (musical, not spoken) to "sanctuary" manages to crib from Yoko Ono's "woman power"... now there's a band with style! The song itself is not bad at all either, alternating between hypnotic chug-rock and crushing cyclone guitar overkill. Another cool one is the droning, surreal "brothers grim," in which five scary brothers whittle themselves down to "a kingdom consisting of nothing at all."

So yes, they are a radio-friendly band, but they are a thoughtful, talented, well-rehearsed, and fearsomely intelligent radio-friendly band. This is not a bad thing. Certainly far more deserving of your respect (and CD $$$) than the average "alternative" band these days.

Yes, Virginia, this is the long-rumored mythical pre-Godflesh release that was originally floated up as a HeadDirt offering then pulled for mysterious reasons (most likely because Earache pitched a hissy fit). To put this into the proper context, a bit of history is probably in order. Take a swig o' Jack, you'll need it for the horribly convoluted mess that follows.... In 1981, our bald pal Justin Broadrick (then all of twelve years old) took a cue from seeing too many Whitehouse and Ramleh shows and started recording solo material at home under the name Final (some of which eventually made it onto disc a decade later). He met bassist G. C. "Benny" Green and guitarist Paul Neville two years later and joined their nifty band, Fall of Because, as the drummer. Two years after that, he met Nik Bullen of Napalm Death at a record store, which eventually occasioned his joining said band as a guitarist just long enough to meet Mick Harris (future mate in Scorn, Painkiller, blah blah blah) and appear on the first side of the band's legendary first album SCUM. For a while Broadrick played in both bands, until both bands appeared at the bottom of a bill with Head of David. The jolly fellows in HoD were so impressed with his drumming for FoB that they asked him to join them, which he did, leaving Napalm Death two weeks later. Fall of Because continued without him, although that band's activity dwindled measurably... until Broadrick couldn't hang with the direction Head of David went in after the DUSTBOWL album, at which point he left Napalm Death to rejoin FoB early in 1988. This time, however, he came in with a new plan: to switch to guitar and bring in a drum machine, hoping to emulate the sounds of Swans, Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Black Sabbath, and the like at half-speed. It was at this point that Fall of Because, because of its new direction, mutated into Godflesh. (A wee aside here: props to slateman for figuring this all out and posting it on his beyond bad-ass Godflesh site so i could steal it, i never would have figured out a history so convoluted on my own. Now go visit his site, home all things 'flesh-related.)

Which brings us to this fabulous slab o' shiny, packaged for your consumption through a secret handshake agreement or something on the parts of Alleysweeper and Invisible (who, uh, forgot to send the band any copies when it was released, or even to tell them the release date; follow the link at slateman's site to the avalanche site to see them bitch in their very own words!). What we have here, besides some priceless photos of Justin as a skinny Dread-Boy Mantis and Benny looking an awful lot like Robert Smith of the Cure, are eleven tracks of Fall of Because at the height of their menacing power, all recorded between 1986-1987. The first eight tracks are apparently (the liner notes are a tad skimpy, i'm afraid) from a demo they recorded about that time; the ninth track, "survive," was recorded live on January 17, 1987 (no mention of where, though). Tracks ten and eleven are are two complete (if somewhat short) live appearances. Everything sounds exquisitely sludgelike, which is okay by me. Three songs ("devastator," "life is easy," and "merciless") later to be reprised by Godflesh appear here; the rest is previously unreleased material (well, some of it appeared on a demo that maybe seventeen people in the world have actually heard). With a few exceptions, it all sounds like... um, like Godflesh, only with less of the latter band's distinctive EQ trademark (immense bottom, tinnitus-inducing high end, no middle). In fact, it's all impressively grungy and dissonant and sludgelike and stuff, sorta what Godflesh sounds like live now, actually. Godflesh fans who cried bitter tears when the 'flesh started branching out into moves like hip-hop beats and actual audio quality will worship this disc.

Which probably sounds like i'm slagging them, but no -- this is pretty jolting stuff. As a Godflesh fan from day uno, i'm personally aligned mainly with the first EP and STREETCLEANER (although the new one is really swell in its own way), and this is very much in the vein of those two releases... hardly surprising, since it's the exact same lineup, minus the drum machine. Incidentally, Broadrick proves here that he never needed the drum machine -- whether they're playing at Swans-like dirge levels or rattling off furiously like Napalm Death (yes, there are actually a couple of semi-fast tunes on here), his drumming is spot-on. And it is really amusing to hear Harris and Bullen (on loan from Napalm Death) nearly starting a riot with belligerent elements of the crowd during the live show that comprises track ten. Plus there's much fun to be had in playing the "spot the riff/beat" game, as a lot of the material from these songs were later lifted and poured into other titles by Godflesh. As a meaningless trivia note, it's interesting to see the Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle influence just in titles like "malewhoreslag," "lifefucker - shitsucker," and "whiterock - blackdeath." Those who still swear by their early Godflesh CDs should gulp this sucker down whole.

Fastbacks -- ANSWER THE PHONE, DUMMY (Sub Pop)

I think I once compared the FBX to the Ramones as fronted by the Shangri-Las, and I still stand by that; it's as good a description as any. We're talking about pop-tinged punk, with songs that generally end in less than three minutes (which is how you end up with 15 songs on an album approximately 40 minutes long). Unlike last year's ZUCKER, this one places more emphasis on the punk part of the equation and sounds tougher, leaner, and less sweet. There's also probably a bit more variety this time out; the only thing that hasn't changed is that this is awfully damn catchy stuff, mon....

One of the things I like about the FBX is that they hail from Seattle, yet they have no traces of Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin in their bloodstream; they also aren't possessed by the morbid streak that's become kind of a boring cliche among other, more well-known Seattle bands. Where the other Seattle bands are all fixated on doom and bodies in ravines and general unhappiness, the FBX are talking about swimming ("Went for a Swim"), stargazing ("In the Observatory"), and writers ("Meet the Author").

What appeals to you most on this one pretty much depends on what you like best; it's all great, but depending on your attitude, some will be greater than others.... For caffeinated overdriven punk, you want "Went for a Swim," "brd COATED," "I Found the Star," "On Your Hands" or "I'm Cold" -- they must eat Wheaties every morning, because normal people can't play this fast and still get all the notes right. For chiming pop you have "Back to Nowhere" (with an ending descended from Kiss' "Great Expectations," only put to much better use here), "And You" (easily the best song on the album), "T.H.I.N.K.," "In the Observatory," and "Meet the Author" (an epic for them, at nearly six minutes).

Bottom line: Another slab o' cranked-up coolness from a band that ought to be better-known. Pick it up and catch them live if you get the chance....

There's a big Arab on Radar influence happening here, particularly in the vaguely pottymouthed lyrics -- then again, the band's been around ten years and for all I know one of the AoR dudes is in this band now. Anyway. If you liked Arab on Radar and can hang with the sound of really, really cheesy synths (cheap ones!) being abused -- on top of all the other spazzed-out subatomic amplblurt and hyperfart guitar madness favored by pretty much everything on Load (I think it's something in the water) -- this will probably amuse you as well. There are 23 pieces that are less songs than uncontrollable temper tantrums that are abruptly over about as soon you start to figure out just what the hell is going on. There's also lots of shouting about shirts smelling like cat urine, "dementoid the homo-man," ways to make a buck, ass-fancying pirates, and poo. The whole disc sounds like a series of demented outbursts in a band equipment room by a group of homunculi wasted on LSD and bean juice. Even for Load this is peculiar stuff. UNF! UNF! The musical fruit! The more you listen, the more you TOOT! They get many, many bonus points for the evocative title "If Humans Had No Poops," and the brief but cryptic wisdom of the song's enigmatic lyrics.

The Favorite Color -- COLOR OUT OF SPACE [Ohio Records]

Remember the whole business last issue with Tris McCall and his solo acoustic album THE BROKEN LOOM? Well, this is essentially the full-scale, sensurround version, heh -- McCall with a full band. And a cool thing it is, too. Perhaps not quite as revelatory as the solo thing, but that could just be me... certainly the songs are more than up to snuff, particularly the chiming, pulsing "Valis," which features additional vox courtesy of Erin Ash (of Edith of Ohio), who plays the part of "the Angel" (and no, i didn't know that before i decided this was the best song on the album, for those of you already aware of my notorious reputation as an angel fetishist). "V. in Love" references Thomas Pynchon (bonus points for good literary taste, mon) over a stuttering synth, while "It's Too Late" opens with watery guitars before kicking into full gear with the cheery observation "I'm in good cheer / I'm in my prime / I'm sitting here wasting time / And all my peers have lost their minds over money".... (By the way, since i don't have the space to quote lyrics left and right, let me merely say that the lyrics throughout the album are considerably more literate and pointed in their observational acuity than anything the "alternative nation" stalwarts have had to offer lately.)

