Galaxie 500 -- GALAXIE 500 box set [Rykodisc]

Okay, so i'm such a clueless putz that i'm just now getting around to hearing Galaxie 500, six years after they broke up -- hey, better late than never, right? Right? RIGHT? (Uhhhh....) Fortunately for moi, Rykodisc has conveniently saved me from the hassle of scouring used-record stores for their out-of-print-and-damn-near-impossible-to-find records by not only releasing all three of them on CD with extra goodies, but by collecting all three with a fourth disc of otherwise unavailable rarities for this swell box set. (There's a fourth disc out now, COPENHAGEN, documenting one of their final live shows.)

The Cliff Notes summary: The box set includes all three original albums (TODAY, ON FIRE, and THIS IS OUR MUSIC) in their entirety, along with a number of extra tracks on each disc (mostly culled from B-sides and the BLUE THUNDER and FOURTH OF JULY EPs), and video tracks (!) for "Fourth of July," "Tugboat," "Blue Thunder," and "When Will You Come Home," all viewable on your PC. The fourth disc collects up all the previously obscure or unavailable material (their original three-song demo, various covers, European b-sides, compilation tracks, etc.). The 48-page booklet (designed, like the rest of the set, by Naomi herself) includes the band's story from the members themselves, along with lots o' swell pix, liner notes from the original albums, and a complete discography.

As for the music itself, well, the albums were recorded on a shoestring and it often shows, but if it's good enough for Guided by Voices and Lou Barlow and Liz Phair (who is apparently heavily influenced by Dean Wareham's guitar stylings), then dammit, it's good enough for Galaxie 500! Especially since the music across these four discs is consistently stellar and generally much better than the bands they've influenced, in my opinion. (How did i ever go so long without hearing this band? Arrgh!) Plus they do New Order ("Ceremony") better than New Order, which is all right by me. An absolutely essential item. Get 'em while they're available.... (Note for the budget-minded consumer: The separate Ryko reissues are exactly the same as these discs, with all the extra tracks and video tracks, only with the original cover art. But note that the rarities disc is only available here. I suggest saving up your pennies for the box set over the individual albums....)

Gals Panic -- AIRPORT SECURITY THINGS [Goopy Pyramid Records]

Look, look, I'm SKANKIN'! Awright! Yow! Twist shukka twist shukka leap leap leap! Hey! And I don't even own anything plaid! Aaaaieeee! Crazed ska from my own obnoxious hometown, a self-released effort to boot (an EP, cassette-only as far as i know; they have a couple of singles out too), and it's pretty nifty (assuming you can stand ska, that is). Actually, debate rages as to whether these guys (whose singer has the dubious distinction of being even SHORTER THAN MYSELF, which takes some doing for anyone over twelve, believe me) are actually "true ska," since they lean toward bursts of heavy-metalism now and then, but the purist argument always bores me anyway, so hah!

Besides, they MUST be ska, for their lyrics are smart-assed and read as if they were written in the car on the way to the studio, and most importantly, make LITTLE SENSE. "Play our game 'til she gets naked / On mine I want cheese and bacon / If I had another quarter / I could reach the next nude border"... yah, must be ska, mon.... Plus "Sega Face" is about Sega games (duh) (and yet NO MENTION of Sonic! how could they forget?!?!), and "Space Race" reveals that they are apparently unaware that the cold war ENDED a while ago (or else they just don't CARE). Songs like "Mummy Cops" and "Skoliosis Skank" are pretty self-explanatory, I think....

For a self-released project, this sounds pretty good -- the guys are certainly no slouches in the playing department -- although their judgement is sometimes questionable (a song whose entire lyrics are "talk... laugh... cry"?!?!?! uh....). But hell, they're SUPPOSED to have questionable thinking, it's SKA dammit, and they are energetic and thus good for jumping around like a spastic moron, aaaaaah, just go buy it, ok?

Gals Panic -- I THINK WE NEED HELICOPTERS [Goopy Pyramid Records]

Aaaaah... the pleasures of goofy ska-metal. A childish pleasure, to be sure, but since DEAD ANGEL believes in the power of being infantile, this scores big points around here.... Gals Panic are from Austin (le hometown!) and regularly pack out the clubs (although since the clubs here are slightly bigger than my closet, i'll admit that's not exactly difficult), and from this CD, it's not hard to tell why. They play well, they're obnoxious, they're funny... and judging from "Jerm and Lance Fuck Around," probably high as a kite to boot. All of the tracks on the original AIRPORT SECURITY THINGS cassette (reviewed a couple of issues back) are here, in addition to a whole bunch of other stuff, for a total of 19 skankin' tracks; most of the cassette songs have been considerably reworked (and for the most part, improved in the process). Granted, i could easily live without the covers of "Superstar" and "We've Only Just Begun" (although they don't really "cover" these tunes as much as they turn them upside downa and incinerate them), and "Talk... Laugh... Cry" is still as dippy as it was on the original cassette. But this is a small price to play for the coolness of stuff like the self-explanatory "Dogs Don't Do Drugs" ("do what you want with your own brain / leave the doggy alone") and the cruel but oh-so-true "Ace Frehley Doll," not to mention the revamped (heavier!) versions of "Segaface" and "Chuck Norris Action Jeans."

Best of all, though, is the totally lunar "Jerm and Lance Fuck Around," which is... uh... well... it lives up to its title and then some. The singer and the guitarist employ lots of gadgets and a drum machine and lots of truly loopy lyrics to form a series of "movements" that don't really have much to do with each other, other than the fact that they're all surreal and/or utterly ridiculous. "Big heads... stone heads... how did they get here?" "Power... power... power made a cola out of you...." I'll bet they were very, very drunk (or, ahem, something like that) when they recorded this masterpiece. Must be heard to be believed. A college-age classic for years to come, i'm sure. Too bad it wasn't around when i was in school, we could have thrown amplifiers and drunk sorority girls off rooftops while listening to this, mon.... Would have been FUN..

Garbage -- s/t [A&M]

Okay, so i got into this big discussion/argument with someone on the L7 mailing list about which is better, Ruby or Garbage, and since i'm apparently the only person on earth who hasn't seen the video for "Vow" on MTV (where WOULD i see it? every time i turn the damn channel on, they're playing The World's Stupidest Show, SINGLED OUT, or the close contenders for the title, REAL WORLD and ROAD RULES. Where the fuck do they FIND these morons? Why would anyone actually WANT to be on these shows? Mein Gott in der himmel, i can't believe the LENGTHS some people will go to in order to publicly debase and humiliate themselves just to be on television. Has it truly sunk to this, that western civilization is so completely enslaved by The Idiot Box that the highest form of achievement is to appear as some butthead doing stupid shit just for the opportunity to stand next to Jenny "yes, i really AM this much of an airhead, but aren't my nipples POINTY?" McCarthy? I suppose so... i weep for the children... the Headless Sno-Cone Girl pees on the idiot box in an attempt to prevent me from turning it on again so hopefully there will be less of these rants in the future....), i had to finally break down and buy this.

The verdict, please.... [Opens the envelope] Ruby wins! It isn't even close! Ha ha ha! To be fair, there really isn't much resemblance between the two groups, outside of the fact that they both have female singers and a fondness for musical backgrounds provided by chopped-up sounds created through PC and studio technology. And this is hardly a bad album, but frankly, the Ruby disc is a hell of a lot weirder, creepier, and flat-out more inventive in its sound manipulation. Plus i just plain like Lesley Rankine's singing better, although Shirley Manson is a fine singer in her own right.

Some people may already know this -- God knows there have certainly been enough magazine interviews on the subject -- but one of the "faces" at work here is Butch Vig, Former Producer to the Alternative Stars (L7, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, etc.) He's the guy responsible for the drums, loops, EFX, and such. Which brings up my biggest complaint about the band: they've made a big deal out of the fact that they're incorprorating weird noises and stuff into pop structures, but they've buried it so far in the background that you can hardly tell it's THERE. On the Ruby disc, the weird noises and fucked-up samples quite frequently ARE the song, an arrangement i find much more interesting.

At any rate, the album is worth hearing, even if (obviously) i think it pales alongside the Ruby creation. (Perhaps this means you should check out the Ruby disc and see if you agree with me, eh?) The songs are all well- constructed, very pop-like, Shirley Manson is a fabulous singer, and the musicianship is pretty swank. The level of quality is pretty consistent throughout the disc, and i'd probably think this was supremely hot shit if i hadn't already heard the Ruby disc....

Garlic has a real interesting sound -- alt-country, mostly centered around steel guitarist Marcus McCarroll, filtered through Beatlesque harmonies and frequently uptempo rock drumming. This is complicated by the fact that they are from London, so their pop and country moves are filtered through British pop sensibilities as well. Regardless of the rhythms they take on or the subjects of the songs themselves, that twangy, reverberating steel guitar dominates the sound, giving a country flavor to everything. At the same time, they are not afraid of fuzzy guitars, big-sounding drums, or funny noises. The result is an album with a backwoods porch feel that incorporates enough odd and unexpected sounds and dynamic shifts to keep it from growing stagnant. For some reason they make me think of Cheer-Accident -- perhaps its their archness, their harmonies, and that piano on "drink induced conversations" that makes me think of Thymme Jones. I am grossly unqualified to discuss alt-country and have no idea how to even begin comparing them to such bands, but they are without question amazing musicians, and these are cryptic but compelling songs. Not likely to knock Britney and 50-Cent out of the top twenty, but certainly better for your ears.

Gastr del sol -- UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE [Drag City]

The late Gastr del sol may be one of those rarest of bands -- a band whose recorded output actually got better with each subsequent album, rather than the other way around. They started out as an experiment, with David Grubbs (formerly of Squirrel Bait) teaming up with Jim O'Rourke (the eternally rumpled god of the minimalist guitar scene, aka "Mr. Fashion"), working with a shifting assortment of like-minded souls (including Cheer-Accident's Thymme Jones, Tony Conrad, and Ralf Wehowsky, among others). The idea, apparently, was to deconstruct music -- to record wildly dissimilar bits and pieces, then edit them together with a razor and splicing block into something vaguely coherent and "musical." The results of the first couple of albums were interesting but mixed... but as they continued to work their mojo, their vision of what they really wanted to achieve became clearer, along with their understanding of how to reach the goal line most effectively. In my opinion, it all came to a head on THE HARP FACTORY ON LAKE STREET, and from that point onward their music has grown by leaps and bounds into something simultaneously unnervingly arty and yet surprisingly accessible. While i haven't heard their final album CAMOFLEUR, i'm definitely interested in the possibility that it, following their tradition of following a good album by an even better one, might actually be even more godlike than this one....

The album begins with "our exquisite replica of 'eternity'," where a shimmering drone is shattered from time to time by almost-random guitar noises and other ominious cut-up sounds; then, as the drone changes in tone and the noises drop out, clarinets and horns come in with drones of their own, eventually building to a wild frenzy that is exploded by crashing symphonic sounds (found sound?), at which point a stately horn melody of a minimalist sort trundles down a valley of peculiar waves of sound before it all dies away, replaced by a spring-like loop that gradually fades into nothingness. All of this, mind you, is done with such impeccable editing skill that it sounds absolutely live, although i'm sure that's unlikely. After that, the acoustic chords of "rebecca sylvester" sound almost shocking. As Grubbs shares some of his more oblique (verging on crepescular, actually) lyrics, the tape grows thick with drones and background shrieks even as the guitar plays in a most Faheyesque style... all coming together in the final "verse," where interlocked guitars and gorgeous harmony vocals drive home the song's eerie question: "Why did the sharks watch him drown?" On "hello spiral," bursts of disconnected noise and found sound eventually gives way to a bare-bones guitar presentation and cryptic vocals about how "the sailor unleashed his dog in the square/ the cat ate the french fry by the tail"; but when the vocals end, the real meat of the song begins, as two guitars create one hypnotic, interlocked riff that gradually evolves over the rest of the piece. Over five minutes into the process, drums actually enter the picture and the sound takes on a totally new character. The interlocked and primarily acoustic guitars make an appearance again on "dry bones in the valley (i saw the light come shining 'round and 'round)," a cover of the John Fahey classic that is actually quite true to the spirit of the original. Many of the guitar parts, in fact, are duplicated so faithfully that you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two...although toward the end it takes on a droning cadence that wanders a bit from the original version (but Fahey probably would have included it himself if he'd thought about it).

Incidentally, this album only confirms my growing belief that O'Rourke is at his best when working with others. While i don't much care for a lot of his solo work, i've so far found nearly all of his collaborations to be pretty interesting, and in some cases even downright inspired. Knowing that the band is no more, i'm curious as to whether or not he'll continue in some fashion as a collaborator or go the solo route totally from now on. For that matter, i'm really curious as to what Grubbs intends to do, since i can't imagine he'll go this route again (at least not in this musical direction), given his penchant for moving on totally once he's exhausted a form. Regardless of what they do, i have no doubt it will at least be intriguing.

The band may be defunct now -- most likely to dueling visions of where they should go, natch -- but at least they went out like men on fire. This is a bad-ass slab o' shiny. It's not quite as revelatory as the previous offering, UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE, but it's certainly more varied... they appear to be using every kind of instrument known to man on this disc, especially on the opening track "The Seasons Reverse." Congas, hyper beats, arcane percussion, and decidedly free-jazz sax wailing almost put them into Sun Ra territory. Eventually the beats fade out into repetitive guitars, firecracker sounds, and a mysterious conversation between the non-English-speaking firecracker thrower. "Blues Subtitled No Sense of Wonder" lays down a relentlessly hypnotic deet-doot loop over which somebody (Grubbs? O'Rourke? who knows?) lays down solemn piano movements, eventually to the accompaniment of trombone, strings, and more. This song finds them at the intersection of art-rock, blues, and classical music, with surprising (considering their early cut-and-paste albums, anyway) results.

The coolest passage on the disc comes during "Black Horse," a swinging jazz track (yes, it is, trust me), when -- almost two minutes into the thing -- everything abruptly dies away for an amazing cascade of harmonic piano and interlocked guitar for about a minute and a half before switching back to a lower gear. That passage is just riveting. The rest of the song is pretty intense in its own right, encompassing about a dozen styles of music at once, and seamlessly at that. The piano as centerpiece theme returns again in "Each Dream Is An Example," where it's augmented this time by horns and molded into several repetitive movements. (The liner notes also say Edith Frost appears as vocalist on this track, but i think she's actually on the lush and dreamy "Mouth Canyon" instead.) A strong Fahey influence shows up on both tracks, but the latter is also soaked in the kind of country-blues feel so familiar to Edith's own albums. "A Puff of Dew," with its cryptic noises and off-kilter-editing feel, comes closest to the "old school" Gastr del sol of earlier albums; interestingly enough, it's also the shortest track on the album. It's a strange one: reverbed drones that get eaten into destroyed sounds as the band attempts a slow blues or something, the whole track has a scattered feel, like a blues song being transmitted by shortwave on a night with really bad reception thanks to the meteor showers. "Bauchredner" is very much in the Fahey mode, pinched guitars competing with each other, finally building to something that actually -- God forbid! -- resembles a rock tune. Granted, it's a rock tune that more or less repeats the same measure over and over with minute variations before exploding into slide guitar and other fabulous stuff, but hey, i'll take this over your average nihilist headbanger any day, mon.

The most interesting thing about this album, at least in relation to their earlier output, is how little it relies on the chop-chop uberedit hijinks they used to be known for. This is definitely more of an organic-sounding record, although i suspect there's a lot more editing going on than meets the eye. The difference now is that they're less obvious about it. Increasing geometric precision or a shift to the subtle? You be the judge.

This album is impossible to explain and to even attempt it would be to do a grave injustice to the artistry of the great John Gavanti. Take our word for it: to those who have heard this masterpiece, Gavanti's greatness cannot be measured on any ordinary scale. This is possibly the most important album recorded in the history of Western civilization; nations have gone to war over disagreements as to the significance of this album, okay? It's sold 37,000,000 copies in the U.S. alone. Even aborigines in the outback have this album -- it's not uncommon to find tribes that have purchased a phonograph solely for the purpose of marveling to the suave sounds of John Gavanti. Just go buy the damn thing already, okay? Just make sure you tell the record store geek that you're only buying it because you wore out your original copy or else he'll smirk at you for being so out of the loop....

TTBMD: This is a quiet cd.

TMU: Well, there's plenty of dynamics going on here. But not much is the way of pure blinding volume, that's true. Of course, three-string guitar and mandolin are hard to rock out with... I was gonna tell you all about the guy's history and stuff, but for some reason i'm having a real hard time focusing on that type... does that look like Swahili to you? I'll bet you can find all that stuff at their web site.

TTBMD: This is good. It reminds me of Village of Savoonga. Sparse, acoustic instruments take you on an ethnic trip to a wet desert -- a place that does not exist.

TMU: I like those bass tones. Maybe i need a three-string toy guitar.

TMU (opens case): Oooo, look -- he sent us a piece of the sky.... (holds up diced Polaroid)

TTBMD: Sounds like he's trying to tune a guitar unsuccessfully on this one.