More coolness abounds on "Mergers and Acquisitions," where power- chiming (power-chiming?!?!) meet a moderately funky beat; twelve-string guitars and a lot o' jangle show up on the caustic "Zero Charisma." One of the more impressive things about this album, actually, is how they manage to incporate lots of different sounds and instruments on every single song without ever losing the band's core sound; it's harder than it looks, buddy, but these guys appear to have it under control, heh. "Perpetual Revolution" manages to combine the thump of "My Sharona" with catchy jangle-pop even as they borrow a couple of lines from "For What It's Worth," sounding pretty suave in the process.

I've only mentioned a few of the offerings here, but all twelve cuts on this album are well worth hearing. You know that $$$ you were saving up for the bloated double-disc thingy from Smashing Pumpkins? Well, you'd be better off spending it on this and THE BROKEN LOOM instead... just a bit o' advice from the DEAD ANGEL offices....

Fear of Dolls -- ALL MONSTERS EAT CHILDREN [demo]

Hard to describe what this sounds like... except that it's probably the most "accessible" thing appearing in this issue (with the except of the Tom Petty box set, duh). "Carving the Desert" builds on a hypnotic, repetitive bass line with disembodied vocals and solid drumming; "Daphne" adopts a slow, floating drone sound with a shimmering guitar that sounds more like a radioactive isotope than a stringed instrument and more disembodied vox. A couple of the songs, like "Sound of Thorns" and "Maternal Charade," unfold like dirges, slow and moody; others, like "The Ties That Blind," are a bit more uptempo --none of this will ever be mistaken for speed metal, though.... "The Fall," with better recording, has the potential to be truly thunderous (it's a little bit squashed here). "Separated," another slow one, merely confirms that this band doesn't so much "rock" as they create moodscapes in a pop format. Ditto for "In Another Year," the demo's final track. While they have a bit to work on in the songwriting department -- several of the songs don't offer a lot of variation -- they do have a sound that's uniquely their own, with a rhythm section as solid and thick as sheet metal, so they're off to a good start. A worthwhile effort from a young band with much promise....

Fear of God -- TOXIC VOODOO [Pavement Records]

You know, when you wait two years for the follow-up to what you consider one of the most brilliant debuts in Western civilization (WITHIN THE VEIL, and yes, hellfarmer, I hear you laughing already, the sno-cone girl hurls her empty paper cups at you, ok?), then finally it comes out only for you to see that only one original member remains in the band and the band is on a completely new label, you can generally take that as a... uh... VERY BAD SIGN.

Well, it isn't that bad -- in fact, it's actually pretty good -- but it's no longer terribly unique, either. What made the first album so interesting was its bizarre crosswiring of several genres that were NEVER meant to go together (in this case, 60's psychadelia, tribal drumming, industrial drone, and death metal) in a way that worked to terrifying fashion. This time out, they've subtracted everything but the death metal (with the occasional vaguely "industrial" clank or sample in the background), and the results are... well... gee, they sound like a death metal band. Big surprise. (They also blatantly steal from Slayer in the title song, and themselves almost everywhere else. Yep, they're death metal all right....)

Nevertheless, there's much to appreciate here, particularly if you're fond of flat-out crunch. "Beyond the Veil" is heavy enough to drill holes through Fort Knox, and the rest of the album isn't exactly lightweight either. Dawn Crosby's puts her trademark creepy psycho-drone voice to good use on "Santismo" and "U.V.", and the latter song lifts off with an incredibly HUGE drone and a monolithic bassline before lumbering along like a leviathan in search of large cities to crush at will. "Will of Evil" -- about serial killer Eileen Wournos, much like the Band of Susans' "Mood Swing," only a million times less subtle -- roars away with lots of interersting background samples relating to the woman's case history. "Worms" is plenty heavy too, but sports a chorus that's... uh... well, let's just say that Dawn's lyrics were better on the first album....

Bottom line: Better than the average death metal poo, but still a major disappointment in light of the first album's total radiating godhead. Plus the guitarist on the first album was much, much better (the fact that they had to bring in two players to replace him should tell you something), and the new lead guitarist commits the ULTIMATE CRIME of wheedling away at high velocity for no good reason, quite often apparently at random, and thus should be beaten down with rods until his blood stains the walls, at which point the band should find a more sensible replacement.

And the cover -- there is no delicate way to say it -- really bites. Badly. (So does the album title, for that matter.) Have all the good graphic designers suddenly fled the country or what?

Budgie are completely underrated. They should be right up there with Zeppelin and Sabbath. [TMU: Are we listening to the same Budgie?] Maybe it's because they were from Wales. Maybe it's 'cause there were only three of them. Maybe it's 'cause the singer wore glasses. Whatever the reason, they don't get enough respect. Sure, every now and then someone like Metallica or Soundgarden will toss off the odd cover and mumble something about them being an "influence." Yeah, influence. More like "provider of riffs for us to steal." Anyway, Budgie gets the Federation X treatment here. The boys from Federation X, aided by Albini behind the board, rip through "Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman Parts I and II" with eight strings (that's two guitars, four strings each) and half a drum kit, and kick all kinds of ass doing it. [n/a]

Hey, i thought concept albums went out of style when Pink Floyd started to suck. Apparently nowhere told Richard Feren, a theatrical composer from Toronto. Choreographer Yasmina Ramzy originally commissioned this entire work for the Arabesque Dance Company's production of "Descent of Ishtar" (so i guess that explains the title -- woo hah, am i smart or what?). Feren might be better known to some as the brain behind the semi-industrial band Crimescene. So this disc is not strictly Arabic in sound -- it's more like swirling ambience and brooding beats wrapped around a Middle-Eastern flavor pellet. The results are interesting. Most westerners are slowly driven insane by the limited melodic range (or so it seems to the average listener, anyhow) of typical Middle-Eastern dirges, and there is some of that here, but it's offset by more western-styled beats and keyboard drones, not to mention peculiar sampled snippets and odd noises staggered throughout the work. The raga drones are also often shifted to more traditional western instruments (notably the keyboard), so it's not quite so alien. As a result this retains a strong Middle-Eastern flavor but becomes a bit more accessible to listeners raised on this side of the ocean.

While there are 12 songs on the album, the tracks are essentially broken down into two sections: the ten-track opus "Dance of the Seven Veils" (divided further into tracks like ""Overture: Ishtar," "1st Veil: The Moon," "4th Veil: The Sun," and so on) and two bonus tracks recorded separately from the commissioned work, "Das Rheingold" and "Thunderveil." In the large piece, the music shifts seamlessly from atmospheric movements to severely rhythmic tracks, all informed to greater or lesser degrees by that Middle-Eastern sound. For songs that are all part of one larger work, the tracks are actually quite varied; Feren's industrial underpinnings make themselves evident when things are in danger of getting monotonous, which increases the music's "portability" (meaning it still makes sense and is listenable without a bunch of half-naked dancers writhing around on stage).

The two bonus tracks don't sound that much different from the larger piece -- it's conceivable that they were recorded for it and cut due to time restrictions, who knows? The first was written for a theatrical production of Wagner's "Das Rheingold" yet sounds more like an "Ishtar" outtake (go figure); "Thunderveil" apparently was just written for the hell of it, i guess. They both sound swell. If you are moved by that raga-like shimmy, perhaps you should check this out....

Lo-fi but bracing electropunk driven by a minimalist drum machine, droning keyboards, and beats borrowed from low-budget 70's sleaze cinema make for entertaining listening. The mysterious Ffej recorded these 13 songs in his home studio back in 2001; why he didn't get around to releasing any of it until 2003 is beyond me. Perhaps he was drinking beer. I know he wasn't smoking crack, because you can't get those mad death-techno beats like the incredible Godflesh emulation of "Shame Carries Weight" without knowing what you're doing, dig? Hypnotic, insistent up-and-down riffs cycle endlessly through "Spiderlight" as everything else gradually builds around it, creating a mounting tension that never quite terminates, until it becomes unnerving... and only then does it think of ending, winding down in a droning cyclotron fading into darkness. "Gomi" percolates around an insistent keyboard sequence, with drums that come and go like steel doors crashing. "Moolah" brings on the flanged-out bass, which may well be the source of the fuzzed-out drone on "Body of a Lie" as well. Ffej's impassioned shouting and his devotion to fuzz and noise is what keeps the techno-bleeps and synthetic keyboards from turning the whole thing into bad techno. A lot of the time the sound is a bizarre cross of synthpop, techno, and twisted grindcore -- in other words, real swell. The headless sno-cone girl approves.

Interstellar sounds from the inner space of one-time Buckle guitarist Douglas Ferguson. Some things you might like to know: the sounds on this disc were generated mainly through guitar and keyboards, as well as some processed field recordings, and were initially recorded in several different tape formats before being mixed down in the digital domain. The first track, "dawning," sets the tone with drifting, droning sounds -- a drone revolves in lazy circles through a rotating speaker cabinet as pure keyboard tones rise and fall in the background. Momentary snatches of piano and tremelo guitar float the surface briefly from time to time, but never far enough to disturb the rotating drone. Layers of bright, tripped-out guitar lines fed through different levels of delay arc and pulse to hypnotic effect over a minimal bed of percussion and clattering sounds in "extraterritorial"; the sounds in "excavation," by contrast, are more dense and subterranean, as a wash of hovercraft drones glide over the sound of what could have been traffic or running water before it was processed. At times, as on "virginia insects," actual recognizable musical figures play on as sheets of sound unwind around them, enveloping them in shifting curtains of musical guaze. The aptly-titled "brooding" incorporates streaming rivers of metallic sound into the shoegazer mix -- the hovering drone maintains a certain level of stability throughout, while the machine parts break down and are washed down the dark and mindless river of a cave far, far removed from the last dying rays of the sun. On "nanosex," the drones are augmented by a crackling texture, minimalist in nature but with just enough variation to carry the weight as chimes and other unidentified sounds periodically come to the foreground. They keyboard sounds on "morning," the final track, sound descended from early seventies psych records -- a momentous pipe organ, trilling synths, and a gently pulsing bass all come together for a mysterious magic carpet ride that culminates in sweling bursts of symphonic sound. In all of these compositions, certain elements remain static while others provide the motion and the melodic commentary, and they are all informed by soothing drones and unexpected sounds. The result is a beautiful and otherworldly disc, like a bridge between the worlds of drone and found sound.

I've never heard of percussionist Marcos Fernandes, but he's apparently been busy while i wasn't paying attention -- he's appeared previously on releases in collaboration with the likes of the Trummerflora Collective, sound artist Marcelo Radulovich, trance artists Wormhole Effect, and worldbeat group Burning Bridges, among others. So he gets around, obviously, and he's not limited to any particular style. Here he appears in the context of his own compositions (with assistance from various guests), and his own words in the liner notes provide a (limited) basis for where he's coming from: "I grew up in a Portuguese/Japanese household where relatives often gathered to eat, drink, play music and dance. I was raised a Catholic in a Buddhist land...." So you know he's coming from a very different and varied musical space. The tracks here reflect that diversity: "Port of Call" sounds very much like the title suggests, with the sounds of audience chatter in various languages, ship horns baying in the distance, and music of various strains all weaved around hypnotic, minimalist percussion. "Science Boy" is a tad more traditional, with repetitive percussion gradually augmented by unusual guitar and electronic sounds in the background; "Undercurrents" pursues a similar stylistic motif, with minimalist percussion over unpredictably shifting layers of vocals, radio, electronic chittering, and other experimental sounds from guitar and saxophone. Fernandes consistently gets a nice tone from his drums, which i greatly like. More intriguing instrumental juxtapositions take place in the spacious, airy "Bullets for Ballots," with minimal piano figures and voices/exotic sounds from a sampler and tapes eventually resolve into a percussion piece accompanied by bamboo flute and wailing saxophone leads as the voices continue in the background. My favorite track may well be the lengthy and evolving world-beat/funk bit "The Orange Line," which works up to a happening groove over which trombonist Michael Dessen dominates as bassist Joscha Oetz lays down a jazzy rhythmic foundation and does battle with guitarist Scott Homan. This is a fine, complex album -- maybe my favorite on Accretions so far -- and if they keep putting out swell stuff of this caliber, they may end up giving Jester a good run for their money in the consistency of excellence department....

N/A: I want to go hang out with the Moon Unit and Todd. Their reviews are more fun. I mean, they don't have a psychotic freak pointing a gun at them. Plus they'd probably let me have a beer.

TG: Who are you calling a freak, you... you... you Canadian?

N/A: Don't push your luck, bitch.

TG (pointing the gun): Review --

N/A: You can suck my cock!

TG (beating him severely with the gun): Would you say that to Tura Satana? I don't fucking think so. Give me a review RIGHT NOW or i'll rip your nuts off and mail then to Bangkok!

N/A (croaking): fiftywatthead kick out cranked-up noise rock. When I say "cranked-up," I mean that they take the basic noise-rock template set out by the AmRep bands and jack the heaviness quotient up to Cavity / eyehategod / Buzzov.en levels. The result is an ungodly racket that will put a big smile on your face. [n/a]

Filter -- SHORT BUS [Reprise]

I have no idea what the title means -- an obscure MIDI reference? Freudian archtypes about death? vague references to Jim "my, look how many Twinkies i managed to consume with that bottle of expensive imported Scandanvian wine" Morrison? compact Taiwanese minivans? -- but it doesn't really matter, because they should have REALLY called it HATE SONGS FOR TRENT. Or maybe WE'D LIKE TO SEE TRENT'S HEAD ON A STICK.... The lyrics are chock-full of thinly-veiled references the former employer of these two pasty-faced guys from NIN. I'll spare you the boredom of relating said lyrics; it's enough, i think, to point out that the most direct of the lyrics pop up on the interestingly-named "Gerbil." Gee, WHO might they be referring to with THAT title? Oh, lawsy, the suspense is killing me....

However, all petty "you dicked us over and now we're gonna make lots of $$$ whining about it" lyrical foolishness aside, this is one monster of an album. The sound totally squashes everything in its path. Imagine BROKEN- era NIN minus all the goofy pretension and stripped down to a handful of cranked-up, amped-out guitars set on permanent overdrive and you have the basic idea. Or for the more literal among you, think of NIN with Layne Staley singing and the squinty-eyed guitarist from Alice in Chains in tow just for sick grins. On the loudest tracks like "Dose" and "Gerbil," they come across like a raging juggernaut; the other stuff is only mildly less oppressive. "Under" is a little TOO close to NIN -- evidence that it may take them a while to fully develop their own real identity -- but other stuff like the already-overplayed "Hey Man Nice Shot" display an interesting, even cunning, approach to songwriting. They have a habit of interrupting the songs periodically to insert weird noises; i haven't decided yet if this is "interesting" or merely annoying. A little of both, most likely....

They get quiet for a moment on "Stuck in Here," which includes the sound of a scratchy record revolving for the effect of listening to a really old single; it's here most of all that you can see how their spell in NIN has paid off in attention to detail. Then it's back through a spell of punishment that includes the aforementioned "Gerbil" and the eerie, echo-laden "White Like That" and the intense paranoid creep of "Consider This" before ending with another quiet song (and another dig at Mr. Reznor), "So Cool." Not bad at all for a debut; now it just remains to be seen if they can make a career out of it....

Final -- SOLARIS ep [Alley Sweeper]

The flood has begun... first the single, now this (and a new single currently available through Self-Abuse and other like-minded folks), and still the Sentrax release of TWO and the Manifold release yet to come. Woo! In the meantime, this ep is pretty cool. Three longish tracks, all anchored by ambient backgrounds and hypnotic, mantra-like repeated bass/guitar phrases in the foreground. "arise" features lots of really mutant, spooky guitars chattering in the background as the mantra burrows deep into your subconscious. "light" is mostly a titanic, circling drone that builds into thick layers of hum, drone, and bass throb; play it loud enough and it'll mess with yer inner ear and make it hand to stand up, heh.... The final track, "solaris," is watery and light (sounds like i'm not the only guitarist diggin' that shit on the Main albums, hah), then deep and low (they do the brood thing well).

As good as the first Final album was, this is light-years beyond that. Their take on the ambient/drone sweepstakes has improved immensely, which means that the subsequent goodies to come are definitely something to look forward to....

Final -- THE FIRST MILLIONTH OF A SECOND [Manifold]

Listening to this is like waking up in a sleep pod to discover that someone set the timer wrong and you slept for a thousand years instead of a hundred. When you step outside, all you find is a vast and empty wasteland presided over by a bloated red sun... all you hear is the wind rattling through the ruins... and all you feel is a glacial iciness. Still, as night settles in the moon reflects through the mountain range of glaciers, you realize that even in desolation there can be an eerie beauty. It's that kind of album.

Final (for those of ye who don't already know) is the more ambient twin to Godflesh, what Broadrick and Green do with their spare time when they aren't playing in Godflesh or other bands or huffing weed. The tracks are long (there's only seven of them here) are mostly long, slow drones of guitar hum, subterranean bass throb, and ringing noises, with odd sounds drifting in and out of the mix at irregular intervals. This is what most people think of when you bring up the term "isolationism." It's the kind of sound whose interpretation literally depends on the what the listener brings to the listening booth: you could find these soundscapes dreamy and soothing or glacial and forbidding, depending on your mood.