TMU: Strings winding and unwinding while the toy guitar emulates a piccolo... making your instrument sound like something else seems to be the name of the game here, eh, o my brother?

TTBMD: Correct. Simple, fun, live. This guy is doing his own thing and obviously doesn't give a fuck what anybody else thinks.

TMU: Lots of plucking action... suave tones abound. This is a man with some style. I envision him performing in a sharkskin suit backed by Eurobabes lounging about in the background with cocktail martinis while he plys his cosmic trade.

TTBMD: What the fuck are you talking about?

TMU: I... uh... um... (thinking real hard)

TTBMD: His contemporaries would be Thurston Moore, White-Winged Moth, Bill Horist....

TMU: Is that a piano i hear? O, such joy it brings me every time i hear the piano....

TTBMD: No piano! He's making his guitar sound like a piano.

TMU: He is? (listens) He is! Such a clever bastard, o my brother!

TTBMD: Clever indeed. Clever indeed.

TMU (screaming): I NEED DRUGS NOW! (lights cigarette) This makes me think of Michael Schumaker, too.

TTBMD: It makes me think of Michael Schenkner.

TMU: I saw his brother once in the Scorpions. He threw his Flying V twenty feet in the air and caught it in the middle of one song. I was really fucking impressed. I bought one of their t-shirts, the one with the guy having his eyes gouged out with the fork, you should have seen how impressed my mother was....

TTBMD: Yeah, BLACKOUT. I personally prefer the LONESOME CROW album myself, their first effort.

TMU: I actually went to that show to see Girlschool. I had the hots for Gil, the bass player.... look, this segment of track five (looks at long, incomprehensible title), uh, track five, there's no way i can say that title.... uh, this segment has some nice picking, like classical guitar stylings. I like this.

TTBMD: On this one (track 6), it sounds like the guitar is submerged in water and is trying to breathe.

TMU: I like those flanged-out sonar-type sounds... they're sure getting some boss sounds out of such minimal toy guitars and stuff. This guy Gayle knows what he's doing here. This reminds me of Isao Tomita's THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE.

TTBMD:  I like this track the best so far. This is better when he doesn't freak out so much.

TMU: This is much more minimal than the other tracks. I like the other tracks, but this is more subdued... otherworldly....

TTBMD: This one, "easily inquisition trial," sounds like a folk track in the style of John Gavanti. John Gavanti fuckin' rocks. We have to review his album in the next issue, as a forgotten album. I have not forgotten. The album is on top of my speakers twenty-four hours a day. I can feel its presence in my dreams. It has a grip on me as strong as heroin.

TMU: Have you listened to the April Wayne album yet? That must be like being in the grip of bad, bad paint thinner.

TTBMD: Overall, this live disc from Gayle is a good listen. I wouldn't listen to it every day like John Gavanti, but all in all, I recommend it.

TMU: I agree. While nothing can equal the mysteries of the immortal Gavanti, this is a fine effort. I'm not sure what to make of titles like "uppii to pepe monogatari (sumouppara no neko damashi)," but he is working in the tradition first set by the likes of AMM and other experimental guitarists, and he does not dishonor that tradition. We shall allow him to retain his finely-honed sword rather than forcing him to commit seppuku.

This sprawling double-disc of improvisational moves between guitarist Philip Gayle and percussionist Richard Cholakian is the result of two recording sessions, apparently cut live without stopping over several hours and then tinkered with and pressed onto cd for your Sun-Sound Listening Pleasure. To make matters just that more intimidating, there are only three songs on all of this (one is cut in half at the end of the first cd and resumes on the second). It's like something out of the late sixties, when all the improv cats had to release sprawling double-albums of them wailin' away live at some benefit concert for the starving lemurs of Bola Bola or whatever. So i can fully understand if you start to back away in fear... but it's worth hearing, since Gayle and Cholakian have a frantic, telepathic style that keeps things moving and doesn't get boxed in too often or for too long. (For the record, the three tracks in question are "Available Jones" (12:36), "Sick Bones" (24:14), and "OK" (77:53). They do relent mildly in their deliberate torture by at least splitting up "OK" into two parts rather than running it uncut on one disc.) As for the sound, it's the sound of freedom -- improvised jazz happening on the spot, with a basic framework of guitar and drums overlaid with other strategic elements (water bottles, harmonica, water phone, gongs, cookie tins, etc.), noodling on the fly. You're either down with this kind of thing or you're not, but if you are, these guys are worth checking out. So is the disc, although some may not have the patience to sit through the entire thing (or even individual songs) in one sitting. (If that's you, then just remind yourself of all the character you're building by learning to be patient.)

There is some seriously demented stuff going on here. 80's video game noises, primitive guitar sounds, and random processed noises all get blended together to sound like some strange alien transmissions. I could almost swear there were actual conversations occurring between some life forms that STAR TREK hasn't discovered yet... really, the craftsmanship on this disc is that incredible. [bc]

I'm not quite sure what to make of Generous Maria. Musically they're great... nice fuzzy guitars, scuzzy distorto-bass, big drums, non-annoying singer, the whole deal. The lyrics on the other hand... OK, check out these lines form the song "Strict Nurse": "What I need is a strict nurse. Oh yeah, a strict nurse. Oh find me a fast car. She'll prescribe something real strong, yeah something real strong that goes straight to my core. I'll be your patient. Give me something illegal." [tmu is laughing] What the fuck is that? Those are, like, Bon Jovi or Scorpions-grade lyrics. In another song the singer howls. Not in a cool Iggy or David Lee Roth way either, more like the guy from London Quireboys (anyone remember them?) or something. To be fair, Generous Maria are from Sweden so maybe something has been lost in the translation. Also, the lyrics get a bit better as their portion of the disc progresses.

Skua (also from Sweden) are also a bit of an anomaly. A lot of bands doing the Stoner thing do one of two things: They either lift riffs directly from Kyuss' BLUES FOR THE RED SUN and SKY VALLEY, rearrange them a bit, add their own lyrics, and call it a song, or they take a random sample of Fu Manchu and Monster Magnet riffs, string those together, and mumble like Scott Hill over the top. Skua do neither. They seem to have passed over Kyuss and Fu Manchu in favor of lifting from Queens of the Stone Age, which I guess is some sort of progression. Now whether this is a good thing or bad thing depends on what you think of the Queens and whether you think there's any need for a Queens (ahem) inspired band. It doesn't bother me much, the guys in Skua are pretty good at what they do. Also, they seem to be pretty young and probably will get around to doing their own thing eventually. [n/a]

Now this is some seriously crazed shit. Imagine Public Image Ltd., early Beastie Boys, Depeche Mode, Funkadelic, and Brutal Truth all battling for supremacy in a studio cluttered with leftover fragments of pop, industrial, dance-music, grindcore, and anything else that happens to be lying around. Now imagine they're all taking direction from a trio of smart-ass college boys in possession of a drum machine turned up as fast as it will go. This is disturbed stuff, all right. The songs aren't particularly long, but they cram enough stuff into each one to make up for it -- the ep as a whole sounds like someone took all the master tracks from a hundred wildly different albums, sped them up, then stuffed them into a blender and set it on puree. When they're not being absurdly catchy, they're letting the drum machine pound holes in the wall and howling like they've been set on fire. This is the sound of musicians with a severe tendency toward attention deficit disorder, five songs of cut 'n paste mayhem that is genuinely diabolical in its ability to combine catchy, even (oh, the terror!) danceable beats and swell, swell melodies with the unnerving sound of asylum inmates turning over all the hospital beds and electroencephalograph machines, then setting them on fire and bolting from the building while throwing grenades. I am deeply afraid to imagine what they'll do with a full album's worth of space eventually... then again, this is the kind of thing that works better in small, wildly-uncontrolled bursts. Truly one of the strangest releases on America's heaviest label. It should be real interesting to see how they pull this off live....

Gerogerigegege -- 45 RPM PERFORMANCE [Dark Vinyl]

The mad Japanese noisemaster Juntaro Yamanouchi, most notorious for antics like often masturbating onstage during performances, delivers what may well be the most gloriously unlistenable album ever made. No kidding, this makes METAL MACHINE MUSIC sound like easy listening. According to the skimpy liner notes, this was recorded "using two record-players and two single-records only," and the results are something that sounds rather like an army of Cadillacs being swallowed by an earthquake and mulched into chrome-plated paste.

There are a grand total of two tracks here: "Side B Of It" and "Side A Of It," and they both sound exactly alike. For all I know, they -are- alike; I wouldn't put it past Japan's prime misanthropic prankster. Not that it matters, since most people will never make it past the first minute anyway. Definitely an orgasmic experience for the noise fetishists, though.

At low volume, this is actually kind of soothing in a way, kind of like a sick, twisted version of ambient music. When you get put on hold in hell, this is probably what they play. All 45 minutes of it, until you want to weep. Juntaro would approve of the idea, I'm sure....

Ghazala is a bit on the obscure side (meaning, i'd never heard of him until recently), but he is known primarily for two conceptual pieces: one is REQUIEM FOR A RADIO, in which a lot of people take turns (under his direction) disassembling and destroying a radio while on tape, after which the sounds are used to create "music"; the other is this CD, in which he employs the "Vox Insecta," an insect voice synthesizer. Essentially he fed many, many insect sounds into a synth and used those sounds for the construction of this epic rumination on the impact of the explosion of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. (For how he manages to bridge the gap from atomic explosions to insects, you'd have to read the liner notes; i think the gist of it is that insects are natural survivors or something to that effect.) The results are, to be frank, pretty spectacular -- droning air-raid siren wails mix with guttural bass washes (synthesized from frog calls, perhaps?) and are sculpted with tremendous finesse, as if Ghazala somehow managed to step outside on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp one night and convinced all the insects in the air and on the ground to wax symphonic. A few of the reviews i've seen of the disc mention its dissonance, and there is certainly plenty of that, although it's more of an ambient sort than you might expect; a few years back this probably would have fallen under the heading of "isolationism," although i think it's more properly cataloged with the likes of Stockhausen and Cage and (perhaps most importantly) the Dream Syndicate and the Theatre of Eternal Music. In fact, if you are already hep to the latter two luminaries mentioned, then you either already have this and know of which i speak, or you need to knock down granny ladies on the street in your unseemly haste to acquire this disc. Imagine if Tony Conrad's minimalist violin drones were harnessed in the quest for a more classical performance structure and you're drifting into the right expanse o' drone. (I should also note, just for the sake of boosting another criminally unheard-of album, that portions of this requiem in five parts bear striking similarities to the sound captured by Dead Fish Fuck on their one album that i know of, SILENCE AT THE EYE OF THE SCREAM.) This CD should be in your collection. Period.

Ghost -- LAMA RABI RABI [Drag City]

These guys are from Japan and you can tell they must be psychadelic just from looking at the pictures 'cause they all have long, freaky hair and wear clothes that even bag people would deem unfashionable, plus they have lots of titles like ""Mastillah" and "Marrakech" and "My Hump is a Shell" that look really deep and meaningful even though they don't make a hell of a lot of sense. But that's all right; they're hippies and we're not going to hold it against them because this is a fine album and not only that, but an AFFORDABLE one -- no small thing where Ghost is concerned, since all of their previous output is otherwise available only as imports whose prices rival those of Current 93 discs (which, for those not knee-deep in the river of hepness and all that shit, means they are damned expensive).

It's too bad this album came out long after i quit smoking dope, because this has a tremendous stoner vibe that i would have found most happening back when i lived with my head in a cloud o' smoke. "Mastillah" is a slow droning thing with loping drums and sleepy flutes; "Into the Alley" is more of a folky thing with wistful vox about, uuuuh, something. "Marrakech" employs a weird tribal funk groove and distorted vox with occasional bursts of psychedelic drone guitar; "Abyssina" is more folk, some kind of dreamy paean to nature complete with chirping birds, sitars, and other weirdness. Other songs are all over the map, mixing country, Indian music, psychadelia, woodwinds, and more into a weird jumpy gumbo. Definitely an album to keep you guessing, and not always gentle and mellow (they get frantic on "Rabirabi" and drop into a subterranean rhythm punctuated by spiky reverb guitar on "Bad Bone"). If you've every wondered what the fuss is all about but been intimidated by those $25 price tags, this would be the place to begin.

What a mouthful, and i don't even know what the title means. (Guess i should have paid more attention in Spanish.) But i know that Giffoni, whom i've heard already on a few earlier PE releases, is a fine manipulator of guitar sounds, and this disc is no exception. On "live guitar improvisation #1" his sound is a bit more violent than i was expecting, but it's an interesting meld of experimental guitar and power electronics with far more dynamics than i generally associate with the latter genre. The use of both continues into "the idea began in bushwick," whose tones are similar to an overdriven pipe organ but which is riddled with noise, static, disembodied voices, and other stuff that breaks down into something else entirely. He's on more "traditional" territory with the bright, Faheyish "for all the ones who i can trust," but the last song (with an indecipherable Japanese title) is a wild mix of tapes and sounds and noises with Giffoni's guitar weaving equally strange sounds around it. One of the strangest and yet strangely accessible guitarists working right now and well worth your attention.

One of the last things guitarist Robert Poss and bassist Susan Stenger did while still in Band of Susans was to appear live with Bruce Gilbert of Wire, playing extended improvisational guitar. While this material (recorded live at the Hacienda in Manchester on October 11, 1995) was originally scheduled to appear on Blast First! later that year, a catastrophic mixing accident made about half the material unusable, or so it appeared... so it went on the shelf. Then some genius (Paul Smith, to be exact) managed to figure out how to remix "variation" in 1997 and suddenly the project was on again. After negotiations, talking, blah blah blah, it eventually migrated over to Wire's label WMO... and now it is available for all to hear.

Thing is, describing this disc is no easy task. For one thing, it sounds absolutely nothing like Band of Susans (save for the immense loudness of the guitars and the luv o' feedback) and even less like Wire (were Wire ever this "unstructured"?), outside of the vague notion of artiness. For another, there are only two tracks ("manc" and "variation") and they are both incredibly long (37:27 and 34:13 respectively) and extremely formless. Basically, what happens is they get up there and start generating drones and making stinky guitar noises -- wails of feedback, stuttering chop-chop sounds, chiming sounds, squeaks and squawks, gradually building from relatively low-key ambient noise to titanic walls of sound. If there are actual chord progressions happening anywhere in here, i'm certainly not aware of it (beyond a certain volume it's kind of hard to tell anyway, and this is definitely way, way beyond that threshold). By the time "manc" nears its end, the sound is roughly akin to lying down on the tracks while a freight train rolls over you. Talk about oceanic, i'm surprised the club was still standing when they finished....

The second track, "variation," is pretty much what its name implies -- a variation on the same essential concept. It starts out quieter, with drones and bass rumbling that gradually grow in both volume and intensity, although it takes much longer to reach peak volume; on this one they take their time about reaching an ear-splitting din. The bass rumble on this is absolutely immense; i can see why they had trouble mixing it initially, especially since by the end it nearly drowns out everything else. Ah, there's nothing like the combination of experimental guitar histronics and sheer obnoxious volume to crush your soul into wet paste....

Gin Palace's follow-up to last years KILL-GRIEF e.p. is absolutely fucking blistering. On KICKING ON the 'Palace expand and elaborate on the DAMAGED meets BAD MUSIC FOR BAD PEOPLE sound they spit forth on Kill-Grief. The speaker-shredding guitars, pounding drums, and the intense, venomous vocals have been augmented with touches of organ, harmonica and acoustic guitar (!). The songs are a little longer and the band seems a bit more comfortable, even slowing things down a bit on the bluesy come-ons "I Like It" and "Dying Breed." Fans of Penthouse (guitarist Jon Free's previous band) [TMU: Americans will recognize the band as Fifty Tons of Black Terror, thanks to Bob Guccione's hubris.] will be all over "Kicking On" and "Tapestry," which feature lurching, stumbling riffs that could have been lifted from MY IDLE HANDS. Easily one of my top five contenders for best rock record of 2004. [N/A]

They describe themselves as a "sexy synth band from another planet" -- I say they're Beme Seed by way of Sun Ra and Funkadelic, strained through a prism of Manhattan performance art. What we have here, it sounds like, are a bunch of zoned-out freaks from art school blowin' their horns and making a beautiful noise, probably while wearing lurid, skimpy latex outfits. Or chicken suits, even. Who knows? The band itself remains mysterious, leaving behind only cryptic and ass-rattling songs full of honking and squonking and all manner of chanting hypno-voodoo. Nearly all of the cd is taken up by the 35-minute "Gods" (apparently, like the rest of the cd, recorded live), a rambling but generally intriguing sprawl of free jazz, religious ecstasy, and entertainingly devolved ideas about sound, rhythm, tempo, and "togetherness." The remaining three tracks play out in just sixteen minutes and are essentially shorter variations on the same otherworldly theme. "Lahasa" starts out with just one lone guy blowing his horn, but since there are 23 players in this ensemble, by the time it really gets rolling it's pretty busy. But not too busy -- they have a good thing going on this eight-minute track, with rhythms drifting in and out and a dizzying number of melodic elements to keep track of. "Full Moon" is more of a creeper, inching along and propelled by a bed of clanking percussion and horns more like low moaning than shrieking (although there are some people shrieking through this), and the short but wildly furious "Halloween" is a brazen display of cacaphony that will bring a tear to your eye (or have you hiding under the refrigerator, especially when they start pounding on the drums that sound like hideous steel sinks). I wonder what this band would sound like in a studio as opposed to being recorded live.... Why this band isn't on Public Eyesore already is beyond me, but they should be. The spirit of Ra says you would be foolish not to at least give them a listen.