Definitions aside, this is possibly the most cohesive album Final has released so far (they've also released two others and an EP), which is odd, since it -- like the others -- was recorded and assembled in a piecemeal fashion over two years. It's also the slowest, i think; i'm pretty sure there's a snapshot of the CD cover next to phrase "moves at a glacial pace" in the dictionary. It's also the first to incorporate beats (unless that happens on TWO, which i haven't heard yet), which appear on "subatomic" (albeit in a most subdued fashion), a song whose underpinnings were recorded live in 1985. Minimalism is definitely the main dish here -- "new species," one of the best tracks, fades in so slowly that you almost can't track it, and is eventually built around an endless three-note bass riff (the rest is all guitar wind, bell-tones and wailing sounds). The sound of running water (or is it a bastard tape manipulation?) forms the backbone of "foundations," a long track in which very little happens... or more accurately, the same things happen over and over again, changing only by the most minute increments.

It's definitely an eerie album, maybe even a highwater-mark for the isolationist genre. It's also more subtle in its texturing than previous efforts, which tended to be more loop-driven than anything else; there's more happening at the fringes this time around, although it's all of a decidedly (and deliberately) incidental nature. There's no denying that it takes a certain level of patience to wade through an album such as this, but those who do will be rewarded for their persistence.

Final -- "Flow/Openings" [Manifold]

At long last... the return of Final. The interesting thing about Final, if my history is correct, that it started out basically as a white-noise tribute to Whitehouse on tapes Justin Broadrick made before hooking up with Napalm Death and eventually moving on to Godflesh and the billion other splinter bands he's been involved with since. Odd, then, that by the time he got around to actually releasing any Final material, that it ended up being fairly AMBIENT, don't you think? But whatever the case, this single holds promise for the much-anticipated TWO that's supposedly coming out, ah, "any day now" from Manifold. This is choice material... two tracks of ominous sound that ebbs and flows on the first track (hence the title, see how smart i am?), with bursts of muted shrapnel every so often just to keep you awake, you know. "Openings" is powered by cycling bass hum on one end and sustained cycling treble, kind of like Godflesh after hitting the delay and hold and forgetting to let go again, with other sounds washing over this basic core like the tide on a dead night. Good halloween music, i'm sure... i'll have to remember this one when October rolls around....

I will freely confess that this review is totally off-the-cuff -- the disc arrived on my doorstep literally days before the deadline and i've only had a chance to listen to it twice, so everything i say here should be taken with a grain of salt. But it's interesting, mainly because it features Bill Steer (formerly of Carcass) on guitar and sounds so totally retro that halfway through i have a tendency to think i've turned on my radio tuner instead of the CD player. And what, exactly, are Bill and his pals (from equally death/hardcore backgrounds) playing? Heavily amplified blues rock, mon. Yeah. What a totally fucking bizarre move. Not that this is a bad thing -- they play really well and they have the moves down cold (they sound sort of like a modern Cream, or maybe a white Hendrix) -- but i just find it strange that this album sounds so much like a bad-ass seventies rock album. I swear, i never imagined that these guys had a fondness for Albert King and Foghat and Cream and stuff like that. This sounds more like the work of a Southern white-trash boogie band than a bunch of guys better known for shaking their hair like epileptics and playing music that sounds like killer bees bouncing over fretboards in a wind tunnel. This bears further investigation. If you lust for the days of yore when men played like men and guitarists actually talked at length in interviews about their debt to the likes of Albert King and Robert Johnson, then you should check this out. Bonus points for the naked chick with the big ass on the cover, woo hoo....

Firmament -- OPEN-EYED ASCENSION [Velvet Empire Records]

The one-man band raises its head again (is anybody in an actual band these days? I sure know i'm not). Firmament is the ambient space-opera brainchild of Martin Chinn. Gigantic keyboard washes -- stacks of 'em, he must have a house full of the things, all piled up to the ceiling -- provide the droning astral background for lots of repetitive efx motifs, such as the chittering phaser sounds and recurring bell-tones of "In A Landscape." A slow-turning drone is the foundation for a building choir of melodic pipe organs in "Celestial Pioneers," which is every bit as space-oriented as the title indicates; in fact, this disc, in previous centuries, probably would have been described as "music of the spheres." Think of late-era Skullflower with keyboards instead of guitars... a soporific cross between Rapoon and Kadura... a gospel choir with many, many keyboards and a background in space rock... you know, that sort of thing. Breaking away fromt he current space-rock fixation on wild noises and psychedelia, this is music that is simply, unabashedly gorgeous. Droning, spacy, ambient, maybe even hallucinatory, yes -- but beautiful. There are elements of goth to Firmament's sound, especially on "The Soul Sleeps," which has a lot in common with the likes of This Mortal Coil, but then on cuts like "Forgiven Frost," subsonic distorted bass and hypnotic rhythmic elements buried in the majestic synth washes bring to mind bands like Trial of the Bow and Rapoon. The latter observation really holds true for "Reach," which is built on a loop that fades into another loop, and then another loop is added as subsonic bass kicks in, and the song begins to breed loops at a steady rate without ever wandering from its essential core of ambient spaciness.

I like this album's interesting take on space-rock, one that's not tied to drugs or sinister references or weird noises. Not that i have anything against those things (well, i'm pretty lukewarm on the dope hat these days -- not my cup o' mojo, bwana), but it's nice to hear something authentically drone-laden that's not obsessively concerned with weirdness for the sake of weirdness. A welcome addition to the CD library at the Hellfortress Beneath the Ice....

Fishtank No. 9 -- ITSELF [Cop International]

This is the debut of War-n Harrison's brand new bag. His name may be familiar as one-half of the now-defunct ...Of Skin and Saliva, whose SAHUL ep was an exotic slice of middle-eastern tribal synth drone. Now that he's gone solo, he's retain the middle-eastern influence and inventive flair for instrumentation and arrangement, but dropped the overly orchestrated sound for a clean, polished, and often spare variant on electro body rock. The other big change is the lyrical thrust -- where OS&S leaned toward the fantastic, F9 sticks to more personal themes.

The spare side of F9 is characterized by songs like "Eclipse" -- an airy, catchy conglomeration of ice-cold synth drone and clattering drums augmented by slithering electronic riffs, it is both haunting and eerily danceable at the same time. But War-n has a few surprises waiting in his aquarium -- "Liquid" welds heavily-reverbed hip-hop beats to sci-fi chittering and heavily gated samples to come up with something like his previous band filtered through a rapper's mixing board, and "Deadlock" adds what sounds like acoustic guitars and piano to the electronic stew. And then there's "Within," a droning, hypnotic mantra that builds from a quiet intro to more orchestral vistas.

The percolating, uptempo "Itself" moves to a more sinister beat, with more overall aggression and detuned vox, and the "biotron remix" of "eclipse" transforms the spare weeper into a much louder, insistent track, with servotron synth rhythm and razorblade guitars (or something, you never know when samplers and very expensive synths are involved, do ya?). To balance all the airiness of many of the other tracks, War-n throws in "Reincarnate," whose thudding drums and chattering wood block beats will wake you back up if you were being hypnotized by the earlier tracks.

The only complaint i have is that occasionally the vox are a wee bit too reminiscent of NIN or Ministry (although you'd never know he'd even heard of them if the vox were stripped out). Otherwise, this is a solid debut full of happening beats and some interesting variations on the whole EBM thing. Should be interesting to see where he goes from here.

If his name is familiar but doesn't quite ring the bells, it's probably because he's been mentioned here before: he's the director of the documentary film FRONTIER LIFE and one-half of Donkey, whose BIG SUR was reviewed last issue. He appears here as a pianist (of sorts), doing all sorts of disturbed things to various pianos (including, occasionally, playing them -- a novel thought!) and recording all of it, then arranging it into bizarre constructions of sound. In addition to piano, he puts to use various electronic devices, efx, field recordings, and other sonic ephemera. The result are thirteen radically-shaped piano pieces dominated by rattling, shaking, vibrating keys and strings, the arcane rhythms and sounds piled up on one another in complex lattices. The beauty of this approach, as the vast panorama of sound indicates, is that the piano is a versatile instrument whose parts can be attacked in a variety of ways to emulate other instruments. Hence, these pieces include their own percussion, their own accompaniment... and it's often very difficult to tell what might be something else and what is secretly derived from the piano. The sounds that are carefully mixed into the cacaphonous arrangements have been collected throughout the world in the course of Fjellestad's travels, lending the proceedings an oddly cosmopolitan air. Exotic and compelling explorations of the deconstruction of sound, centered primarily around an instrument not normally associated with such strange soundscapes. John Cage would be pleased.

Here we have four experimental artists, two of them members of the Trummerflora Collective, collaborating together in a series of duets, trios, and quartets over the course of eighteen tracks. Most of the tracks are fairly short; only five are over four minutes long, and the longest of those only approximately seven minutes. So while they tend to wander about in unexpected directions and there's very little to connect the individual tracks, the tracks themselves have just enough room to explore some interesting terrain without becoming repetitive or wandering too far afield. The range of sound encompasses both traditional acoustic instruments and more electronic ones, and there's a strong drift toward European stylings in some of the more sustained moments. The four here -- German bassist Peter Kowald, keyboard guy Hans Fjellestad, pianist Dana Reason, and sax / electronics-pusher Jason Robinson -- have a lot of experience at improvising and it shows: no matter how far apart they get or how devolved the action becomes, things eventually resolve without sacrificing spontaneous combustion. More swell explorations in the world of experimental free jazz.

These are deeply strange people. You take my word on this. But they're lunatics with a purpose, and more importantly, they have a sense of direction and a firm grasp on the line between brilliant lunacy and self-indulgent overkill of weirdness just to be weird (well, i think). Conceived as devolved forests of sound suitable for hymns or pop music, from the first song it's obvious that they have very different ideas about what contstitutes a hymn (or a pop song, for that matter). I could imagine them on the same bill as Cheer-Accident. They have that same gift for the crafty juxtaposition of seemingly jarring sounds that, upon closer observation, work perfectly in an unorthodox manner. At any given moment, just when you think they've gone completely insane and are about to lose it entirely, they burst into something so catchy and poplike (in a demented way, usually) that it turns your perception of the song upside down. Of course, given that their first album was a noise-bluegrass threeway with loopy comics artist Dame Darcy and the inscrutable Laddio Blocko, maybe it's not so surprising that they should be so out-there. Do i detect Sun Ra in the house? I believe i do... and maybe the Shangri-Las, Last Exit, and the singers from the barroom in THE WICKER MAN too. Among many, many others. Maybe the best way to put it would be to imagine those same singers and dancers from THE WICKER MAN after listening to too much Foetus and Men Without Hats while drinking acid-spiked gin, with handfuls taking turns making up compelling nonsense while dancing around the fire as everyone else hoots and chants. They manage to be psychotic, deliriously giddy, bizarrely sensual, and oddly sinister all at the same time. Maybe it's island music or exotica as made by pagans with modern tools and ancient sensibilities... maybe it's a conscious rejection of everything about the mainstream, down to the beats and chants... maybe it's the lost soundtrack to a particularly hallucinatory Jadworsky flick made deep in the forest where everybody ended up getting naked and stinking of gin. Whatever, it's certainly compelling in the most bizarre way i've heard in a long, long time. Recommended, and not just because the two singers look like angelic wood nymphs....

You've seen THE WICKER MAN, right? Okay, imagine those kids -- you know, the ones running around naked and talking with disarming frankness and just basically being poster children for Pagan Life -- and imagine their counterparts twenty years later, after the Batcave and Neubaten pounding on shopping carts and the Birthday Party foaming their way around stages and after Miranda Sex Garden made it okay to be kinky madrigal enthusiasts (and to wear funny clothes). This is the kind of music those kids are making now. In this particular case, Flaming Fire -- a five-piece centered visually around gorgeous singers Kate and Lauren, although musicially they're all carrying an equal share of the weight -- combine Devo's deadpan irony and outrage with pounding tribal drums, electronica, pop, noise, pastoral folk guitars, and a wild variety of singing styles that encompass everything from medieval chanting to straight pop stylings to crazed shouting (and a lot of other stuff in between).

They don't waste time on this one: "The Way You Kill Me (Blood Does Shine)" opens with a thumping tribal beat designed to get you hoppin' around the room, and as soon as Kate (or is it Lauren?) comes in with "I love the way you kill me, it's so hot hot hot / I love it when I'm dying, it's so hot hot hot," the sonic landscape starts filling up with all sorts of bizarre yet catchy elements. At the bare bones, it -- like much of the rest of the album -- is a pure pop song, catchy and to the point, but then they start laying all sorts of bizarre instrumentation and pagan chants over it, then halfway through they revert to a slower and less cluttered sound before revving back up again. "Kill the Right People" opens up with a strange pagan variant of doo-wop, and then turns into something the Wall of Voodoo would have been happy to claim as their own, only wilder. And with a catchy chorus that goes "Yeah, and I know what's right / You got to kill the right people / No, you can't mess that up," how can they fail? But then "Your Love Belongs to Me"  (a mildly unhinged expression of fanatical devotion) is pure electronica with madrigal-style chanting and vocals. (Have I mentioned that all of this is horribly catchy?)

One of the best songs is "Goddess of War," a plain unvarnished folk song with minimal percussion that's executed perfectly, and whose spooky lyrics are brought to the forefront by keeping the background simple. "Foreign Car" is one of the more interesting songs, more bright pure pop with a big, fuzzy bass shake and lyrics like "That bastard's working for God / He's sitting, spinning his holy axle rods / That bastard's working for Christ / And God's grease monkeys don't play nice" -- all while Patrick rambles this paranoid chant about the Subaru coming for him while the girls chant call-and-response lines behind him. Other songs like "Cut the Reaper" and "There Is a Sky" are just as off-kilter and still plenty listenable, but it's the stuff like "Onward Forever" -- with its minimal military snare, traditional folk sound, and pagan warrior vibe that suddenly explodes into heavy grinding rock and crazed shouting, like a tribe of war gods in the middle of a frenzied religious ritual, jumping up and down around the fire. Limp Bizkit they ain't, and that's a damn good thing. The next thing you should hear is the wind in your wake as you rush to find yourself a copy of this. Trust me. "It's burnin', burnin', burnin'...."

I can't remember the chain of events that caused this CD to magically appear in my mailbox, whether i heard from them or they heard from me (a mind is a terrible thing to misplace, i think i left mine in my desk at work), but obviously is was a good chain of events, for this is a swell bunch o' rockin' tunes. The little sticker they helpfully included with the CD proclaims they are "New Jersey Punk/Hardcore," and who am i to disagree? I can feel my T-cells pogoing up and down as it plays....

I don't know enough about hardcore to know if this is "innovative" or anything, but my observation has been that innovation and rock 'n roll rarely work well together for more than three or four listens, so that probably doesn't matter. I do know they are very energetic (those T-cells are still hoppin') and extremely concise (seven songs in 19 minutes and 14 seconds). The first two songs, "What Now?" and "Friend," are straight-ahead crash and burn punk -- loud, fast, with a guitarist capable of spitting out piles o' notes like a horde of lemmings being thrown off a cliff. Yow! If crazed action like this doesn't make you want to get up and put your foot through a TV and set your li'l sister on fire there is something wrong with you. They make a wild U-turn with the bizarre "Teenager in Love" though, which starts (and ends) like classic doowop with a big punk jam in between, and "Two Miles and a Dream" skates right up to the edge of actually being metal (at least until they reach the double-time mosh breakdown); the bass intro does make me wish they'd give the bass player some action of his own, though, 'cause mon his tubby tones are sharp, i grok immensely. "Dro Drinks" is apparently some shout-out to their hard-drinkin' drummer (what exactly it says is beyond me -- i've never been terribly good at deciphering hardcore shouting), but it rocks plenty hard. "Another Time" and "New" both crash salong just as intensely as all that came before it, and then the album is over (just about the time you run out of steam, too), reminding me that hardcore is best ingested in small chunks lest one fall over with a coronary from all that jumping up and down. A fine (and exhausting) example of hardcore....

The Fleshies, from Oakland, CA, are part of a scene that's spawned such contrary, idiosyncrastic bands as Totimoshi, High on Fire, and Theory of Ruin. They spend most of THE SICILIAN sounding like a mash-up of the Jesus Lizard and the New Bomb Turks. I say "most" because hidden amongst anthemic freak-outs like the awesome "Desperate, Middle Aged Woman"; moody freak-outs like "Maelstrom of Whirling Bullshit"; and shambolic freak-outs like "This is the City Where All the Dirty Assholes Are Safe" are catchy pop-punk numbers like "Rosa" and "To Whom It May Concern."