Gist -- YOUTH'S AVAIL [self-released CD]

This CD-ep is tailor-made for the DEAD ANGEL Hellfortress Beneath the Ice in the sense that it's really difficult to pigeonhole. They combine elements of new wave, "alternative nation" stylings, and hard rock in a really quirky manner that makes it hard to discern their influences, much less figure out what the hell to call them. Nayan Bhula's alternately scratchy/propulsive guitar work sounds like a bizarre approximation of Pat Place, Peter Buck, and Suzi Gardner all fighting over the same instrument. It's a good thing the rhythm section is a lot less crazed and somewhat more straightforward, or else he'd be flailing away in the ionosphere without a tether... but fortunately bassist Jennifer Moentmann and drummer Fred Burton manage to rein him back in. (Well, most of the time, anyway.)

Instrumentally, the two most interesting things about the band (outside of Bhula's elliptical, chicken-scratching style of guitar frenzy) are that he actually knows how to do something interesting with a wah pedal (a lot trickier than it looks), and that self-professed L7 obsessive Moentmann actually sounds a lot more like... uh, Peter Hook. (You know, Joy Division, New Order, blah blah blah.) Maybe this is what Joy Division would have sounded like if they'd grown up trying to emulate Lynyrd Skynyrd and Black Sabbath. (Or maybe i'm reaching. But i'd never do that, would i?) The tub- thumping guy is sensible enough to just rock steady (can you imagine if they were all quirky in three different directions? Summons up visions of Rush at their most excessive... eek!), much as Ron Spitzer always did in Band of Susans, and this is a good thing. (He does pull off some cool tom rolls in "Frustrated Anger," though.)

High points: The seesaw motion of "Youth's Avail," going back and forth from complex low-key chicken-scratching wiggly guitar to flat-out bruiser rock, then finally culminating in some spiffy wah abuse; the dirge-like intro of "New Light" (whose chiming bass/guitar riffs vaguely recall Helium); "Frustrated Anger," where they start in an ominous slo-mo crawl and gradually pick up the pace (both in speed and intensity) as the fizzy guitar comes in, the layers pile up, and they go through more shades o' blue than a mood ring before a chittering bass interlude prefaces a complete change of direction; and "Screams of Life," which has plenty of weird guitar noises and abrupt stop 'n start riffing to keep you guessing where it's all headed next. Really, the whole disc is swell (even the odd untitled extra track that sounds almost like a lost Sonny Sharrock outtake; maybe they're Last Exit fans too, who knows?). About the only two downsides (both minor) are the somewhat squashed production (but at least at's CLEAR, which is better than most low-budget endeavors) and the fact that a lot of the songs rely on the light/heavy song structure a bit too often. But there is definitely plenty of promise for the future here... and besides, they don't sound like anybody else that i can think of, always a good think in my book.

They get bonus points for the front cover, which includes a picture of not just an angel, but... yes... a HEADLESS angel. Might this have been a secret communique to the Headless Sno-Cone Girl? We'll never tell... some things must remain forever mysterious....

These gentlemen from Jacksonville, Florida have a strange gig happening here: they combine elements of punk, straight-up rock, and jazz into something that sounds like... uh.... jazz as interpreted by Neil Young and Crazy Horse? The Sex Pistols channeling the spirit of Sun Ra and John Coltrane? Um, something like that. They rock, often in a distinctly southern way (i don't care what their jazz credentials are,i have a feeling the guitarist didn't learn how to play solos like the one on "Year of the Cock" from listening to jazz records), but they often sound like three completely different disciplines working at once. The rhythms may be jazzy, but the guitars are punkish... or the rhythms are rock, the guitars are punk, and the saxaphone jazzy... they mix it up quite a bit. This certainly results in a unique sound (although the press thingy references the Minutemen, and i guess i can see that in spots), but it's kind of hard for me to get a handle on sometimes. When they manage to swing into something i can get my head around, though, as on "Spouse Rider," they have my attention -- a monochromatic beat like something from the Fall meets a warbling organ as rock-steady bass rumble lumbers up to the bar and the man with the horn goes completely apeshit over a building rhythm section, and it all builds to a climax and just stops. One thing in their favor for sure: they don't waste time. The drums in "Silencer" are pure free jazz, hard to pin down, while the rest of the instruments practice a peculiar form of start 'n stop hocus-pocus as skittering guitar chitters away like a horde of bugs crawling up and down the fretboard. I'm not exactly sure where these guys are coming from, but they definitely have different ideas about music, mon. Intriguing stuff and a far sight more inventive/creative than your average jazz-rock (with emphasis on the latter) combo.

GOD -- APPEAL TO HUMAN GREED [Big Cat]

This is the long-awaited remix album of cuts off GOD's previous album. It features remixes by Lumberjacks, Bill Laswell, Justin Broadrick, Kevin Sheilds, and Kevin Martin. Without going into a blow-by-blow description, nearly all of the tracks as remixed are fairly stripped down from their previous guitar furor and then replaced with heavily laiden strains of the tripped out, hemp-influenced, bass-dub thing that is all the craze these days. While none of the tracks individually stand out as superior or more inventive interpretations of their originals, they are fun to listen to and as a whole, make up an enjoyable ride. Suitable for all borb system travellers, 'natch. [yol]

Godflesh -- MERCILESS [Earache]

Godflesh return after an extended absence with thirty or so minutes of pure, grinding pain. And painful it is-- four bruising tracks of nihilism and dread that come across like a requiem for a serial killer. Listening to this makes me want to wander the streets late at night and drive an icepick through someone's lungs. Whether that's good or not depends entirely on your perspective, I suppose....

Now that Godflesh is more or less signed to a major (Sony in the US), they can finally afford real equipment (it's amazing to realize that their previous long-player, PURE, was recorded on a home-studio eight-track unit), and the difference is noticeable right from the first track "Merciless." The high end is sharper and more defined than on previous albums, and while the thunderous bass plumbs even murkier depths than before, for the first time it doesn't swallow everything else in the process.

"Blind" and "Unworthy" are essentially remixes of the same track, a grinding death-funk exercise in immolation reminiscent of SLAVESTATE's excursions into death-disco. Of course, your average dance track doesn't feature guitars that sound like they're being brutally sodomized or Justin's peerless death-croak, but given the state of the house scene, that's probably an improvement anyway. "Unworthy" is the heavier of the two, with harsh peals of noise and an overall sound like the band is being sucked down a garbage disposal.

The strangest offering is "Flowers," a "demixed" version of "Don't Bring Me Flowers" from PURE in which everything is sampled-- the song is nothing but repetitive loops of guitar sounds taken from the original song, building in intensity until a steady bass pulse hammers away at your head while droning waves of feedback threaten to set your cranial soup on fire. Is this the direction in which the forthcoming album will go? Beats me, but it sure is obnoxious (which is the point).

Godflesh -- SELFLESS [Earache/Columbia]

My, but this is gloriously obnoxious. And very static; not only is the album generally reaaaaalllllllll sssssllllllllooooooowwww, even more so than OTHER Godflesh albums, but most of the five to eight minutes songs are built around a maximum of two (maybe three) riffs. Now, this is either incredibly hypnotic and spartan, and thus the word of total radiating genius (my opinion) or merely repetitive and unimaginative, plus real irritating (everybody else I've talked to who's heard it). It DOES sound much, much better than previous albums, thanks to all that $$$ from Columbia, so for the first time we can actually hear what the hell Benny's doing in the background at last, and the usual subterranean crunch actually has some definition this time around. Of course, if it only makes you want to open the CD player and sail the shiny little disc out the window, that's kind of a moot point, eh? But whatever....

Godflesh has had this tendency to keep shaving away at its sound for the past few albums, apparently in an attempt to distill everything down to its simplest form possible; this album is no exception, and I'm not sure you can GET any more basic than this. As already mentioned, the main formula here is to throw in two (maybe three if Justin's feeling merciful) riffs per song, played over and over reeeeeeeal slow for anywhere from five to ten minutes until you are totally numbed with fear and loathing or have started searching for the receipt so you can return the damn thing. Sort of like the musical equivalent of watching a slow-motion train wreck with lots of weak flesh being crushed beneath the diesel engine's mighty wheels, in other words. No kidding, this is so slow that if they got any slower, they'd be standing still. Black Sabbath at half-speed? More like Black Sabbath at one note per minute. Hell, it's even slower than the Earth CD reviewed a few albums back! Yow!

While this isn't the slowest thing ever recorded (I think Type O Negative already copped that honor with the twenty-bpm "Bloody Kisses"), it might be the heaviest and most dismal. This is music for beating loved ones to death with an axe handle while they sleep. Some of the songs like "Crush My Soul" and "Body Dome Light" could actually qualify as dance music, I guess, if you extend the idea of dance music to include radically detuned guitars being used as blunt instruments, and you could sort of mosh to the rest, if you were underwater. And for the total masochist, the CD includes --lucky you! -- a paralyzing 23-minute hatefest called "Go Spread Your Wings," in which Justin screams "I'll never escape" about a million times while backed by what sounds like the Emerson, Lake and Palmer of Earth-X, where everything is death metal, even the Muzak. This is godlike in its annoyance potential. Makes me wonder what new standard in obnoxiousness they'll set with the NEXT album. Or how long they'll be hooked up with Columbia, for that matter.

Godflesh -- SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE [Earache]

Some reviews i've read of this are claiming this is the best thing they've done since STREETCLEANER. Not sure i agree with that, but it's certainly the most CONSISTENT. It's also the most single-minded; judging from the lyric sheet (!), it appears that the entire album is about how much Justin hates religion. Hmmmm. They (Justin, Benny, and sometimes-live drummer B. Mantia (!!)) kick off the jolliness with the imposing death-grind of "Wake" and never really get any happier, heh. Some of the tracks, like "Sterile Prophet" and "Circle of Shit," lean heavily on the hip-hop tinky drum thing, which is mildly annoying -- i like my drums monolithic, dammit, i do not approve of tinky drums. I DO approve of Justin screaming in severely bilous fashion, something he hasn't really done for a while now. Ees kewl, seenyor. It all starts getting pretty primal, though, with "Hunter," where a messed-up beat combine with a surging hate guitar groove to basically rock like a pee-dog.

What's interesting is that some of the weird, quasi-ambient stuff they've been pursuing in Final has crept into Godflesh now. Check out the shrill ambient wash that builds to a roar at the beginning of "Gift From Heaven," for instance, or the SOLARIS-like ringing tones in "Amoral." Then there's plenty of bass heaviness in "Angel Domain," along with some serious monolithic riffing... hmmm, maybe this IS the best thing they've done since STREETCLEANER after all. The best track is "Kingdom Come," with churning, slablike bass riffing and scary ringing overtone guitar that sounds like a soundtrack to rioting in the streets, yeep! Heavier than cows falling from a UFO tractor beam gone haywire -- step too close and you'll get beat down, just the way they like it....

The remaining tracks are plenty heavy in their own right, although nowhere near as groove-laden. It's certainly reassuring to know their brief major-label excursion didn't suck anything out of them.... Bonus points, btw, for the tremendously hep inner photo (courtesy of controversial artist Andres Serrano) of Broadrick being drenched in blood. This is offset, however, by the considerably less-swank photo on the cover (which is real, incidentally -- shot on location from the hillside in one of New Orleans' finer stinkpits). I liked it better when their covers were blurry and surreal. But then, they didn't ask for my opinion, did they?

Godflesh -- LOVE AND HATE IN DUB [Earache]

You knew it was going to happen. As often as Justin Broadrick's been wallowing in deep vats o' dub on the projects run by other people (Ice, Scorn, Techno-Animal, etc.), it was only a matter of time before he smoked enough dope to think it would be a good idea to run Godflesh tracks through the Patented Peabody Wayback Dub-O-Matic Machine. Fortunately, this is a better idea than it might sound like to some, especially given Godflesh's eternally massive bottom end. In a bizarre way, though, this actually sounds more like a Scorn album (early to mid-period, that is) than a Godflesh album, which is kind of strange....

So anyway, how much you will like (or need) this disc depends pretty equally on three factors: a) obsession for discography completeness, b) your tolerance for remixes, and c) your dub fascination quotient. I'll say this -- the original LOVE AND HATE disc is one of the best Godflesh has done in years, and the selection of tracks here (remixes of basically everything but "amoral" and "hunter") makes this essentially a radically altered "alternative version" of the album, one that's every bit as good as the original but aimed at a slightly different audience. And the remixes are indeed very different -- many fly in extra sounds and subtract others, completely different vocals are employed, and in some cases the remix sounds absolutely nothing like the original. As for the dub quotient -- yah, the EQ has definitely been diddled (the bass is practically hiding underground causing seismic tremors and the drums have that hollow sound so intrinsic to Scorn releases). In fact, since i've mentioned Scorn twice now, let me say that the "closer mix" of "almost heaven" sounds remarkably like an outtake from Scorn's EVANESCENCE.

The remixes of "almost heaven" and "gift from heaven" alone demonstrate how enthusiastically Broadrick embraces radically opposed remixes. The "breakbeat" mix of "gift from heaven" sounds like dub gang warfare gone tragically awry; you can just imagine the Jeep lurching up and down the highway while this one pulverizes the stereo speakers into itty bitty crumbs. By contrast, the "heavenly" remix of the same song is a droning, subterranean bass wave with all the vox and beats removed so that it actually more resembles a Final track. You'd never guess that they originally started out being the same thing at all. Ditto, in a sense, with the "closer mix" and "helldub" versions of "almost heaven" -- while you can recognize that they were lifted from the same source, the latter version is so thoroughly soaked in a vat of hellish EQ and added skronklike noises that it might well be an irradiated version from another planet. (For the record, i think the "closer" version is the better one.)

Most of the other remixes for tracks like "frail," "sterile prophet" (one alternate version and a hellish dub treatment), and "time, death and wastefulness" are simply alternatives to the originals and not necessarily better or worse... but two tracks show how powerful the remix toolbox can be in Justin's resin-stained hands. The original version of "kingdom come" was a swank groovefest whose guitars were more dominant than anything else; here Broadrick has reversed the pattern, throwing the guitars way into the background, bringing up the vox (nearly inaudible in the original), and jacking the drums WAY up into the mix, then dragging in a violent dub bass of epic proportions. The result is pretty damn amazing. But the real stroke of genius is on "domain," this disc's reworking of "angel domain," which is merely okay on the original disc but tremendously godlike here, mostly thanks to a snarling fuzzed-out bass and the excellent decision for Broadrick to intone the vox in a sinister monotone rather than shouting as usual. It sounds like a serial killer sharing his inner thoughts from amid a swirling maelstrom of churning fuzzhell. Broadrick should go this route with the vox more often.

Needless to say, i think it's a pretty essential thing to have around the house....

Godflesh lumbers toward the millenium (and yes, i know that technically the millenium happens at 2001, hush up and let me finish here, howzaboutit?) with an album that, intentionally or not, encapsulates all of the various sounds and tangets Justin Broadrick has been waffling away at for the past ten years... and sounds like a morbid party-down album to boot. Sort of. What J. and Benny have done here is to take the best elements of early Godflesh (eerie, ambient Lovecraftian guitar dissonance), later Godflesh (sledgehammer riffs, Black Sabbath fixation, droned-out vox), Final (strange ambient sounds), and Techno-Animal (hoppin' beats), and mixed it all down into an ass-shaking (and ass-quaking) groove o' doom. This is not only Godflesh's most danceable album, it's also their most varied... and possibly as a result, their most consistent. I like to think of it as SLAVESTATE updated for the nineties, or perhaps the first EP filtered through the refracting prism of Final and Techno-Animal.

The guitar sound is largely reminiscent of the first EP and STREETCLEANER; this is made even more evident by the return of the Alesis drum machine, missing in action for the past couple of albums, which makes an appearance on a few tracks (particularly the awesomely oppressive title track, which opens with pipe-tone tom-toms climbing up into the upper registers as the detuned guitars fade in, and includes a middle section that is simply the most hypnotic and heavy thing they've done in ages). The fact that they've downtuned to B for the first time since probably the PURE album or earlier makes that guitar sound a familiar blast o' crunch too. But this time out, the beats are front and center; many of the songs, such as "Endgames," feature the guitars pushed into the background while the emphasis is placed on trip-hop drum beats. In some others like "Witchhunt," the guitars and drums are essentially one indistinguishable minimalist riff locked into a a fat groove that shakes from side like an ill-tempered rhino. One of the most interesting things about the new album -- and i haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else, either -- is that a lot of the songs have actual introductions, where they briefly do some weird beat/riff/noise doodling, often while fading in the main guitars, before launching into the song proper. Another interesting move is Justin's choice of vocal styles; for the first time, he's all over the map. Whether he's roaring through an overcompressed shout on "I, Me, Mine" or muttering darkly ("Whose Truth Is Your Truth") or droning with waves o' reverb (many of them), he manages to achieve a pretty serious variety of sounds. Part of this sudden interest in variety, etc. can probably be attributed to the length of time they took to make the record -- nearly two years, off and on -- and the results are deserving of praise; there's not a bad song on here (although "Defiled" does seem to aggravate some listeners; doesn't bother me, however).