Normally, the poppy stuff would throw me off. Especially since on the poppier songs, singer King Dirt sounds quite a bit like Green Day's Billy Joe Armstrong (hell, for all I know King Dirt could be B.J.A.). It doesn't, though, because even at his most Billy-Joe, Mr. Dirt's voice is inflected with shades of irony, melancholy, and resignation that you won't find on a Green Day record. [N/A]

Floor is one of the greatest bands around. After a long hiatus they return with an album that absolutely punishes. Old fans my be taken aback by the clean vocals and quality of the production. I, as a Floor fan since their demos, appreciate the direction they are going in. A huge guitar sound, and there is a bass player on this one (he also plays drums, good job Henry!). Buy this! [ttbmd]

The new Floor full length makes much more sense after you've seen this list (liften from ex-Cavity member Ryan's page):

"STEVE BROOKS (FLOOR's fearless leader) would like to note that this list is in no particular order. Like, duh!):"

20)Slayer 19)Guided By Voices 18)Pink Floyd 17)MC5 16)Beatles

15)Swans 14)The Birthday Party 13)Scott Nixon 12)Talk Talk 11)Fugazi

10)Jane's Addiction 9)Husker Du 8)Godflesh 7)Adam and the Ants 6)Joy Division

5)Crash Worship 4)Melvins 3)My Bloody Valentine 2)Sebadoh 1)VAN HALEN(w. Diamond Dave)"

That list is key to understanding FLOOR. Let's do some history: The "old" Floor ran from 1992 to 1996. They recorded a bunch of singles and a full length. Said full length included a 17+ minute Joy Division cover. [tmu: A cover so devolved, in fact, that you can't tell exactly what the hell it is, or even which album it's from, UNKNOWN PLEASURES OR CLOSER.] Unfortunately it never saw the light of day. That incarnation of the band came up in the sludge/grind scene (this was back before "stoner rock," when people routinely referred to eyehategod as DEATH METAL, yup.) along with Buzzov.en, eyehategod, and fellow Floridians Cavity. At the time Floor stood out from their contemporaries - they tuned lower, they played slower, and weren't afraid to use a bit of melody. Where the other bands were full on almost all the time - Steve and Anthony (Floor's nucleus?) had a really good grasp of dynamics and juxtaposition. If you keep the listener off balance the heavy seems heavier.

Jump to 2002. Floor is back. The line up is Steve, Anthony, and a drummer named Henry. Henry and Anthony played together on Cavity's 1999 Man's Ruin release, "Supercollider." [tmu: He's currently beatin' skins for Sour Vein, too.] With 2/3 of the band having played in Cavity during Floor's hiatus it would be expected that the new album would be very Cavity-like. That's not the case at all. This is where Steve's list comes in.

That list is a blueprint for this disc. On FLOOR you'll find Godflesh/Swans-like plodding (there are bits of songs that sound very much like they belong on Godflesh's "Selfless." Selfless is a great record.), the creepy ridiculousness that's the Melvins' specialty (see "Tales of Lolita" - Is it a come on to a little girl or a joke? Or both?), a bit of Fugazi-like angularity, a Pink Floyd-like sense of spaciness, MBV-like noise pop (see "Kallisti - Song for Eris"), a guitar sound that's totally Van Halen (tuned low enough to vibrate your speakers right off the wall), Joy Division-like?.well you get the idea.

What does this all mean? It means that Floor have made one hell of a record. One hell of a record that has one small flaw - at times the vocals stray a bit too much into Jane's Addiction territory. That's a pretty minor complaint - some people actually like Perry Farrel's voice. Of course, there's the whole "Emo-doom" business but I'll leave that until I get the first copycat disc for review. [n/a]

Flying Saucer Attack -- s/t [VHF Records]

There's an interesting story behind how i came to pick up this record. (Well, maybe it's interesting and maybe it isn't, but you're my captive audience now and you're going to hear it anyway.) Josh O'Ronsen (former guitarist for Batromyomachia and he of the O'Rourke-worship that is only matched by my Skullflower/Null obsession) was over at the DEAD ANGEL headquarters, sipping a pina coloda tastefully mixed by the Headless Sno-Cone Girl, when i made the crafty move o' playing some Autodidact material for him to get his reaction. About halfway through hearing said tape, he said, "You've been listening to a lot of Flying Saucer Attack, haven't you?" When i told him I'd never heard them (only of them), he laughed and said i should listen to them and see why he was laughing. So i went out the next day and bought this and now i see why he said what he did... my qausi-ambient trance guitar project Autodidact, as it turns out, bears a more than passing resemblance to this band, even though i'd never heard them before. Color me nonplussed....

So about the album: What can i say? Obviously i'm inclined to like it. Fuzzy, droning lo-fi guitars, all the controls set for the heart of the sun, and lonesome vox captured in the stream and carried down the river of soaring guitar feedback. Like a less menacing Skullflower at times, if you like. The presence of two vocalists (one male, one female) helps immensely. Noisy, droning, lo-fi dreamfuzzpop, in other words. GODHEAD, i say. All the songs have something illuminating to offer, and you should check them out.

Nexialist bills itself as not as a label, but more a research group on sound as architecture, so you can already guess they have a masterplan (more evidence is in the coordinated packages -- the label's releases come in similar-appearing white sleeves encased in a slipcase pasted down with a shiny li'l sticker bearing all the info you need for the release and the label... smooth). Judging from the sound of Fragment King, described as "muisque structurelle and dissected breakbeats," i'd say the masterplan involves generous amounts of background noise, throbbing bass hell, and cold breakbeat fury. Techno for those who found the machines too clean and decided to pour sand in the works, possibly. These ten tracks were originally written for various short films, and they're all heavy on the tyranny of the beat, surrounded in streams of compressed white noise that drift and hiss in the background. The feel and rhythms (not to mention the chilly electronic vibe) are all straight-up techno, but the aesthetic is cribbed from minimalism and they have the good sense to tweak their tones, which keeps them from sounding generic. Soundtracks for the cell-phone generation; robot music for relaxing in the chill room after a hard day pissing away stocks 'n commodities. And when they bring in the big beat, that's when the robots start to swing. This is sufficiently interesting enough in its own right, even divorced from the sights these tunes were meant to accompany, to merit repeated listening. Makes me curious as to what the films were like, though, to be using this for the soundtracks....

Amazing disco noise-pop from Japan. Completely unhinged and simultaneously brilliant, combining bizarre elements of disco, rock, psych, and lounge music into a thundering spectacle of unusually catchy poundcore. (Singer Tome sure is loud, though.) Like a music machine set on a disco beat but fronted by a groove-laden live band, with four tracks from the studio and five recorded live at the Fandango in Osaka, this four-piece band is one of the few bands capable of encompassing surf music, doowop, noise, and slow wasting doom -- and that's just in one song, "Stupid Game." Sometimes they make me think of a more grind-influenced answer to Hang on the Box (especially in the vox department), and other times I start seeing Wire in their locked-down grooves and tiny boxes of wee fluttering birds in their acid-drenched leads and delirious howling ("Midnight Walker"). Mostly, though, they just rock like a pee dog. Forget about revival poop like the White Stripes that's diggin' back to the sixties garage bands; this band is going back to Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, and John Lee Hooker and forcefeeding them acid and amphetamines. This is occasionally possessed-sounding shit, when it's not turning into outright pop ballads (as on the gorgeously melodic "Free From Disguise"). The sound on the live tracks is a bit iffy, but serviceable, and the performance is suitably manic (and the reverb / echoplex moves hefty enough) to overcome any sonic limitations. They get their space-rock on with "Blood Train" and venture in the land of eccentric sounds on one of the tracks listed in Japanese; the rest of the live tracks are live versions of the studio stuff. Powerful, disorienting stuff with enough catchy hooks and melodies to offset their essential weirdness.

I find albums like this very reassuring, because they remind me that, yes, there are other lunatics out there, possibly even crazier lunatics. These people are weird. Scratch that, these people are insane. This is the kind of whacked-out, furious blood-pumping jungle grunt that only a Killball player whacked out on a lethal eight-ball of PCP and steroids could truly appreciate. Normal people (if there are any left; if there are, I probably don't know them) will find this vastly repugnant; for this alone they get many, many bonus points. I approve of their grotesque sounds -- motorcycle sounds, flabby tubbed-out bass farts, military drumming, overly loud snares, drones of doom, howling winds of death, screeching filth, bizarre antidisco, everything louder than everything else -- and I deeply grok their complete lack of an attention span. This is actually a very good simulation of the chaos happening at places at Burning Flipside or Burning Man, only here you can turn it down when it gets too loud. Remember: only damaged human beings like you can make albums like this. That's what makes them so exciting, so human, so totally deranged. "Real musicians" aren't allowed to make albums like this. But "real musicians" bore me, and this is vastly more entertaining. I can fully understand why they tour by playing at clubs from within their van -- makes it easier to escape if the crowd gets too restless from their disorienting sound attack (or their willfully perverse attitude). Friends Forever are ready for the blood duel. Are you?

Robert Fripp - A BLESSING OF TEARS [Discipline Global Mobile]

This is Volume 2 of a three-volume series of recordings from live performances done in California in early 1995. The music on this disc is all solo soundscapes by the man who brought us Frippertronics. Whatever happened to Volume 1, i wonder? No matter. The other day, while i was listening to this for the upteenth time, it occurred to me that this music really transports me emtionally whenever i listen. Even more interesting is the way it has affected my moods while listening. Unlike most music, rather than make me feel one distinct emotion, it tends to amplify whatever mood i happen to be in. When happy, i feel euphoric. When depressed, i feel sombre and oddly sad. When quiet, it makes me feel introspective and curious. In the liner notes, Fripp has reprinted the entire eulogy he gave to his mother during her funeral. In a way, his music on this disc really transcends the kind of reverent dignity of a funeral scene. Alternately, strong images of a dreary rainy day, a contented stroll outdoors or a childhood memory can slip into the mind. The music builds slowly to an intensity that pulls one in from the very depths of their soul and turns the world inside out. [yol]

Bill Frisell - LIVE (Gramavision)

Features Kermit Driscol on bass, Joey Baron on drums and of course, Frisell with his electric guitar. This recording was made during a live performance in Spain in 1991, but that date seems highly irrelevant in context with the music. For over seventy minutes, the trio deliver a truly captivating performance that is virtually timeless in quality and execution. Baron at times is hitting anything but the skins, carefully playing off of Frisell's playful guitar licking. Frisell's agile guitar work at times moves from melodic structures to quirky picking or chaotic crecendos within the blink of an eye. And just as suddenly, order is restored, returning again to the initial refrain. Listening to him play is at times mind-boggling, just trying to keep up with the numerous changes and shifts. Frisell ably demonstrates he is yet another master in the fine art of creating short, simplistic repetetive chord structures that act as an anchor to the music, a characteristic of guitar playing i have always loved in bands like Omoide Hatoba, and Vacuum Tree Head. The tracks range from upbeat or downright frenzied to moving and sometimes deeply contemplative. All of the music sparkles with a kind of clarity that is rarely heard. The range of influence that Frisell obviously had on Zorn's early Naked City albums is clearly apparent after listening to this recording. A truly phenomenal piece of work. [yol]

Frog A Mungus -- VELOUR [DEMO]

An intriguing four-song demo from this five-piece band from Columbus, Ohio. The stripped-down trio format is augmented by two female singers, so while you have the band wobbling through a sound that's part pop, part Jah Wobble, and part pure shards of noise, the two singers are warbling like they ought to be in Lush or the Cocteau Twins... a bizarre and intriguing juxtaposition that really shouldn't work at all, but usually does anyway. The lyrics throughout are kind of morbid and goth-like, pretty strange in light of the band's fragmented-swirling-into-cohesiveness-and-back-again aesthetic, and... uh... (you can tell i'm doing this on the fly, can't you? hey, YOU try describing the undescribable several times a month sometime, ok?) ...what was i saying? (God, i need more rest.)

"when i die" is probably the best thing here -- starting off with a bassline descended from "Walk On The Wild Side," the guitar line slowly filters in, until the whole thing kicks into full gear and the singers start working their mojo. "unforgiven" is all swirly background fuzzdoom and power chords, most cool. I could live without the extended soloing, but then i'm notorious for my crankiness on the subject of solos, and at least THIS guitarist can actually play with taste, so we won't hold it against them, eh? The last track, "wall inside," is a bit faster and rocks harder than the others, PLUS features a vocal that sounds like it was phoned in through a Speak 'N Spell with dying batteries. All right! Studio weirdness at its finest! DEAD ANGEL approves!

The art for this is tremendously cool -- the J-card includes lyrics and photos (with a predominant oriental motif/sensibility) and it's printed on brown paper and just basically looks much snazzier than your average demo outing, you know? If you stumble across this, or have the chance to see them live, feel free to indulge in your curiosity and reap the rewards that are sure to follow (am i spouting zen or pure horseshit now? probably both, but you should still check them out)....

Edith Frost -- CALLING OVER TIME [Drag City]

Many, many moons ago -- at least a decade ago -- i came to possess an album by a young lady from Knoxville, Tennessee by the name of Amy BeVille. It was a real anomaly: an independent, self-financed, self-released country album by a woman in a field where these things just weren't done. As it happens, the album was brilliant, but not "traditional" country by any means. Between that and the fact that country has always been (for the last several decades, anyway) a major-label, radio-airplay kind of game, her album disappeared as quickly as it was released, and she faded back into the woodwork, probably going on to become a housewife or whatever. I don't know. I'm sure i'm the only person outside of her family who actually owns a copy of this album. Did i mention that it was brilliant?

So what does this have to do with Edith Frost?

Ah, the kicker... yah, the kicker. About half the album sounded very much like Edith's debut album, CALLING OVER TIME. And this was an album recorded more than a decade before, by a woman i'm pretty sure was not into the Velvet Underground or Dream Syndicate or any of the other names that keep coming up in reviews of Edith's album. Which i find interesting... most interesting. I also find it interesting that the same sound that almost immediately doomed Amy BeVille to obscurity is gathering Edith critical raves from all over the globe. It's a funny world, isn't it?

Another thing both albums have in common: Neither one is really, strictly speaking, a country album. BeVille's album had all sorts of odd sound effects and peculiar instrumentation, along with distinctly uncountry arrangements (or at the very least, arrangements that greatly stretched the definition of country); Edith's album has more in common with the Velvet Underground than it does with anything in the country tradition. (Yes, i kow there's slide guitar on "Pony Song," but slide does not a country or blues album make.) Hell, for that matter, "Denied" is more closely related to the Beatles' "Julia" than anything else. In fact, this is closer to being a folk-blues album than a country album; i could see John Fahey tapping his toes to this one. The only reason i even feel compelled to bring up the country thing is that so many of the reviews and articles i've seen on the subject keep referring to her country leanings. It's pretty inexplicable, especially since i suspect most diehard country fans wouldn't be able to get behind this album at all due to its foot-dragging pace and abundance of peculiar noises (courtesy of backing unit Gastr del Sol, who sound absolutely fabulous).

Regardless of what the hell it is, this is a fine album. Sure, it's slow, droning, and a bit on the morose side, but these are GOOD THINGS as far as i'm concerned. Part of what makes this album great is the spare (as in damn near minimalist) accompaniment from Gastr del Sol and cohorts Rian Murphy (sometime Royal Trux guy, who also produced the album) and Rick Rizzo (playing bass for the first time and doing a swank job of it). My favorite tracks are "Too Happy" and "Albany Blues," both of which are made spiffy by just-right piano tinkling. These are the two most uptempo songs on the album; everything else is slow and subtle, almost monochromatic even, to the point where brief flourishes of slide or pedal steel take on major importance. Edith's voice -- far more of the country-blues persuasion than any of the instrumentation -- floats high above the unobtrusive songs like a searchlight cutting through night fog.

I have no idea what Edith plans on doing for an encore, but given the strength of this debut (and the live performance i saw at 33 Degrees, a show that prompted me to buy the disc in the first place), i'll certainly be first in line to hear it when it happens.

Talk about yer left field surprises -- the new slab o' shiny from Edith opens up with a percolating bass line and hateful fuzz guitar (courtesy of whatsisface from Royal Trux, who also co-produced the album with Jennifer H. of the same band, cutely enough under the pseudonym "Adam and Eve"). What's either violin are a seriously overamped guitar weaves through it about halfway through, and Edith's voice has never sounded more hypnotic. So the album is off to an excellent start. Most of the rest of the album is closer to the feel of the first one, only with a tad more distortion and a wee smidge more of a "rock" feel. The song "Light," though, is just flat-out country to the bone (a good thing -- this is real country we're talking about). Judging from the act of putting this on the the same album with the aforementioned "Walk on the Fire" and the more poplike "You Belong to No One," i'd make the argument that this album has considerably more variety than the last one. (What i don't understand, though, is how anybody thinks Edith sounds like Liz Phair -- i actually saw that in a review somewhere and i have to wonder what that reviewer was smoking.) Most of the album, particularly on songs like "Telescopic" and "My Capture," fall into the category of ambient country folk drone, much as her entire first album did. The addition of fuzz guitar here and there helps out this time to provide some extra grit and texture, and the addition of up-tempo moments is a suave move. (The one drawback to the first album was that it spent most of its time in extremely low gear.) The songs themselves, in addition to exhibitng a fair degree of variety, are plenty strong enough to hold up to repeated listenings. My only regret is that even with the fuzzed-out moments, very little of this rocks as hard as Edith did when i saw her play live at 33 Degrees. But then, that just leaves her a move to head for on the next album, eh?

C12 (gasping): So what is this bale of ungainly sound keeping the little devils at bay?

TG: This is a split CD with Fukktron and Hair & Nails, one of the noisier offerings on Public Eyesore. They're from the chaos school of power tool management, apparently. The first seventeen tracks are courtesy of Fukktron, who favor dense, noisy, chaotic collages assembled in patterns so convoluted that they border on the random. The patterns are there, but buried under so many layers of sonic crap that it's hard to pick them out...

C12: It's all indecipherable to me.

TG: Look, you have to have the ears for it, okay? I'm sure if I listened to any of that damn Wagner you insist on playing at the pool parties it wouldn't make any sense to me either, so just shut the hell up and let me do my job, okay? By the way, move your leg up... yes.... (fires of a burst from the Vapotron and laughs as a weasel bursts into scattered molecules)

C12 (looking at titles): Hmmm... "pudding pampers"... "k-y firebird"... at least they have a sense of humor....