"Bittersweet" is probably the most "classic" sounding piece here -- in fact, it sounds very much like an outtake from either the first EP or STREETCLEANER -- with huge, morose Sabbath-style walls o' riffage and the trusty Alesis dug up from the grave to provide the ominous beat, while Justin drones and wails about being invisible and weak (not that you'll ever know it without looking at the lyrics -- did i mention that they printed the lyrics?).For those who miss the primal bludgeoning power they whipped up on thunderous tracks like "Spite" in the past, they have helpfully provided "Nail," which sounds more like they're playing mason blocks instead of guitars. Those entranced by the snakelike feedback wailing of those early albums will be happy to groove to "Descent," which is (in a demented sort of way) sort of the Godflesh adaptation of the Nirvana principle: quirky intro plus quiet verses plus brain-frying heaviness on the choruses equals nifty shit. They throw in more surprises with the out-of-control breakbeats in "Control Freak," moving at the fastest clip they've achieved literally since the songs "Streetcleaner" and "Tiny Tears." It's bizarre (but good) to hear Godflesh propelled by velocity.... The last two songs, "The Internal" and "Live to Lose" (originally recorded during the SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE sessions and released now for the first time) owe much of their sound to the futzing about Broadrick has done in Final and Skinner's Black Laboratories -- under the uberfuzz are some distinctly creamy harmonic tones, and in the latter one (which reminds me, oddly enough, of a slowed-down and detuned Band of Susans) there are even flourishes of what might be an acoustic guitar.

The bottom line is that this -- possibly their final album for Earache, if you believe the rumors -- is not only the heaviest and most consistent album they've made since STREETCLEANER, it may actually be even better than those first two landmark slabs o' otherworldly hate. (It helps that they've eased up a tad on the obsessive crankiness in favor of introducing marginally less opporessive moments.) It certainly has my attention. Now if we could just get Justin to stop diffusing all his energy in the million other side projects and concentrate all of it in this one, we might get albums of this quality out of them a wee bit more often....

First thing to keep in mind: This is not even remotely an essential item in the Godflesh canon. It's interesting, but if you were starting from stratch to accumulate their catalog, this would be way down on the list of ones to acquire. Second thing to keep in mind: It's only available as a CD-R for $17 plus shipping directly from Godflesh themselves, via their web site for Avalanche Recordings. At that price, especially for something you won't find in stores, only the dedicated will be picking this up. As for the recording itself, it is essentially an expanded version of a "lost" ep that the band intended to put out around the SELFLESS era, an idea that was scuttled by Earache's disinterest. The original four tracks are now matched by dub versions as well, maxing the EP out to eight tracks. The sound? Think of it as the missing link between MERCILESS and SELFLESS. It combines the obsessive biomechanical "rhythm for robots" feel of the MERCILESS ep with the song structures and general feel of SELFLESS, with the exception of "sungod," which sounds like it should have been on MERCILESS to begin with. How much interest you potentially have in this depends on your tolerance for Godflesh's techno and dub leanings. "Messiah" ..., but "Wilderness of Mirrors" grafts the patented low-end assquake onto hip-hop beats and irradiated guitars; to pique the interest factor, they warp the beat periodically and mutilate the vocal sound in interesting ways. The hands-down winner of the set, though, is "Sungod" -- an endless drum 'n bass loop with little variation takes on mutant guitars that sounds like the product of a fiendishly twisted loop generator. Similar in mechanics to "Blind," it sounds like an army of replicants spitting out tweaked technoish guitar riffs in overlapping patterns, like a hypnotic auditory hallucination. The dubbed-down version is even more surreal, with overlapping samples as well in addition to the mandatory dub treatment. None of this is as mind-shatteringly brilliant or revolutionary as their early stuff, but it's certainly not bad by any means. If you're not heavily into the dub component of Godflesh's beat-heavy existence, then you might find the dub tracks irritating. Otherwise, it's certainly deserving of a wider audience than what it'll find on CD-R, i suspect.

Any way you slice it, this has inadvertently become a transitional album in the ways of all things 'fleshlike. Not only is it the first full album with a live drummer (Mantia only appeared on half of SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE, remember), and simultaneously the studio debut of Ted Parsons (former human metronome for Swans, Of Cabbages and Kings, and Prong), who's been playing with them since the SOLAH tour, but now it turns out to be Benny's last album with them as well. (He's leaving to go back to school, apparently, and is being replaced by Raven -- logically, the next step will be for Justin to be replaced by Tommy Victor and become Prong Mach II. Stranger things have happened....) Frankly, I can't even imagine what Godflesh would sound like without Benny, so it will be interesting to see where they go from here. At least Benny gets to bow out with the strongest album they've done in years -- this sounds like the album they could have made somewhere between the debut ep and STREETCLEANER, but with occasional nods to many other projects they've all been involved in over the years since then. Having Mr. Parsons step up to the drum stool turns out to have been an extremely shrewd move -- he's capable of playing with metronome-like precision, but his style is very different from the band's previous drummers, man or machine, and that in turn has driven the band in a new direction -- not only does Ted provide beats that are totally unexpected yet totally Godflesh, but his entire approach forms the backbone for a more stripped-down, structurally looser sound than ever before. Freed from the tyranny of counting measures to stay in sync with the machine, in many places on the new album they sound like something akin to a more trance-oriented Zeni Geva, assuming that Null initially worshipped at the altar of Black Sabbath and Swans rather than Pink Floyd and Swans. (It also seems that Justin's a lot more tritone-happy on this album, although that may be my imagination.)

Elements from all of their previous albums (and a few side bands) are here -- the bone-crushing heaviness of the opening track "Defeated" could have come from the MERCILESS sessions, several songs expand on the crushing Sabbath-worship of "Bittersweet" from US & THEM, "Antihuman" sounds like a rogue Ice track, and "Animal" could be an outtake from STREETCLEANER, while other songs echo elements of the mantra moves on SELFLESS, cascading feedback and grinding bass of the early releases, even the techno stylings of from SLAVESTATE in a couple of places. ("Vampires" does sound an awful lot like a song from the last Prong album, which is kind of interesting.) The difference is that everything is subservient to the mammoth, often heavily torqued guitar and bass, and brute force rules over every other consideration for the most part. This may be the most consistently heavy and unrelenting thing they've ever done. At the same time, there's no filler on this release -- and some of the songs (in particular "Anthem," "White flag," "For life," and "Jesu") are among the best they've ever done. This is a focused mess o' tracks, all right....

I think it's interesting that they're now on Music For Nations, because this new refinement of their sound may earn them an entirely new audience as this album makes its way into the hands of the stoners. People hep to the likes of Electric Wizard and Goatsnake who previously would have been put off by the frequent experimental forays into loops and sonic ugliness (or the drum machine) should find this collection of riff-heavy uberfuzz death dirges more to their liking. For that matter, this is the closest they've ever come to making a "traditional" death metal album -- it may have that stoner hypnogroove, but it's executed with machine-like precision.

Incidentally, if you ever wondered what a Low or Codeine song would sound like in these hands, check out the untitled ending track (approx. a minute or two after "Jesu") -- the first heavy section, in fact, sounds very much like a Codeine riff. My favorite track on the album hands down, one of my favorite Godflesh tracks ever, in fact.

Godhead -- POWER TOOL STIGMATA [Sol 3 Records]

Godhead hail from Washington, D.C., but have absolutely nothing to do with hardcore (well, one of the album's engineers once did engineering for a Jawbox record, but that's pretty tenuous, dontcha think?). Rather, they're solidly in the electro-body rock vein, with vague stylistic nods to NIN and Front 242, among others. Unlike a lot of the industrial dance groovers, they have a good understanding of how to integrate melodic passages into the heavier moments, and they manage to avoid most of the more irritating cliches of the genre (dumbass samples, puny and derivative sounds, unimaginative songwriting, vocalists who sound too much like Reznor or Jourgensen or Ogre), which puts them miles ahead of much of the competition right out of the box.

First off, they get immense bonus points for the good taste (and balls) to cover "Eleanor Rigby," which they do in respectable (and listenable) fashion. It doesn't top the original, of course (how could ANYTHING top the original?), but it's no embarassment, either. My guess for the dance-floor single would be "Fucked Up," whose insistent drum pulse and building guitars eventually explode in turbocharged mayhem on the choruses -- the Nirvana effect in EBN, what a concept.... "Lies," with percolating synths and explosive slash-and-burn guitars matching the surging beat, would be a good one as well. The more interesting ones, though, are the ones that explore territory a bit more unusual for EBN, such as "Memorial," which opens with drones and bass straight out of Joy Division and a spiky piano that continues even as the song picks up the pace, or the weird gothic trip-hop of "Headache Symphony." Also high on the coolness meter is "Afterthoughts," which has an amazing drum sound -- sort of like machine lathes beating on steel sheets -- and a fairly imaginative song structure.

I'm not sure there's anything terribly revelatory happening here, but it's all well-done and won't insult your intelligence, and you can groove to it, mon. And wasn't that the point? Yah... time for you to shake that rubber skirt groove thang....

Gods Among Men are a three piece noise 'fest from Seattle. The three pieces are guitar, drums, and cello, with the people behind the pieces doing much yelling. Musically there is much thrashing going on, and I don't mean "thrashing" in the Slayer-"thrash" as genre sense. I mean, they literally seem to be thrashing their instruments. This is a good thing. Not enough bands play THIS hard.

Oh yeah -- "But, Neddal, this talk about thrashing instruments is all well and good, but I want to know who they sound like?I can't just buy a disc 'cause you say it sounds like they're breaking stuff can I?" Yes, you can and you should. But whatever, here goes -- use Neurosis as your starting point. Now add a touch of the Melvins, maybe a hint of Black Flag. I also hear some Stinking Lizaveta. Top it off with some Mr. Bungle-like skittering and you'd be close. The bottom line is that it rocks. (I've been told that the Gods Among Men are currently working on a full-length. So keep your eyes out.) [n/a]

This is the Gods Among Men full-length that I mentioned back in # 53. It's a big leap forward from their self-titled EP. That's not to say that the EP was weak by any means. There is still much thrashing of instruments and lots of yelling going on. The recording is much clearer if not cleaner. The songs still tend toward the spastic, but they have focused their energy into controlled bursts rather than chaotic blasts. With this focus comes a new sense of dynamics; the songs ebb and flow, with quieter and more sparse moments standing in contrast to the more hardcore-sounding freakouts. I should also mention that these guys are one hundred percent DIY, which is something to be admired. [n/a]

This EP is the followup to their brilliant first album. I think i like the first one better. Which is not to say that this is bad; it's just that the first album is so flawless that it's kind of hard to top. Nevertheless, the do their cinematic thing here, largely to good effect, opening with a tremendous drone on "Miccia" and building from there into orchestral swells accompanied by a massive, rumbling low end. The sound builds and builds, then finally dies away into something quieter before building up again. Approximately five minutes into the piece, they finally get around to having actual beats.... Then the pace picks up, building to a frenzy before backing off again. It all segues into "Benzina," with more ambient bass and the occasional tinkly guitar while some guy they taped on the street rants against the courts, the government, you name it. His rant is blackly funny and not a little bit profane, and it unfolds against the backdrop of their droning instrumentation. Somewhere in all of this it turns into "Sabbia and Sappone," with more of the ambient bass and spaghetti western moves. All in all it's not quite as riveting as the first disc (i said that already, didn't i?), but still worth hearing if you're hep to their peculiar brand of imaginary cinema sound....

Well, i was going to delve into all sorts of epic shit regarding this staggering two-disc opus, the latest ravings from these Canadian masters of the whole "soundtrack to an imaginary movie" thing, but (typically) i ran out of time and the whole project is just too immense for me to grok in such a short amount of time. This double-album is bigger than my head, goddamit! So i'm gonna put it off and maybe we'll get lucky and i'll remember it in the next issue, eh? In the meantime, here's the essentials you ought to know: this is their second proper full-length release, it's two whopping CDs, it's in a digipak with cool but cryptic art and incomprehensible track listings, and if you're already hep to them you'll want to have this. If you think they are vastly overrated (hi hellfarmer!), this won't change your mind. They get bonus points for the black helicopter on the back of the digipak....

In one word: moody. [n/a]

The GoGos -- RETURN TO THE VALLEY OF THE GOGOS [I.R.S. Records]

Yes, THAT GoGos. And this godlike thing here is a 2-CD retrospective crammed FULL of amusing shit -- the original hits, lots o' b-sides, a PILE of live/ unreleased stuff (much of it from their earliest days), and three new songs. The best part is that the disc is, with one or two exceptions, entirely in chronological order, which means you can hear the band go from being amusingly bad surfpunk (i can just imagine them pogoing and falling off the Mabuhay stage) to the pure pop machine they were for a couple of years before everything disintegrated... and then you get to hear the stuff since then, both live and studio, that indicates they could come out of retirement without any embarassment. The first six cuts, from 1979-1980, are interesting just to hear where they're coming from, even though they sound pretty hideous; starting with "He's So Strange," though, they start turning into a real live band with some possibilities, and everything after that just gets better and better. Besides, they get bonus points from me for doing the only good cover of Wanda Jackson's "Let's Have A Party" i've actually heard. What's really odd in listening to all of this is suddenly realizing how much SURF guitar there was in their sound. especially in the guitars.

The main reason to have this set (outside of having all the hits in one place) is the stuff recorded after TALK SHOW and the "breakup" -- all of it live except for the three new songs. The new ones ("Good Girl," "Beautiful," and "The Whole World Lost It's Head") are pretty happening too, chiming away like the ten-year gap between the last album and now didn't even exist. The other reason to have it is the accompanying CD booklet, which is HILARIOUS, and pretty much demolishes the GoGo's "cute li'l sweethearts" image and does a pretty good job of reminding people that they were originally a PUNK band, regardless of all those catchy surf guitars. All in all, most cool. Now if they'll really reunite and start putting out albums again, that would be just totally MONDO....

Golden Palominos -- DEAD INSIDE [Restless]

This is hands down the creepiest thing i've ever heard. Forget the bluster of the sadoporn noise junkies or the ranting of the lo-fi punk ranters, this is the real deal. To begin with, it doesn't even sound like you expect a Golden Palominos record to sound; the sound is largely ambient hoverbot droning only occasionally disrupted by anything as mundane as actual beats, and the vocalist, Nicole Blackman this time, doesn't sing but instead talks her way through the album. And what she has to say is pretty dire: the album opens with death and closes with more death and in between covers self-deception, madness, sociopathic behavior, disintegrating societies, and drowning (both real and metaphorical). Combined with irregular bursts of sinister sound-bite loops, the effect is of listening to an unusually articulate street lunatic calmly explain why it's all right that we're all going to die as she juggles hand grenades. The most disturbing of these songs are generally -- coincidentally or not -- the ones with the most ephemeral backing tracks, songs where the bass and guitars are warped into subterranean metallic drones and rippling wave generators, songs like "Victim" (whose lyrics, the last musings of a woman who's been kidnapped by a sociopath and is about to have her head evaporated by a shotgun, are exceptionally harrowing), "Drown," and my personal favorite, "Holy" (about a woman starving herself in order to become an angel).

Some of the songs are a (wee) bit closer to earlier incarnations of the Palominos sound, such as "Belfast" and "Ride," which are anchored by metronomic beats and driven by stuttering hocus-pocus basslines and cryptic guitar loops but still actually have something like an actual structure. "The Ambitious Are" cleaves down the middle of the two approaches, with a slow looped beat and twitching, droning basslines that contrast with the electronic noises and sound bites. The rest of the album wanders somewhere between the two extremes of dark ambient guitar and beat-heavy rhythms. The lyrics are so dark and frequently so bleak that making it through the entire album in one sitting is pretty tough sledding, but that doesn't change the fact that the album overall is utterly brilliant....

Guitarist / singer J. Goodin is a one-man band whose playing style encompasses so many genres and textures, many deliberately jarring, that it's hard to get a handle on him. This is a good thing. Most of the time he embraces this thunderous guitar thunder that pleases me mightily, but he also dabbles in music concrete, strange experiments in EQ, and quizzical moments of pure weirdness. Heavy and crunch-laden on one song then full-blown country on the next, with bursts of pop and other styles like clockwork, there's a wide variety of sounds happening here. I particularly like the heavier ones like "drama queen" and "jump ophelia" that are nothing more than pure full-blown metal, dude, but even the more restrained, countryish tunes often provide plenty of apocalyptic heaviness, such as on "prelude -- morning ate my moon" or the creeping "grin like a dog," both of which are plenty sinister without wearing the distortion pedal (that pedal gets its own frantic workout on "scruffnut"). The gorgeous closing track "mr. snowflake" makes it clear that he can play it straight, without needing efx or weird moves to get the point across. An interesting (if occasionally perplexing) and varied collection of strong material from someone who's just aware of what makes mainstream music popular and just bored enough by it to make something listenable yet different.

The Goslings are a duo from outside of space and time (this may explain why there's no contact info on the cd sleeve) in possession of gongs, birds, organs, noises, cryptic field recordings, mutant droning synths, eerie sighing ghosts, perverted guitars, transmissions from Saturn, and other... other sounds. Yes. Many, many sounds. On "In May," they spend thirteen minutes spilling out these various and sundry sounds over endless drones. The result is somewhere between early, early, way early Skullflower and Endless Smile's eternally obscure first album. Lots of drone, lots of soothing harmonic hiss, lots of strategically-placed noises of a varied and textured nature... plus the first half sounds sort of like the members of Last Exit hammered on Jagermeister and trying to all sync up while the room spins in the slow ovals. (The second half is less slow ovals and more noise over pulse 'n drone.) The ringing, swelling drones at the end are a nice touch. "Statuette" is pure organ-fueled drone and honey voice and waves of harmonic distortion. The slow tempo and minimalist attitude allow the drones to overlap and fade without interference, creating shimmering pools of sound. "Lillian" is defined by repetitive loops of ringing tones and a steadily-increasing power drone that turn into the distorted sound of drone being twisted into unnatural shapes. On "Summer For Spring" they demonstrate the knowledge that every good drone goes well with bell-chimes (among other things). I have no idea where the band is from, or who the mysterious Max and Leslie might be, but if you're hep to the thrilling sounds of bands like Sunroof!, Flying Saucer Attack, Charalimbides, or early Skullflower, you should badly, badly, badly want to hear this disc.

This Australian band makes me think of a scaled-down version of Tone. Totally instrumental and, as the title implies, aligned with the soundtrack school of sound, this might qualify as space-rock if they weren't so bent on avoiding the effects-laden cliches of that genre. Their sound, in fact, is remarkably clean and bright, with their only real nods to efx being in the use of spring-reverb on songs like "Polo Neck Pioneers." One of the guitarists is somewhat enamored of blues tones and the keyboard player is fond of symphonic washes of sound, but the rhythm section is a powerhouse that keeps everything anchored. What I like is incongruous yet highly listenable pieces like "The New Brutalists," which manages to incorporate rock riffs, raga-style drone, blues, and jazz all into one mutant package, like a jazz fusion band scoring spaghetti westerns. The Tone comparison really makes sense on "Flanagan Transfers," where rock riffs turn into choppy guitars and spiraling keyboards building over a simple but insistent beat, the song laid out in mini-movements that build in intensity as the song progresses. "Conceptual Enjoyment," with its ringing, flanged guitar chords and keyboard drones over a slow beat and pulsing bass, is closer to the soundtrack sound, while "Rust Sometimes Dozes Off" actually opens with sounds of life that are gradually drowned out by bluesy slide guitar rifflets; you can almost imagine the imaginary film coming to an end with the credits crawling up the screen as the song gradually fades out. Too bad this is only currently available in Australia, for this is a really excellent album and would surely have great appeal for Tone fans who have to wait too long between albums (not to mention GYBE! listeners who prefer their cinematic musical visions a tad more rooted in actual music as opposed to found sound and weird experiments)....

N/A (aggrieved): See? See? They get to digress! Do I get to digress? They get to be smartasses! Do I get to be a smartass? Fuck no! Why? WHY! Because I am being HELD HOSTAGE by an overgrown Rubber Girl Scout with a gun!

TG: It's a good thing you weren't in my platoon, I would have butt-fucked you on a daily basis just for grins....

N/A: Don't threaten me, you disgusting she-male pervert.

TG (outraged): Just for that, on this one you only get two sentences. COMPOSE THEM NOW OR REST IN ASHES! (the barrel of her gun looms large in Neddal's pantheon)

N/A: Soundgarden / Kyuss-inspired doom-rock from Sweden. Their sound may be generic, but the songwriting is quite strong and this disc will grow on you if you give it a chance. [n/a]

The Grassy Knoll -- S/T [Nettwerk]

Despite the press thingy's mention of "haunting ethereal darkness," I didn't find this terribly ominous; for that you'd want the nada disc.... Which is not to say there's anything wrong with what's actually there, which is a percolating mix of samples, semi-jazzy instrumentation, and big, rumbling bass attached to a generally danceable beat. This is a versatile one; funky enough for the club and intriguing enough to stand up to close listening, but low-key enough to work as background music as well (with the volume down, anyway). "Unbelievable Truth" starts with looped wind samples before getting funky; "Altering the Gates of the Mind" begins with a thick backwards-riff like the sound of a record being run counterclockwise and then settles into... another funky groove. There's a lot of electronic funk on this album, actually. And as with most sample-driven albums, it lends itself well to the "guess-where- that-sample-came-from" game. My one complaint is that --partly since there are no vocals -- the songs all kind of run together, and more to the point, it's sometimes hard to tell them apart. Most of them appear to be constructed from the same basic formula: start with weird sampled noises and then get funky. Hmmm.... perhaps on the next one they'll get a bit more varied with their liberal use of sampling.

Graveland have been making great albums for years now and this is one of the best yet. The production has improved and the songs are more developed. Epic tales from the past, keeping alive the true spirit of pagan "black metal." Droning guitar work, mideval drums, haunting vocals. Supreme artwork and limited vinyl pressing. No Colours does it again. [ttbmd]

Gravitar -- CHINGA SU CORAZON [Charnel Music]

Like molten lead running through a sewer... or maybe thick sheets of metal being fed through a paper shredder... my, this is NOISY. Three guys, no bass player (plenty, plenty low end regardless), MUCH ear pain. It's amzing what three men with a total disregard for "proper" use of their instrments can do for their own sick amusement, isn't it? For fans of really LOUD, horribly distorted walls of noise, this should be the tiny round equivalent of nirvana.

"Alpha-115" starts out quietly enough, with semi-ambient guitar tinkles over a vague background drone, but just about the time you start to feel soothed, ugly scraping riffs start jumping up like irradiated cockroaches and before you know it, the walls are caving in. This continues for quite some time, to glorious effect, with the drummer thumping away and the singer buried in the drainspout as totally fried guitars threaten to strip the cilia from your ears and permanently rewire your central nervous system. You could cut telephone poles down with this.

The rest of the CD pretty much aligns itself in the pain emission format. "Evil Monkey Boy" is highlighted by lots of insane gibbering from the, uh, voalist, while "El Melveno" sports some truly deathlike vocals amid guitars that sound like pigs being butchered one moment and like they've been tuned down about a thousand steps the next. For wild, hyperspeed guitar wailing, check out "Bludgeon," which lives up to its title. Then "Moist" shuts it all down in a most peculiar, rambling, and bizarre fashion, leaving you dazed and soiled. NOT for the weak!

Total impression? Let's put it this way: Mason Jones once claimed Gravitar sounds "like an entire city undergoing demolition"; all I can say is that Mason's a damn perceptive guy....

Gravitar -- A BRIEF HISTORY [MGOGM]

Once upon a time, in the faraway land of Okemos, where people bowl a lot (or so i'm told), the gentle people of this sleepy town woke up one morning to the terror of a giant dragon eating its welfare mothers and crushing its elementary schools and librarires. Some swore the dragon's name was Newt Gingrich; others claimed it was the foul materialized spirit of the great demon Republicanism; others said somebody must have dropped some SERIOUS acid in the drinking water. At any rate, it was pretty bad news and after a while all the dead welfare mothers began to really stink, so the enraged people of Okemos drafted a young group of seedy reprobrates with guitars to hopefully vanquish the beast by destroying it with great gales of brutal sound (sort of like GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA, only... only BETTER). And thus, in the throes of terror and amidst the ashes of burning chaos, was born... the mighty GRAVITAR.

Well, i don't know what happened after that, but i DO know that this tape is a nifty compilation of pre-Gravitar material, early Gravitar material, demos, stuff that got left off the two studio albums at the last minute, and fragments of chaotic live communication breakdown. In other words, a lot of unspeakably cool shit. This tape does nothing to dispel the common rumor that Gravitar drink cobalt like it was coffee (leavened with a bit o' the powdered mushroom for that "spacy" inner-earth train of thought) and excrete it it vast towers of grinding sonic sludge designed to render your thoughts into wall paste.

We start at the beginning, with a couple of pre-Gravitar tracks: On "Lucid Sky Dreamer," there are seconds where they almost sound like a NORMAL band... of course, then they start piling on titanic out-of-sync guitars and howling a lot, and then they sound RIGHT. And on "Falling Pieces of the Mothership," with engineer John D'Agostini guesting on bass, they manage to splice in a brief snippet of "Foxy Lady" into a landscape of wonked-out guitar sounds that do indeed resemble the sound made by pieces of Skylab hurtling toward your head.

The early Gravitar goodies include "Buzzon," a sick exercise in low-end screeching and introducing Geoff Walker's disturbed vocalizations, along with choppy helicopter noises (oooo!), plus two versions of "Alpha 115" -- the first, a deranged and rambling early version, the second a "fast and smooth version" that's a better recording but not quite so impressively art-damaged (although Geoff DOES sound even more crazed than before).

The Middle Gravitar period consists of two tracks recorded during the CHINGA SU CORAZON sessions but never actually released -- the aptly-named "Bludgeon," in which they emulate a wounded rhino knocking down trees in its death throes, and "Rubber Tree," a short (and atypically quiet piece) that leads into the brooding "Blue Sabbath," a late-period piece from the sessions for the second CD. The first side of the tape (a 90-minute, one, btw) is topped off with a short duet between Geoff and Eric on bucket and clarinet (?!?!?).

The second side is mostly live -- lots of of long, stoned, twisted improv jamming that will either truly rattle your skull with amazement at the thick sheets o' sound and fury eating away at your speakers (you can guess, then, that i approve) or drive you completely batshit. Either way, it's not often you hear guitars sound quite like this, particularly on the ridiculously long version of "Wrong to Be Right" and "Vivian"; PLUS you get Gravitar doing "Buick McKane" and "Yellow Submarine" as well! Not that you'd really RECOGNIZE them, but then again, i think that was the point....

Gravitar -- EARLY GRAVITAR [MGOGM]

Got the same problem here as with the Bacillus tape (dammit, i KNEW i should have reviewed the cassettes first, before she got here). Therefore, the "hard facts" review is, uh, postponed until the next issue. But in brief, what we got here is a 90-minute (approximately) self-released cassette chock full o' prime meat -- early Gravitar demos, unreleased studio tracks, live demolition, tons o' spaced-out devolved sludge riffing, tortured wailing, crazed behavior, like a 90-minute avalanche for yer ears. If you grok the Gravitar Experience already then you must own this. I'll explain just WHY in more copious detail next time, i promise....

Gravitar -- GRAVITAATIVARRAVITAR [Charnel Music]

Like the unstoppable four-headed irradiated hydra from some really bad science fiction movie best viewed after smoking many lids o' dope, the mighty Gravitar have RETURNED! And a fine return it is. They've refined their attack a bit so it's a bit more subtle this time around -- not that they've lost any of their power, mind you, but this time everything's even more cohesive than before. Primal sludge never sounded this structured, mon... except maybe for Skullflower, but these guys are way further out in left field and MUCH more eccentric, plus they have a singer who doesn't even sound human, which is always a good thing. Jazzy drums fade in an out of the overamped power sludge and occasionally the amps melt, but the Grav remain firmly in control even when they're flying by the seat of their flaming pants.

One of the most interesting things about Gravitar is that, among all the players in the genre loosely known as "noise" (which is becoming about as useful a description, incidentally, as "alternative") they are almost alone in their ability to hover on the edge of the abyss between structure and total chaos. They may veer wildly off into free-form pure noise hell, but they always manage to rein it back into some actual shape; at the same time, while they come up with compelling song forms, their fondness for crapped-out noise and Geoff's truly inhuman wailing pretty much insure that they'll never be mistaken for "pop music" or anything trivial like that. Witness "If It's Wrong To Be Right, Then Let Me Be Wrong," which is an actual SONG -- i think -- buried in piles of twitching, shredded feedback, in which the drums form the backbone over which everything else is heaped; or better yet, listen as the pulverizing roar of "Ostrich Bark" gives way to actual acid jazz improvisation. This is hot shit, buddy, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

"Automaton" is another song that could almost pass for a pop song (at least in terms of its basic structure) if it weren't for the subterranean bass rumbling, guitars soaring in and out of the atmosphere like mean li'l UFOs, and more guttural wailing from Geoff. "Krug Calling Retik" is the kind of heavy thud mass the speed-metal weenies will be shaking their heads to in another couple of years, when they eventually catch on. And "Why Is It So Hard," featuring more wind-tunnel noises and a shaking, jangling guitar over a solid beat, may be the best thing they've done yet. Why these guys aren't millionaires with a whole entourage of toadies desperate to supply them with an endless supply of beer, dope and nubiles while Bush rakes in bushels for their tuneless crap is utterly beyond me.

The last two cuts on the disc demonstrate why Gravitar consider themselves first and foremost a live band -- "Strained" is just insanely loud and cut up all to shit, with ugly out-of-control feedback and guitar lines like snakes with dislocated spines, recorded live at the Halfway Inn. They sound like they must have been beating their guitars against the amps and then setting them on fire. Yi! The jazz tip resurfaces on what i think is another live track, "Dirt Burglar," to great effect. Let us admit the truth now: This is a great band and a stunning album, and you should not only go out and buy this, you should buy several copies and then force li'l granny ladies at gunpoint to buy even MORE copies so they can get rich and famous and live happily ever after (and maybe even make records on a more consistent schedule with all that hard-earned dough). Do it! Do it NOW! Don't make me hurt you, dammit!

Gravitar -- NOW THE ROAD OF KNIVES [Charnel Music]

[OPENING SCENE: Deep in the primeval woods, with more coniferous trees than the eye can begin to reasonably grasp. Eerie green light radiates from the background. The camera focuses on a tree stump bearing a human head with a pike driven through one eye; at the end of the bloody pike is a piece of paper. Closeup reveals the paper to be a promotional sheet extolling the virtues of Gravitar, now a trio (having "misplaced" original guitarist Harold Richardson) from MIchigan. Apparently they have a new album out. It's their fifth, including the tape-only offering available directly from the band. All previous albums have been the work of darks gods with razor blades and efx boxes dialed into from another dimension... but what about THIS one?]

CUT TO: Agent Mulder's incredibly messy apartment. We're talking cyclone city here. Moldy pizza boxes rest on stacks of illicitly-copied government files, one corner is a towering stack of unlabeled videocassettes that could be classified UFO footage or Thai bondage fat porn -- one never knows with Mulder, blurry photos of what could be aliens or three-lobed kittens are tacked to every available surface, cigarette butts litter the floor, an unidentified woman's peekaboo panties hang on a doorknob, the leftovers in the fridge have grown sentient and are plotting world domination... you get the idea. Mulder sits at a table with a small stereo; Scully stands, twitching with disgust, trying to defy physics and levitate so she won't have to actually touch anything.

SCULLY: Mulder, you are a pig. Have you never heard of a vacuum cleaner?

MULDER: (engimatic smile, like the acid just kicked in) I didn't call you over here to talk about cleaning tips. Check this out. It's... interesting.

SCULLY: (picks up CD) Gravitar? NOW THE ROAD OF KNIVES? What about it?

MULDER: Listen. (turns on stereo)

The CD plays. Ugly screeching noises like a UFO tuning up its engine fade in, then are exploded into oblivion by overheated guitars being ripped apart by a mulching machine as unearthly howling, dissonant noises, mutant demi-jazz drums, jet engines combusting, Superman farting, etc., etc. roar out of the speakers all at once. The wall of fury is rarely ever full-on, meaning that periodically everything happens at once, then elements drop out to reveal space, then others surge back in, much like a tornado lasting for approximately seventy minutes. There are supposedly fifteen tracks, but since nothing ever really stops, it's obvious that the fragmentary "track listing" is present only to confuse the easily confused. (Like the reviewer for instance.) An impressive number of indescribable sounds are catalogued throughout the epic, all chopped to slivers by the cruel hands in charge of the editing razor. Flanged-out skipping CD noises, hovering UFO sounds, sheet metal wailing, and psyched-out cyclotron rotator sounds figure heavily into the mix. Vocals turn up periodically, if you want to call them that; Freud would interpret them as the seething vocal expression of an id being tortured with meat forks, actually. Periodically something vaguely resembling "songs" emerge briefly, only to be swept away by the sonic tidal wave again. Energy is the theme of the day; at almost every juncture it sounds like the speaker cones are getting ready to catch fire and explode. The ghost of Coltrane sneers at Morricone toward the end. A stuck CD impaled on a military knife signals... the end. But the end really comes with the sound of a scratchy record locked in the groove.

MULDER: What do you think?

SCULLY: (in disbelief) My God... they're... they're DERANGED. I've never heard anything like it. Where did you find it?

MULDER: In the mail. It was sent by a concerned citizen. (chuckles) Surely you know what it IS, don't you?