TG: Would that more of these noisemongers had one. They're not afraid of beats, either, although with what they do, the beats might as well be afraid of them.

C12: So what about the other band? (fires a burst from the sonic cannon to thwart weasels ripping at his suit)

TG: Hair & Nails operate from a similar school of thought, although they're not quite so hep on the beats and more into the drone thing. They also favor really piercing noises.

C12: Oh, how... how lovely.

TG: But the Moon Unit has a full-length of theirs scheduled for review in the next issue, so that's probably all you need to know about them right now. (laughing demonically): Check this out! (hits the elevator button and climbs up the walls to hang from the ceiling)

C12: What are you doing?

TG: You'll see. Watch. (points to the horde of weasels chasing after them)

(C12 watches with amazement as the weasels, half-blind from her phosphorous bombs and not terribly bright in the first place, swarm into the elevator. As soon as the elevator is full, she unlocks her Magnasoles and drops to the floor, stabbing at the CLOSE button. As the door begins to close, she fires a volley of bullets into the elevator and tosses in a Subatomic Deactivator grenade. The door closes on the sight of several weasels juggling the shiny metal globe, puzzled as to what to do about it.)

TG (running): I'd suggest you follow me like right now, nelly boy! 

C12: What did you throw in there? What's it going to do?

(He is answered by a roar of white light and white heat as the elevator, along with most of the entire wing behind him, goes up in a blinding explosion that roughly resembles the creation of a small new sun.)

C12 (eyeing the damage): Well, I suppose that wing needed renovation anyway. Oh my. Do you have any idea what you're doing to the resale value of this estate?

TG: Don't make me kill you, okay?

The band is named after legendary goremeister Lucio Fulci (probably best known for the zombie cannibal holocausto deluxo ZOMBIE), and that's certainly appropriate, for this is a genuinely gruesome platter of dark and evil death-drone. This is what zombie cannibals listen to while gnawing mindlessly on the flesh of the living. The band itself is Eric Crowe (Social Infestation, Marax) and Adam Wright (Strong Intention, Leviathan A.D., head zombie for Crucial Blast), with some help from Nathan Miller on bass and Adam Brown (drums). The five longish tracks on here poot about in the darkened alleys often frequented by the likes of Skullflower, Earth (circa their second album), Teeth of Lions Rule The Divine, Sunn O))), and maybe even a smidge o' Maeror Tri. It's all tripped-out riffs repeated endlessly over rumbling death-drone from another dimension, like cowering in fear in a darkened basement while the rest of the building collapses one slow brick at a time. One of the best tracks is "scatter my bones on the shore," which combines wavelike drone guitar with wailing, ringing feedback and melodic lines over fragmented percussion; "temple hammer" and "gallows of divorce" are more straightfoward power-death drone, scary enough in its own right, but "... shore" is one of the most unusual and eerie drone mantras I've heard in a while. Actually, "temple hammer" -- the opening salvo of grim death-dirge -- has a far more metallic grind than the band's influences, and the bleak, ritualistic chanting of the doomed is a nice touch o' grimness. Even better, the bass-heavy creep of "megan" features some hideously detuned bass with serious teeth, and soon settles into a monolithic two-step slo-mo drone that washes over you like the waves of the ocean, disgorging bloated bodies that come to rest on an endless beach, waiting for the scavengers. The final track, "depth lord: the year of the dragon" is essentially piercing wails of feedback over a slowly-rotating drone broken only by punishing subterranean riffing, molasses-style. Truly one of the most forbidding sessions of apocalyptic, soul-crushing doom you could ever hope to hear. Forget about that next hit on the crack pipe; spend your cash on this instead. Then you'll have something appropriate to listen to while smoking the next round as you descend into hell....

If you're hep to Southern Gun Culture or Twin Sister, then you already have a good idea of what to expect. Amber Dickerson, bassist for SGC and guitarist for Twin Sister, covers the axe-slinging and (on two songs) the singing; Trent Parker, pounder of immaculate rhythms for SGC (and occasionally Twin Sister, among others), keeps the mighty beat and shouts on the last song. If you're not hep to the aforementioned bands, then let me spell it out for you: This is pure southern-fried boogie rock with all the useless parts stripped off and left lying by the side of the road. They've taken the things that were good about the other two bands (swell riffs, orchestrated parts, unorthodox song structures, rock-steady drums, fuzzed-out guitar, interesting lyrics) and tightened everything up, resulting in concise songs that rock (dude). Touches like the speed-queen riffing plus acid-soaked solo in "Exposed" and startling feedback / drum riff in "Give Me Somethin'" only help make the songs more unusual, and if it's velocity you seek, "Feet On The Ground" provides that (along with a doo-wop refrain behind Trent's shouting on the choruses). Their real stroke of genius here is in stripping everything down to simple but swank parts and throwing in the occasional curveball to keep things interesting. If this is what they sound like when they're just sorting out where they're going, subsequent releases should definitely be exciting to hear, and I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more from them.

Fushitsusha - PURPLE TRAP (CDx2, Blast First)

Note that the album may actually be titled "The wound that was given birth to must be bigger than the wound that gave birth". At least, that is what is printed along the spine. Quite a mouthful! This is another in the series of live recordings made at Club Disobey in London, England. All told, there's a little under 100 minutes of playing time, spanning two discs. One is titled "Purple Trap I"; the other is "Purple Trap II" (of course). When Fushitsusha are on, their deluge of guitar, bass and drums is a supreme spiral of angular, chaotic playing that rips your head off and lets you see your spinal juices flowing before you fall over dead - but always with a smile on your face. While the playing strategy is indeed somewhat simplistic, there is also a repetetive, yet droning and insistant nature to Fushitsusha's sound that is truly captivating. This is without a doubt, one of their finest live recordings to be documented on the suave technology of little digital silver platters. [yol]

Fushitsusha -- GOLD BLOOD [Charnel Music]

Hup ho... okay, here's the scoop on the band with the funny name (and no, i have no idea what it means). They're more or less a psychedelic band from Japan led by Keiji Haino, apparently a guitar god of the nth order (with an ego to match, judging from his recent interview in HALANA); lots of people seem to think they're the cat's meow; this is the band's first domestic release after approximately a billion imports; Haino is just about (or maybe more) prolific as a solo artist; plus they have a ridiculous fondness for the color black, which makes their albums real hard to tell apart, especially if you don't read Japanese.

This particular disc was recorded way back in November, 1996 during their performance at the the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, a show that was simulcast on KFJC-FM. The recording itself is from the station's broadcast mix, which makes it sound heaps better than your average live spoo. For the sake of brevity, the two-hour show was edited down to the best 72 minutes, and lo! that is this disc. The basic thrust of their sound revolves around bassist Yasushi Ozawa and drummer Jun Kosugi laying down shifting rhythmic grooves, over which guitarist Haino basically improvises at will, shoveling his guitar through a staggering wall of effects. The results are pretty damn freeform much of the time, and while i'm not so sure i buy this Haino-as-god theorem, i have to admit he's got a pretty good grasp of the "controlled" part of Fushitsusha's controlled chaos theory.

While the furious psychedelic shower (intermittently shored up by spot- on tribal jazz drumming and given a tenuous continued rhythm only by the floating basslines) of the opening "The halation born between you and I were doomed to appear in form" (Christ, and i thought i came up with long- winded titles!), i much prefer the slow-motion wail and drone of "Hazama," a genuinely beautiful song that's occasionally enshrouded in vaporlike clouds of heavily reverbed background guitar noise in between the wailing. The varying (and mostly ominous) guitar textures of "If I had been showered in gold blood, wouldn't my prayer have been answered?" are effectively counterpointed by Haino's wordless operatic wailing, and the song builds slowly but inexorably toward a churning, frenzied climax. The lurching, jagged thunder of the final track ("This trembling in my core, with which of your cells couldn't it hold hands?"), however, seems almost out of place next to the more ethereal pieces that precede it, and while the serrated guitar chords sound most swank, the stuck-pig squealing gets a bit annoying fairly quickly. It certainly builds to a supersonic, hyperkinetic climax, though. Which is all right, but... i think i preferred the earlier tracks better, where there was a certain level of dramatic tension that was really interesting, as opposed to just flailing away.

I dunno -- this is cool stuff, yes, but not the synapse-shattering experience i was led to believe was such a part of the "Fushitsusha legend" and all that. Perhaps this is not the best place for the neophyte to begin? I don't know. Of course, if you're interested in Fushitsusha at all and have yet to hear this, this would be the place to start just out of sheer economics: those pricey import Japanese discs cost mucho dinero, bub. So... approach with the knowledge that hype always leads to unrealistic expectations and all that, you know....

And you know, i could just be a heathen.

Ah, if the entire disc had matched "Hazama," mon. That's all i can say.