SCULLY: No, but I'm sure you'll tell me....

MULDER: Isn't it obvious? It's a captured transmission of a UFO landing.

SCULLY: (doesn't believe) Ah, the light is shed.

MULDER: Look, it's obvious. Somehow -- maybe it was a guy with a shortwave who just happened to have a tape recorder nearby, I don't know -- someone must have intercepted this. I mean, it's obviously not of human origin. Can you listen to this (cues up "Leelarran," on which a tranced out guitar loops as something vaguely resembling reed instruments with a lot o' gain wail over the top) and really believe this was done by HUMANS?

SCULLY: Mulder, have you ever heard of an effects box? You know, they're about the size of a Stephen King book and you plug an instrument into them and funny noises come out....

MULDER: And listen to this. (cues up the untitled fourth track) Listen... hear that cycling hum? And now these "drums" come in... now... here it comes... (big explosion of sonic fury) see? SEE? The rockets! The engines revving up, the entire mothership lifting off -- or maybe it's landing, it's hard to tell....

SCULLY: (looking at CD insert) It says here that Davin Brainard appears on that track. Hmmmm.... And I see that Warren DeFever of His Name Is Alive appears throughout the album. Obviously this a mutant jazz-noise trio, Mulder. Not a UFO.

MULDER: Then what about this? (plays "I Know," in which noises bump and collide amid a sea of weird editing, heavily gated guitar squeaking, fucked-up drums, and more, with the overall effect of objects floating in weightless space among a hall of whirling knives)

SCULLY: I must admit that's pretty unearthly. Most impressive. These boys have fiendish imaginations.

MULDER: And what does this sound like to you? (plays untitled track 12) I mean, come on, can't you tell that this is obviously the ethereal brain cries of the abductees being forced to run the ship's Spectomagnetotron Chain Drive with their mental energy?

SCULLY: You know, this UFO obsession of yours is taking an unhealthy turn. It just sounds like Morricone wrestling with Coltrane in a bed of snakes, that's all. Sure, it nods in the direction of jazzy Skullflower, but it's hardly... uh... what was it again?

MULDER: The mental energy of abductees.

SCULLY: Christ, I think you're due for a 50,000 mile checkup.

MULDER: What do you make of the end of the transmission?

SCULLY: Sounds like they found a really swell passage on a stuck CD and looped it for quite awhile, then dropped in pokey drums and various other kinds of guitar effluvia. I like the sound of the scratchy record stuck in the groove at the very end, although that entire device -- the analog reference on a CD -- is coming dangerously close to being a cliche these days, you know.

MULDER: No, no, no, no.... It's so OBVIOUS, can't you see? It's the sound of the engine knocking. They need a tuneup on their interstellar overdrive whatsit. I can't believe you can't recognize that.

SCULLY: You can't be serious.

MULDER: I'm going to get to the bottom of this. The FBI can't stop me! The government can't stop me! The president can't stop me! The preacher man can't stop me! I'm gonna take off my pants! I'm gonna take off my pants! Uh, wait, wrong song.... You know, there's a long file on this "group" at the headquarters. They've been doing this for a long time and it's time someone got to the bottom of this. We have to know what they're REALLY up to. And i'm just the man to do it... because... BECAUSE....

SCULLY: My God, don't you dare fucking say it --

MULDER: (eyes get all moony like a religous cultee) Because...

SCULLY: I'm SERIOUS, I have a GUN, dammit!

MULDER: ...the truth is out there.

SCULLY: (searching through her purse) Goddamn, where is it? I know it's in here somewhere... you can never find your gun when you really NEED it....

[Fade to black. Gunshots ring out over the aforementioned stuck-CD trance- groove of "+LEE+19357-039."]

Gravitar/Nicodemus -- IT'S AN IDIOT'S LIFE [Insignificant]

This, o my puzzled children, is what happens when you sit around in yer shiny iron lung huffin' bowls and listening to warped and melted Hawkwind cassettes for too long. You sound like... THIS. Although what "this" IS, exactly, is a matter of conjecture... it's damned hard to tell... but i THINK this is two really long songs ("It's An Idiot's Life" on the A-side, "Barking at the Bagged Food" on the only side left) being sandblasted into oblivion by Gravitar and Nicodemus in tandem. Now, Gravitar i know about -- damn dope-smokin' purveyors of mutant dethjazz from Michigan, where it apparently is so cold that everybody just stays indoors futzing with their "instruments" all the time because it's too much trouble to slog through ten feet o' snow to do anything else -- but Nicodemus, mon, of this hairy individual i know damn near nothing. Apparently he made trippy albums in the sixties or something. Dunno for sure; my sources are silent on this matter. Regardless, he looks like a scary biker and just looking at him makes me tremble with fear and want to wear a diaper. I gather he plays both guitar and bass and contributes "vocals," although i defy you to find any recognizable evidence of the latter on this album. He's also credited with effects, which is kind of like saying the pope wears a funny hat -- it just be so OBVIOUS that The Man didn't even need to MENTION it, right?

Wait, wait -- there IS a vocal here in the first song! He's saying... wait, i've almost got it... yes... YES... "I like to eat Moon Pies." But i could be wrong....

So anyway, the first song is basically the Second Coming of Hawkwind, only with clinky-clattery demijazz drumming and the whole thing sounds like someone in the mastering plant "accidentally" hit the half-speed button while the rent-a-whores were talking so sexy-like about inventive uses for fried chicken. Start off with a layer of scummy distortofuzz, garnish with the aforementioned unpredictable drum diddling, add a few million sauteed microriffs smothered in various efx, throw in the occasional demented muttering, and there it is. Sort of like... like an existential audio Spirograph drawing. Or maybe the dream of the Anansi spider as captured on a VCR with a failing head. Or maybe the work of men -- not wimpy men either, but REAL men, MANLY men, men who drink American beer and sweat a lot and probably kill yaks armed only with those cheap tiny folding pocketknives that come in Taiwanese shaving kits, the kind of knives you can't even cut butter with -- on tainted drugs. You wish you could sound like this. ADMIT IT. You know it is TRUE.

Now, "Barking at the Bagged Food," that's another kettle of poisoned blowfish altogether. Aside from the intro, where they attempt to sodomize some tape loop gadget, the rest is vaguely ambient most of the time (but, as with the first side, positively laden with efx of every description). You know how someday the Elder Gods of Cthulu realms are gonna wake up and eat us all like Chicken McNuggets smothered in tube steak sauce? Well, this is what will be playing on their snooze alarm. The first half sounds like stoned giants dragging a steel plow through Skullflower's sidewalk; the latter half sounds sort of like Not Breathing soaking in a vat of Quualudes. It all sounds very damaged. The neophyte may harbor the terrible suspicion that something is wrong with his speakers or his stereo, but nay, i say NAY, the truth is far more horrible -- something is wrong with his MIND! Or the minds of Nicodemus and Gravitar. Just call it music for a drowning man and be done with it, brutah... to hear is to believe....

Tragically, the wait for the forthcoming new Gravitar disc grows long... but fortunately, Gravitar has grown hep to the wonders of burning yer own. Hence this disc, one of two collecting all the material originally released on the GO-SONIC cassette. This disc contains three soul-frying tracks of the beautifully corrosive deathjazzspew we have all come to expect from these swell tortured artistes -- two from the aforementioned cassette and one, "Night Dub," that is previously unreleased. That one is the noisiest chunk o' hate here -- fried-metal guitars, the rumble of planets colliding, dive-bomb noises, a beat that comes and goes, tortured rawmeat "vocals" (at least i think there's vocals in there somewhere), crazed fearmongering comin' at ya from all directions... prime Grav, in other words. Need i also mention that it is very, very loud? This is what Sun Ra would have sounded like if he'd done drugs and been weaned on Black Sabbath. With "U.R.R.," they build from scratchy fuzz guitar to screaming, wailing overdrive and insanely polyrhythmic drumming -- the sound of overexcited ions bounding off the walls of a superheated skillet. The Walker brutahs pile on some supremely crazed guitar molestation on this one, waffling up and down the fretboard in circles and extracting wild caterwauling feedback from their sweaty axes. Like a superhuman drill press, they flail away until there's nothing left to flail at... get me, li'l tater? Just don't stand too close if you value your life....

My favorite track, though, is "Rocket to Dearborn," which is actually (gasp! quiet and even sorta (brace yourself) melodic. The guitar sound makes me wonder if either of the Walker brutahs are hep to the suave D.C. band Tone. A ching-ching guitar soaked in water carves a path down the middle while pokey drums and (occasionally) weird flanged-out guitar sounds circle around the sides. The piece gradually builds in density and volume until it resembles a more "traditional" Grav offering, although the totally crazed overdrive paintpeeler doesn't really get cranked up until over six minutes have gone by, and even then it's for background effect rather than up-front obliteration. It also gets bonus points for being the longest track on the CD (over sixteen minutes worth o' hypnotic fun).

The interesting thing is that this is not an "official" release -- rather, it's being sold directly from Gravitar's web site in limited (and i mean limited, so if you're intrigued ye best act quickly) in CD-R format. Don't let that fool you -- the sound is excellent and so is the material. Incidentally, i think this is the wave of the future... soon all bands will be offering self-made, low-run discs for the hardcore on their web sites. I'm just glad the mighty Grav is ahead of the curve on this one, so i can assuage my junkie-like need for their savage brand of sonic filth....

The companion to the disc mentioned above, natch. This one is a bit closer to the Gravitar of old, especially on "Blues for Charlie," which is propelled by some serious power drumming and lots of screeching-tire guitars. Ultrasonic guitar shred makes an appearance on "Nov. 2, 1996, pt. 1" along with many, many strange effects; in fact, about halfway through it sounds like they're feeding the guitars through a wood-chipper shredder. (Maybe they are feeding them through a wood-chipper shredder.) "Nov. 2, 1996, pt. 2" has an almost identical title but very different sound -- looped swooshy sampling, dubbed-out drums,, hyperkinetic bass and guitar lines, and a pile of extremely fuzzed-out guitar wonk. "City Bishop Overson" takes a different tack, almost in the fashion of "Rocket City Dearborn," by pulling back on the overkill; a crypto-blues guitar romps through one channel which a pulsing rhythmic fuzz goes through the other, until they meet in the middle with hyperspeed runs and drumming vaguely reminiscent of Skullflower.

Things get weirder when Warren DeFever (of His Name Is Alive) lends a hand at mixing on three songs; the results are all pretty peculiar. "Devil Korn" -- a fairly short piece of action -- is notable mainly for its strange efx processing and looped sounds, with an overall tone that's fairly different from the unadulterated stuff. "Drain Circus" is heavier and features vox that are actually halfway recognizable as something human, with the rumble breaking up into distortion all the way through the song. (Some intense bass drumming here, too -- Gravitar goes metal! All right!) They return to the "Dearborn" territory again, under DeFever's direction, with "Nelcotte (early version)," at least for the beginning; the ominious melodicism quickly gives it up for exploded-sun death immolation and monolithic drumming. "McCoy (live version)" is equally heavy and filled with flying shrapnel guitar that ends in a thundering wall of fuzz.The final track, "That & Herman Blount" (a title that makes plenty of sense if you're hep to Herman's secret identity, mon), is another trip through the wind tunnel of whirling knives, only buried in a grim wall of fuzz and irradiated with wild gibbering courtesy o' Geoff "is it human?" Walker. This is probably my favorite track on the album -- luv the frenzied drumming and ascending wall o' fuzz.... Once again, this is available only only Gravitar's web site. Highly recommended, too.

[As their search continues, the Moon Unit and his unlikely entourage find themselves wandering through the rehearsal space on Sublevel 13. Amazingly enough, this part of the Hellfortress remains untouched, much to the Moon Unit's relief. Guitars of every shape and model line the cavernous walls on one side; the other side of the room is an endless stack of amplifiers and ten-foot speaker cabinets. Obscure and peculiar efx pedals are scattered all across the room; the cables littering the floor are so numerous as to resemble a bed of black snakes. His companions follow in awe as the Moon Unit hops across the room, skipping over pedals and strobe tuners, heading for the stereo with the latest Gravitar CD in hand.]

TMU: As long as we're down here, we might as well hear the new Gravitar disc. Rumor has it this is their best effort yet. This time they actually went into a professional studio as opposed to destroying tape in their rehearsal space, so the sonic waves o' death should be crystal clear this time around....

Pym: Look at all these cables and gadgets. Do you even know what all this stuff does?

M--w (pointing): Ah! A vintage Octavia! And look, an utterly ancient ring modulator... oh, how the very sight of such fine recording equipment warms the inner mounting flame of my very soul....

M--a: Yes, a fine store of processing devices indeed. Fearsome as she may be, the devilish Madame Onna would never dare to enter this room.

M--w: And this wall of speaker death! Oh, I am so excited I must now compose a new death haiku....

M--a: Please, let us hear it.

M--w: But of course:

TMU: Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever you say. (fiddles with many knobs, then stands back) All right, better prepare yourself... I'm sure this will be intense....

[As the CD begins to play, suddenly TASCAM-Girl drops from the ceiling without warning. Her spine-chilling scream of "BANZAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIII MOTHERFUCKERS!" can barely be heard over the clattering din slowly erupting from the speakers. She lands squarely on top of the Moon Unit, slamming him to the floor and knocking him senseless. As the band gathers steam, working their mojo in loud and disjointed fashion, she stands up and starts kicking the Moon Unit as the others watch in horror.]

M--w: Perhaps we should put a stop to this, do you think?

TG (snatching CD from his hand): Just try it, punk. What the hell is this wall of sonic filth... oh, don't tell me Gravitar has another CD out for the Moon Maggot to fawn over. I just don't get it. They sound like the members of Black Sabbath tumbling around in a dryer while playing three different songs at the same time. What ever happened to people who made real music, like Foghat and April Wine and shit?

C12 (emerging from hiding): Some would say that you merely have hideous taste, my latex-clad child.

TG: Oh, don't you start... hey, this ending part where they drown a repeating thingy in reverb and get louder and louder is kind of cool.

[Abruptly, actual recognizable chords and a melodic guitar line emerge in the reverb hell's wake. All stand transfixed as vocalist Geoff Walker begins to sing.]

C12: My... my God. They... they can actually play songs. Not just crazed improv jams, but... songs.

TG: He can sing. He's not howling like a pit bull being castrated -- what the hell is going on here?

C12 (quivering in the corner): I... I am very afraid now....

Pym: Hey, this is "Diana" by Skip Spence. A pretty interesting cover for a freedeathjazz improv combo, don't you think?

TMU (mumbling from the floor, still only half-conscious): Yes... such a suave move... right up on par with Judas Priest having the brilliance to cover "Diamonds and Rust" by Joan Baez and then Fleetwood Mac's "The Green Manalishi"... of course the Melvins did that one too... maybe Gravitar should cover Fleetwood Mac... yes....

M--w: I greatly approve of this. See how it gradually grows louder? Denser? Thicker? Like, perhaps, a rancid sausage ripening in the sun until it must burst?

M--a: Yes, an appropriate analogy, my friend. For notice halfway through the song that they slowly but surely pile on much distortion and drift from the meter, burying the song under many layers of sonic rubble. It brings tears to my eyes, it is so beautiful. Already I worship this band, and this is only the second song.

TMU (rolling over, eyes glazed): This next one isn't bad either....

C12 (looking at him suspiciously): How do you know that? This just came out.

TMU: Oh, I've had a bootleg copy of it for about a year now... I have my sources on the black market, you know. So much Gravitar... you should hear the BALLADS AND STANDARDS material, what supposedly will come out on Vinyl Communications someday... I think... I could be confused....

Pym: I kind of like this one. That lonesome reverb guitar that opens it is almost like a weepy blues thing.

M--a: And then, true to their savage nature, they prove that they must bludgeon this song to death with drumming from another dimension and exotic guitar sounds traveling through miles of distortion and efx pedals.

M--w: Surely we must learn more about these deviant gods of thunder.

Pym: Hey, this fourth track is like a devolved rock song or something. It even has a steady beat, sort of. And mutant chicken picking.

C12: They're certainly making some odd noises with their guitars in this.

Pym: This is actually sort of like psychedelic country blues or something....

TMU (stirring again): But here comes "Deep and Wide," which is more like the sound of eighty-foot triffids marching over the hills and into the cities with destruction on their minds.

M--a: Yes, it does sound quite violent. They sound as if they sawing through the guitar strings. I would liken it to a cyclone skipping across the plains and uprooting trees, myself.

M--w (as the next song plays): I believe I prefer this one. The grandiose power of the hyperactive drums is matched by the sound of guitars exploding. First they sizzle, then they explode. And still the drums run rampant.

M--a: Glorious indeed.

[As the CD reaches the last track, "Rocket to Dearborn," TMU sits up, eyes wild and crazed.]

TMU: Okay, this is it. The moment I've been waiting for. This is the greatest song they've ever done and the greatest verison of it, plus it's really long, so pay attention.

[They all listen intently as a hypnotic, flanged-out guitar figure moving at a pokey pace is gradually joined by a steady beat and exotic histronics from the second guitar. As the song progresses, it slowly builds in intensity and density of sound, as most of the weight is carried by the second guitar. As that guitar grows progressively more crazed, eventually the first guitar's sound grows beefier and more grotesque in its own right, until they resmemble UFOs hovering wildly and blindly through one of the howling sandstorms of Jupiter's giant red eye. After some time the cyclone passes, and the first guitar returns to its original flanged-out tone. The song's structure reverses itself toward the end, growing quieter and less crazed, before finally fading out.]

Pym: You're right, that was long.

M--w: An amazing display of power and grace.

M--a: A masterpiece.

TMU (finally coming back his senses): Uh, anytime you guys want to stop fawning over their greatness and hit these clueless fortress-wreckers with the Ultrasonik, that would be okay with me....

[But it is too late. As the noise duo reach for their weapons of ultrasonic destruction, TG and C12 bolt madly from the room. M--w and M--a burst out the door after them, but they are gone....]

(Our intrepid duo of death and destruction are riding the elevator up to the Helltower when the elevator abruptly comes to a halt. C12 pushes buttons; nothing happens. TG kicks the door and finally pries it open to reveal a brick wall, indicating that they are stuck between floors.)

C12: Oh, this is good. This is just... just... just SPIFFY. (jabbing at the buttons with increasing agitation)

TG: Don't get your panties all sweaty. I'll figure something out, just give me a minute. In the meantime, let's cue up another disc and get on with the reviews. What do you have there? (points to CD with red cover)

C12: Oh no. We're not playing that one here. Anything but that one.

TG: Oh, now we're definitely gonna play it. (eyeing the case) Oooo, Gravitar have a new album out! Oh, I'm getting all wet and nasty already!

C12 (voice filled with dread): I don't know about this... every time Gravitar gets played at the Hellfortress, bad things have a way of happening....

TG: PLAY IT or I'll tell everybody about your habit of wearing lacy pink undies and dancing in the shower to the Backstreet Boys! I know about your fetish for them, I'll bet you'd like to travel their backstreets all right....

C12 (sighing): I am not responsible for anything that happens next. (inserts the CD and cringes as it gets loud in a hurry)

TG: Oh, check this out, all the titles are the same. How hilarious. And three of the tracks clock in at over fifteen minutes. They must be keeping time with one of the Moon Unit's clocks... all right, the sound is there. This is classic shit. Like the howl of studded leather babies carving each other up with switchblades in a Kenmore dryer tumbling around a trailer that's being carried off into another state by a tornado. I approve of this.

(The elevator begins shaking; suddenly a drill bit pokes through the floor, nearly spearing C12's right foot.)

C12: AAAIEEEE! They're attacking us from beneath! We're going to die!

TG: Huh. (bends over to watch the drilling with her ass just inches from C12's nose) Where do you suppose weasels learned to drill?

(As the chattering, angry weasels begin to peel back the floor, TG shoots out the ceiling and climbs up. C12 follows behind her. Gravitar continues to beat the shit out of various instruments at high volume as they climb the steel cable holding the elevator in place.)

TG: This first track sounds like an utterly devolved version of the middle section of "Rocket to Dearborn," how utterly fucking swank.

C12: Which version? (gasping as he climbs)

TG: It doesn't matter. They're all whacked-out. This one's got a steady beat, kitchen-sink guitar riffing, and evil flanged-out, fucked-up guitar wailing. Sounds like a psychedelic flower being eaten by metallic aphids, don't you think?

C12: What I think is that you should do something about them. (points to weasels crawling through the hole in the elevator and reaching for the cable)

TG: Sure, sure, whatever. (draws her Velocitron Phaser and fires a burst downward) Anyway, uhhh, what, we're on the second track already? This is similar, but a tad more straightforward -- or as straightforward as these guys ever get, anyway. Watch out, you'll want to have a good grip on the cable now.... (drops several grenades into the elevator) I like these psych moves, because they're not like "oooo, pretty flowers," but more like "look what happens when we shovel an endless amount of delay on this guitar and badly abuse it." The sound just keeps getting thicker and meaner and more damaging to your inner ear....

(The elevator explodes in a hot ball of white light, casting jagged spears of metal in all directions. The box shears loose of the cable and plumments to unknowable depths, the chattering of frying weasels dying away as the elevator hurtles into nothingness.)

C12: You know, you have this unnerving habit of employing drastic solutions for everything. Why do I get the feeling you swat flies with a sledgehammer?

TG (ignoring him as she climbs): The third track is more frantic and all over the place, but the fourth one -- another one of those long ones -- is where everything takes a turn for the unexpected. They open with near silence and heavily reverbed guitar flourishes over an insistent beat and builds to their usual wall of fury. A nice move. Eventually strange ideas about syncopation emerge, along with that unmistakable trilling guitar they're so fond of.

C12: Mein gott, it sounds like an impenetrable sonic omlette....

TG: I know. Lovely, isn't it? (comes to a halt near the shaft's ceiling) Oh look, we have a problem.

C12: Why am I not surprised?

TG: These doors are sealed with Maglocks. Well, I can fix that. (She unloads a truly staggering amount of ammunition into the steel doors; C12 hides his face to avoid being blinded. When the smoke clears, the doors still remain intact.) Okay, maybe that doesn't work.

C12: What now, genius?

TG (activating inflatable cushion): We go down. (lets go of the cable)

C12: This is a very bad idea. (follows her down the shaft, activating his own cushion)

TG (as they fall): This fifth track -- the last one, you'll be happy to know -- helps explain why people keep mentioning Black Sabbath while discussing them. It thunders like a castrated rhino from the word go with immense dirt-riffing. Imagine a royal procession for metallic elephants and there you go....

C12: I don't recall Black Sabbath ever employing horn players, or hearing horns so badly abused, for that matter.

TG: All the more reason they are geniuses. Heads up, we're about to land.... (much crashing and cursing and violence as they slam into what's left of the elevator)

Gravitar -- "Evil Monkey Boy/She Not Heavy, She My Brother" [Charnel Music]

Oooo, scummy noises, mondo cool. This version of "Evil Monkey Boy" is considerably different than the version on CD. Among other things, it adds loops of evil noise that falls somewhere between electronic birds being given cobalt enemas and the really squeaky hinge of the world's biggest steel door. Your mother will not approve of this. And she DEFINITELY won't like the lack of a runoff groove, which means the evil noise described above plays over and over forever at the end of the song, until it hurts your inner ear and makes your insides all queasy. The B-side is a slow and intensely heavy lurch riff with lots of squiggly noises poured over it in hot steaming chunks while the guy with the microphone babbles cryptic- sounding stuff every so often (not that you can understand him, which wasn't the point anyway). Kind of like... like taking massive amounts of barbituates and attempting to bang your head underwater. No runoff groove here either, and the ending (a hiss and a bass bump, played for infinity) is so exquisitely annoying that you better hope your agitated old-fart neighbor doesn't own a shotgun.

Gravitar/Universal Indian -- split 12" ep [MGOGM]

You know that horrible, horrible dream you have every so often after drinking too many cases of Mad Dog 20/20 and smoking too much dope while eating bad pizzas and watching wretched late-night TV? The one where you're running in slow motion through quicksand as the wind howls and when you turn to look behind you, you find a steamroller chugging up your ass? The one where your only refuge is in the pit lined with pongee sticks smeared with the shit of rabid dogs? You know, the REAL CRUEL HALLUCINATORY NIGHTMARE that makes you twitch like an eel and swear off all your bad habits for at least a day?

Well then, welcome to the Gravitar Experience.

Mind, this is a GOOD THING -- tortured psychadelic sludge riffing and twisted experimental guitar annihilation was MEANT to sound scary, dammit. If entropy were sentient, it would listen to this. This is BETTER than smoking dope... doesn't give you the munchies... BETTER than dropping acid, although you'll probably still have flashbacks ten years down the road where you fall on the ground squiggling on the pavement like an eel with a dislocated spine (uh... do eels HAVE spines? well, you know what i mean), BETTER than drinking heavily until you assault people with pool sticks -- this assaults YOU instead! The only thing better would be listening to this WHILE assaulting Kathy Lee Gifford and Oprah with pool sticks! [Helpful tip: Use the fat ends, they don't break as easily. Reserve the other end for poking people in the eye.]

So anyway, what we have here is some stuff that was recorded during vocalist Geoff Walker's, uh, "hiatus" of approximately six months last year. His brother Mike subbed during his absence and, to the best o' my knowledge, remains in the band today. Two tracks here: An extended, bone-splintering, "gawd i'm on acid! look, i'm ripping my arm off and splattering bone marrow on the walls! oooo, PRETTY COLORS!" wall-o-filth version of "Automaton," also found on the new album with the impossible-to-spell-properly name (the one with the red cover, for those of you who haven't yet been blinded by my "science"). Basically, it's pretty gruesome -- even rawer than the usual Gravitar output, which i didn't think was possible. "Vivian" is another long, droning plodfest dominated by thunderous shuddering guitars that act like standing waves rippling through everything else (mostly psychotic guitar squiddling and semi-jazzy drum torture). Plus lots of agonized wailing, always a plus. Will pulverize your speakers and cannot be turned into Muzak; sounds like good dirt to me....

And that's just SIDE ONE! The other side is some thing called "For Keith Lucas," a reference that totally escapes me (must be an "insider" thing), by a handful o' swank cats called Universal Indians. More noisy guitar torture, only with lots more screeching and what sounds like a helpless guitar being eviscerated by a bandsaw, and... oooo, actual recognizable chord progressions or something! something that sounds like a GUITAR -- wait, it's gone, they beat it to death again. No, wait, it came back and it sounds like a horribly overamplified acoustic guitar... how odd... singing too, although you'll never know what it is, i assure you. This is great, twisted shit. Things are obviously getting weird in Michigan....

Great Circle Saxophone Quartet -- CHILD KING DICTATOR FOOL [New World]

Just the other day, a friend and I were discussing the distinctive flavors of various local music scenes (for lack of a better term) in different cities across the States. Without doubt, the Northern California East Bay music scene is perhaps one of the most unique I've yet to come across. This seemingly disparate group of individuals (of which I am merely a spectator to) spans the range of punk, jazz, improv, no-wave, avant garde, progressive and post-classical (to name only a few) styles, and yet there is a great amount of coherency and overlap amongst members of all these outfits. Often, folks will participate in recording projects or playing live together. It's astounding to realize that such an inconceivable thing is not only possible, but that it is continually churning out a rich legacy of aural delights.

And it occurs to me that the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet (to be referred to as GCSQ from here on out) really exemplifies the kind of close- knit and diverse working relationships that have flourished in the East Bay. For example, at least three of the four members of GCSQ participated in Gamelan Seka Jaya's "American Works for Balinese Gamelan Orchestra" recording; and two of the four have also worked with Crawling With Tarts. They have also worked with notable composers and musicians as Pauline Oliveros, Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor. Originally as members of the saxophone unit called Smokehouse (named after an East Bay fast food joint) and later SPONJ in the mid 1980s -- Randy McKean, Chris Jonas, Steve Norton (Debris, Either/Orchestra) and Dan Plonsey (Manufacturers of Humidifiers) are the GCSQ. Phew!

Even more exciting is the conceptual workings behind this album. This disc is made up of saxophone compositions, each written separately by the various members, except for one created by the quartet together. One might expect that such an arrangement would yield improbable results. In fact, it is anything but - all the more reason to seek out this disc. Instead of noodling around with abstract or technical range of their playing, the GCSQ concentrate solely on the musicianship of saxophone playing. The sum is a warm, evocative blend of compositional complexity, playful improvisations and captivating interplay, all executed with flawless dexterity and comfortable ease. [yol]

The Great Kat -- DIGITAL BEETHOVEN ON CYBERSPEED [Bureau of Electronic Publishing, Inc.]

This isn't really a music CD, exactly -- it's actually a semi-educational/mostly-promohype CD-ROM -- but i can't think of any better place to review this outre muthah, so here it is. The concept here is the Great Kat, former Julliard classicist turned metal shredbeast and self-described "fastest guitarist on earth," is gonna teach people (kids, theoretically) about classical music and its relation to heavy metal in her own earnestly goofy, over-the-top way. First off, it helps immensely to have a sense of humor about all of this, and to sort of "get" the Great Kat in the first place, for you to get much out of the whole thing. It opens with a twirling bust of Beethoven that morphs into the eternally-screaming Kat and the title credits, at which point the screen fades to a wall with light switch that illuminates various objects: a demon with brain on a plate, a drum, a musical staff, a Kat book, etc. By clicking on these various objects, you can go to other sections of Kat's world. The demon takes you to a dark, underground hall by the lake occupied by a pulsing brain, where you can pick one of two doors to take a couple of classical music quizzes livened up by Kat's obnoxious cheerleading/hateful spew when you get things right or wrong, or you can enter a composers hall to learn about the lives and music of guys like Beethoven, Mozart, etc. If you pick the drum, you go to a catalog of instruments used in classical music, each with samples and pictures. Click on the TV GUIDE featuring Kat and you get to watch some peculiar videos of "KAT TV." Hit the red button and you go to a wooden door where ghostly hands push out scrolls to click on, each taking you to interviews with Kat, taking you to the Slave Club (with Kat videos and the like), Multimedia (a giant celestial jukebox featuring musical selections by Kat and -- for some inexplicable reason -- someone else on one track), a glossary, and more. So there's plenty to do. It takes a while, actually to go through the entire thing, and you get to hear either snatches of classical music or Kat's deranged hyperspeed version of the same throughout, so you won't be bored on that count.

The main problem with the CD-ROM is the art design -- while some parts look brilliant, other parts appear a bit less well-thought out. For instance, the icon that allows to go back to the start throughout the CD-ROM is a black piano... but on some screens, especially the theater (where a projector shows quiz questions regarding composers) and the underground hall, the piano is damn near impossible to see against the black backgrounds. In some of the areas, it's really difficult to quickly figure out what the hell you're supposed to do to make something happen (i spent an inordinate amount o' time clicking desperately on everything in the underground hall before i finally realized that you have to click on a scroll as it descends, then click on one of the nearly invisible doors in the background). And while some sections look incredibly hep -- the minimalist tower against the forbidding sky where pianos rest at the top, waiting for you to click and learn about composers, for instance -- the information that results is often kind of minimal. Part of that may be a limitation in having to fit all of this onto only one CD, particularly since there are an immense amount of graphics. Regardless, it's sometimes annoying, although since it is the Great Kat we're talking about, there's every possibility that this is intentional....

As i mentioned earlier, a lot of your enjoyment potential with this rides on your tolerance for Kat's over-the-top shenanigans. But if you're already among the converted -- or better yet, have teenagers (or know some) who could use an interesting, slyly subversive introduction to classical musical that won't bore them to sleep (a fact Kat herself makes fun of, in one of the videos showing her in black tie and tails with her violin at the stand, slowly falling asleep from boredom as some somnolent classical piece drones on) -- you might want to look into this. It's not going to make you forget QUAKE by any means, but given the genre, its mere existence is a small miracle into itself.

The Great Kat's output is sort of a guilty pleasure -- "guilty" because her entire presentation is so shamelessly over-the-top that "mature" adults have to be embarrassed to even be seen in the same room as a Great Kat CD, "pleasure" because admit it, YOU are curious to know how Vivaldi sounds played on electric guitars at approximately 400 times the original speed, aren't you? Let's face it -- The Great Kat is totally out of control and this, her latest disc (and a short one, i'll warn you in advance), is only more evidence of what we've all known for the past decade or so. Talk about schizophrenic -- two of the tracks are classical fare nuked into oblivion (Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," played at such blinding speed as to be a supersonic blur o' notes flying past your head like a hurricane of broken glass spears, and Sarasate's "Carmen Fantasy," basically more of the same) and two are generic-themed heavy metal fare thrown in a blender and set on "puree" ("Torture Chamber" and "BLOOD"). Like the Dwarves, which whom she thematically has much in common (think about it -- outrageous presentation, outlandish names, mondo-short discs, overall aesthetic based on the concept that there is no such thing as too many notes or playing too fast). Now, i'm lukewarm on the strictly metal stuff, but i'll tell you what: the classical music at high speed sounds unspeakably cool. I might actually LISTEN to classical music if it sounded more like this. (I think that was all part of her master plan, by the way.) Beyond that, mere description cannot do justice -- if you're curious, you're just gonna have to break down and hear the stuff yourself to see what the blather is about. (Check out the web site, mentioned, uh, frequently by TGK herself in the interview....)

The Great Kat -- GUITAR GODDESS ep [TPR Music]

Need to clean out your ears? Put this on. Frantic doesn't even begin to describe it. For the unaware, The Great Kat is the self-described Goddess of Cyberspeed (formerly "hyperspeed"), a lunatic who's been around since the first wave of speed-metal in the early eighties. A classically-trained violinist from Julliard (it's true, i've seen reviews from pre-Kat era in the NEW YORK TIMES) who converted to metal after seeing Judas Priest and realizing that standing around sawing on the violin was boring, Katherine Thomas reinvented herself as The Great Kat, one of the fastest-playing guitarists on earth, dedicated to reinventing classical music for the metal-addled masses. (Her reinvented persona includes lots of brash proclamations and a high annoyance factor that is either maddening or amusing, depending on your view and sense of humor.) Her early albums were mostly radical, juiced-up reinterpretations of Beethoven; now she's branched out to other composers, although she still throws in lots of loopy stuff related to classic metal themes (dominatrixes, dead people, etc.). If this sounds deranged, well, it's not gonna get any saner so you might as well hang with it....

This EP -- essentially a teaser for the forthcoming BLOODY VIVALDI disc -- has four insanely fast/brief tracks (note for all you Dwarves fans: this disc clocks in at less than ten minutes), two being obscenely turbocharged makeovers of classical music pieces, two of which are more standard metal fare (but delivered at as fast a speed as possible). Now, straight from the shoulder, i don't know if Kat is truly the fastest guitarist on earth, as she (often! very often!) claims, but she's well on up there. I can't follow what the fuck she's playing half the time because it just flies by in a hyperkinetic blue of 64th notes. I will say this: she's not sloppy, like some classical-influenced metalheads; unlike most of them, she can actually play this stuff right at many, many times the original speed. (Whether she should play that fast, of course, comes down to a question of aesthetics....) Her speed is most impressive on "Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville,'" where you can actually follow the classical structure even while her millions of notes zoom by you like dangerous shrapnel. She's plenty fast on "Dominatrix" and "Feast of the Dead" as well (she also sings on these two -- or more accurately, shouts in a deranged death-croak, cool!), but these two are more standard metal fare and thus not quite as interesting. She makes up for it on "Sarasate's Gypsy Violin Waltz 'Zigeunerweisen'," which is not only so fast that it's practically over before it starts, but actually does a pretty good job of emulating actual violins (of course, if you played real violins this fast they'd catch on fire).

The poop sheet says it more succinctly than I ever will: "CORRECT is a 16-minute assault of non-musical character pieces. After years in various metal bands, Green Andy has gone solo, armed with dozens of instruments he has no intention of learning how to play. The product is a mess of keyboards, guitar, toy instruments, and percussion. Recorded digitally at extremely low resolution, this release redefines 'lo-fi' for the 21st century." I am here to tell you now that absolutely every word of this is true, although it's surprisingly more musical than you'd expect, in a grotesquely deformed sort of way. I have a feeling there is no middle ground here: you will either find this entertaining for its high irritation quotient and thoroughly diseased sound, or you will find it the most unlistenable and heave-inducing pile of poo imaginable. It probably helps to be down with the whole damaged-keyboard / minimalist noise-of-annoyance scene that seems to be forming.... I'm not sure I'm completely down with this wild heap o' grue myself, but I totally worship the awesomely fucked-into-heaviness sound he gets in places and the fact that while it claims to be only sixteen minutes, it appears to last for all eternity. Anybody who can make an album this obnoxious deserves to be venerated and feared. Really, how can you not like a guy who can come up with a title as great as "Paint Hard"? I dare you to listen to this.

Randy Greif is an avant/electronic composer who's been working since 1977, recording cultural music from Thailand, New Guinea, and other exotic locales to incorporate into his own music; Dan Burke, of course, is the founder and leader of Illusion of Safety. Individually they've released piles of stuff, but this is their first outing together, the result of a year of tape-trading through the mail. There's no telling who did what, not that it really matters; what they ended up with is a series of eight pieces, all collages assembled from all kinds of arcane noises in addition to the more conventional instruments (piano, synth, etc.) Most of it's fairly low-key, similar in attitude to releases by Illusion of Safety, only without the long gaps of silence and extreme shifts in dynamics (which means there aren't five-minute periods of silence followed by thunderous bursts of noise, in other words).

"My Forgotten Arm" opens with a stately piano that is gradually consumed by a droning synth and other noises, including a record running backward, water sounds, thumps and bumps, and stuff too strange to readily indentify; "Just Drift Away" is more ambient, with interesting, crunchy, rattling noises at some points that gradually increase in volume. "Dismantling the Known" incorporates a pinging rhythm part that is periodically punctuated by huge-sounding synths that loom in and out of the picture almost at random, and ends on a quieter note with tinkling bells. Possibly the most eerie of all the tracks here (and they're all fairly creepy, like listening to a slowly disintegrating mind as it comes unraveled one strand at a time) is "Utter Back Fields," with what sounds like animal noises, the rumbling of an approaching thunderstorm, footsteps, and eventually a spoken part about the ominious fields of the country.... The rest of the tracks follow a pattern similar to the earlier ones, mixing noises and instruments in a carefully-orchestrated collage, with some particularly interesting sounds showing up in "The Man Who Wandered Away." Followers of musique concrete and/or either of the composers in question will want to hear this, as will anyone interested in the work of Illusion of Safety....

This is the third album from the UK techno-dronerock band Greenhaus, who originally had more in common with Orbital and Underground, but have since evolved into something closer to an updated My Bloody Valentine straddling the line between techno and blur-rock. There's more than a little bit of the Massive Attack influence at work, too, especially on songs like "trigger" -- this band shares their fascination for stacked-up layers of sound and vocals so dreamlike or processed as to be nearly indistinguishable. The band has a few guest vocalists on board for this album, too -- Liz Green of Swarf, Roi from Mechanical Cabaret, Sandrine Gouriou of Seize (whose turn on the opening track "it's that time of the year" is one of the best things on the album), and more than anyone else, gorgeous singer Lahannya, who showed up to collaborate on something else with band member Steve Bellamy and got on with the band so well she stuck around to end up on half the album. Her breathy, floating vocal style, reminiscent of Liz Fraser circa mid-period Cocteau Twins, is well-suited for the band's dreamy, floaty music (swirls of sound anchored by heavy beats and the occasional tripped-out guitar riff). Sometimes, as on "delusions," they use swirling noise or effects to lead into the song proper, and some songs (like "see no reason," featuring vocalist Liz Green) make their roots in hard techno extremely evident. The band tours regularly live, as evidenced by their considerable chops; their sturdy songwriting and attention to sonic detail keep the album lively in spite of its length (14 songs). With a sound encompassing the likes of Mogwai, Lush, Massive Attack, My Bloody Valentine, and hard techno, this should be of considerable interest to a lot of people on this side of the ocean.

I've always suspected that people who listen obsessively to the overloaded-meter free-psych feedback bands like Mainliner and High Rise have a superiority complex similar to yanks in the '70s who were hep to bands like Neu! and Amon Duul. The feeling that they were onto something that the rest of us unwashed heathen could not handle, something way too "heavy" for the population. Something that could probably not be translated effectively into another culture, something completely localized to one time and PLACE.

PSF fanatics, I have this to say: if should ever find yourself in Stoke-On-Trent, England, and wish to retain your naiveté on such matters, cover your ears and eyes and try to imagine that Green Monkey does not exist, because they just grabbed High Rise by their girly hair and knocked 'em the fuck off the mountain.

It?s a simple set-up: guitar/moog, 5-string bass (we likes it LOW) and drums (VERY able drums from Mr. Doog!), recorded at testicle-sterilizing levels, bashing from one to six minutes, riffing you into sugar-shake/sugar shock. The whole thing's over in half an hour, but so are most bloody political coups. Unlike the bulk of the Japanese feedback brigades, the rhythm section actively contributes to the sound, with the drums actually being audible as something other than a faraway tapping metronome sound. They crunch and punch and wrap around the syupy bass drizzles, and are just as interesting to listen to as the arsenal of guitar or moog-based discharges. The first song has no rhythm section, but the disc makes up for it by allowing a drum solo at the end (balance in all things... how eastern!). In between, it's pure riff heaven/hell (depending on which side of the angsty teen's wall you're listening from) in 1:30 chunks.

I know this may be an unpopular sentiment here at DEAD ANGEL, but the Japanese just got more competition on a different front. Just as the Swiss (Sudden Infant, Runzelstirn & Gurglestock) are the hottest shit going in the noise/experimental race, free-psych's borders are now getting pelted by some pretty heavy fire. Phil, Joy and Doog stared High Rise in the eye and giggled, but didn't flinch. [cms]

I was really looking forward to hearing this, but like most black metal bands these days, it was a total disappointment. Fucking lame-ass keyboards and almost every song sounds the same. These unoriginal dickheads are from Sweden and have a similar sound as the utterly boring Soilent Green (members of Soilent Green are in Goatwhore and they are totally STUPID and FAKE, so BEWARE!!!) The only thing that Grief of Emerald have going for them is that their drummer fucking destroys and they don't wear corpse paint. If you are looking for boring metal, this is right up your alley. [ttbmd]

Grizzle -- FLY YOU FAT BASTARD [J-Bird Records]

You know, just who WAS it that said metal was dead? I'll bet he's feeling pretty goddamn foolish now.... [For more poo on this subject, see the editorial rant.] I think we should send Grizzle over to, uh, "discuss" it with him. I'll bet their arguments would be manly and forceful....

A brief digression: You will note, by carefully observing the label notation in the brackets after the title above, that they are signed to the nifty online record label J-Bird. Perhaps you have heard about J-Bird; they have a nifty deal: if you gots your bad self $600 for production costs, you gots yourself a record deal. (If this makes you wet yourself with fantasies of being a "star" and ultimately destroying your career through rampant assholism and the usual rock star jass, then by all means, hie your fanny over to www.j-birdrecords.com.) Perhaps you have wondering, too: if anybody can be signed to this label, then what's the quality ratio? Are they merely signing useless spoo and pocketing the cash? Are the records any GOOD?

Well, i dunno about the overall percentages (maybe they should send me a lot more CDs so i can find out), but the two i've heard so far (CIVIL WAR by MISS, reviewed last time, and this one) sound plenty swell to me. Which leads (you knew i'd get around to it eventually) to this one.

I am inclined to say many nice things about this disc, not least of all because they happen to be (judging from the pix) rather large men who could probably press my head between their massive biceps and pop my skull like a grape. For one thing, they have one of the most intriguing lineups i've ever seen: two men, one guitar, one drum kit, one massive set o' lungs (courtesy of the guitarist). But that one guitar is HUGE, mon. Forget basslines, forget melodies, forget extra instruments -- Grizzle are so damn MANLY that they don't NEED these things. Clint Listing just pounds out these huge, ugly dissonant riffs while Jason Mills beats on concrete with a jackhammer and all is guten. They are heavier than a herd of dead cows stinking up the back of a Peterbilt truck, okay? And just about as ugly, sonically speaking. This is not pretty music. This... this is music to beat up your supervisor by. (Or your teacher, or your mailman, or whatever.) This is riffing incarnate, mon -- these riffs were conceived with the singular purpose of making air move in front of speakers.

It must be said: Grizzle are heavier than Pantera. And unlike THOSE guys, i'll bet Grizzle have never been a poofy sub-par Def Leppard lite with crudely drawn album covers and dippy titles like PROJECTS IN THE JUNGLE. (But these things ARE true of Pantera, much as the dirtbags from Arlington, Tejas would like to have you forget... but i SAW them during that phase, and let me tell you, there are GOOD REASONS they threaten to beat up people who remind them of this horrible nightmare from the past.) I'm not quite sure they're heavier than Godflesh, although Clint does seem to favor the low-end sizzle so endemic to Godflesh's first EP. They are heavier than just about everybody else right now, though (at least, anybody listenable... extreme-for-the-sake-of-extreme death metal doesn't COUNT, that's a world unto itself, as we'll find out when i review Cradle of Filth's latest hatefest in the next issue.)

So, uh, songs... uh... Grizzle has some. Going into details is really sort of beside the point; they're all full of big riffs and jackhammer drumming, the lyrics all appear to be about hate and death and how they'd like to cut you into tiny pieces with a dull butter knife just because it'll hurt longer and stuff. Some of the better heavy riff/hateful lyric combinations, though, turn up in "Weeping," "Fascism," "Mystic Man," "Long Distance Discount," and "Alligator Trainer." But really, it's better to take the album as a whole rather than by its individual parts. As for the impact of the whole album, it's like... like... like lying asleep at night, all bundled up and snug and comfy and dreaming of Elizabeth Hurley's poochy lips getting ready to NIBBLE on your "nether regions," when all of a sudden the window shatters inward and two men roughly the size of Mack trucks burst in and pin you down and begin beating on you violently with big metal hammers for about an hour or so while screaming "SAY IT! SAY TONY IOMMI IS GOD! SAY IT YOU PUNY MOTHERFUCKER OR I'LL BASH YOUR GODDAMN SKULL IN! SAY IT! SAY IT! SAAAAAAAY IIIIIIIIT!" If you live through it, you might find the experience oddly transcendent....

Growing's last disc, THE SKY'S RUN INTO THE SEA, was one of my favourite records of 2003. A study in contrasts, it managed to be intense, yet soothing, heavy as all hell, yet strangely relaxing. It evoked the sound of wide open spaces, their potential and their emptiness. In many ways SKY'S RUN... is a hard act to follow and Growing's latest, THE SOUL OF THE RAINBOW AND THE HARMONY OF LIGHT, while coming close, doesn't quite match its predecessor.

Now don't get me wrong, the difference between THE SKY'S RUN... and THE SOUL... is the difference between absolutely fucking amazing and really fucking good. What's SOUL... missing? It's hard to say. Perhaps the droning cymbal in "Onement" goes on for a little too long, perhaps this disc is missing the sense of dynamics that made SKY'S RUN... so arresting, perhaps the problem is that there is too much drone and not enough riffing, perhaps.... No, it is that there's too much drone and not enough riffing.

One of the things that set SKY'S RUN... apart from other heavy ambient discs is that the pieces were arranged in such a way that the drone never became monotonous, a big riff would collapse on itself as the plug was pulled on an amp; little touches that had a big effect on the songs. THE SOUL... is lacking in those little touches that made THE SKY'S RUN... such a great listen. It's not until the feedback chorus of third track "Epochal Reminiscence" that the songs start to open up, and then it's too late, a feeling of stasis has set in. That and the nature sounds on "Primitive Associations / Great Mass Above." I don't care who uses them, birds chirping and miscellaneous nature sounds are never a good idea.

Still, as stated above, THE SOUL OF THE RAINBOW AND THE HARMONY OF LIGHT is a really good disc, not brilliant, but really, really good. [N/A]

TASCAM-Girl moved carefully through the thicket, brushing aside beetle-laden ferns. She wore shiny black vinyl shorts, thigh-high leather boots, a laceup red PVC vest, and not much else. At her side she carried a Slug-O-Matic, fully loaded. Occasionally she glanced behind her at the sound of Captain 8-Track crashing blindly through the brush behind her.

"ARRGH!" She heard him go down hard. "Who in God's name would be digging HOLES in the forest?"

"Moles," she said tersely. "They live in the dark and feed on the bugs."

"Would you tell me again why we're here?" He sounded thoroughly exasperated. She could hear him swearing about the mud caked on the boots he had just bought two days earlier.

She didn't answer. She knew the answer, of course -- they had been sent into action by the High Epopt, at the moment too busy watching the Powerpuff Girls to review albums himself, to unlock the secrets behind the new solo album from David Grubbs, he of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and more recently Gastr del sol. She had traced the elusive Mr. Grubbs from his ordinary hideouts in the Windy City to here, deep in the rain forests. He was on the run. That much she knew. But who was he running from? Why had he chosen the rain forest, of all places, to hide? And there were other questions. What was the secret behind his obsession with interlocked guitar parts? What about his startling new forays into jazz? What did those cryptic lyrics mean? And why couldn't he make up his mind whether to have a beard or not? TASCAM-Girl thought she might know some of the answers, and had definite opinions on everything else -- she was certain, for instance, that Mr. Grubbs should stick with the beard -- but there were too many other unexplained mysteries. Like the title of his new album, for instance. What did it mean? She didn't know. Neither did Captain 8-Track, although since he was currently fighting off the advances of a sex-starved weasel, she suspected that he had other things on his mind.

In the distance, she heard the sound of droning guitars and saxes. She knew they were close. She reflected on what she had heard of the album. It was a continuation, she thought, of everything he had explored in the now-defunct unit Gastr del sol -- interlocked guitars, an expanding palette of sound that now included piano, sax, and other instruments more often associated with jazz -- only without the jarring jump-cut obsession of those albums. Had those tape-edit fetishes, then, been more a product of Mr. Grubbs' partner, Mr. O'Rourke? She thought it was quite possible. One thing she knew for certain: THE THICKET was definitely a swinging album. Like bop or free jazz welded to an arcane structure of the man's nefarious devising, the songs welded the dissonant elements of the man's earlier bands with a more straightforward approach that was both startling and rewarding. She was especially surprised by the use of banjo on certain tracks -- but she welcomed it, since Grubbs, a masterful guitarist, was capable of transforming the instrument from something more suited to bluegrass into actual jazz terrain.

The band in the distance started to jump. A shuffling beat was joined by the banjo, then other harmonic instruments. She recognized the song immediately as "Amleth's Gambit," a fine tune from the new album. She recognized Mr. Grubbs' voice as he sang, and even had he not opened his mouth, she would have known those precise rhythms anywhere as he plucked at the banjo. But who was playing with him? She didn't know. She had tracked him here alone; how had he managed to sneak in a band? It was a question she hoped he could answer... but a question nowhere near as important as the question she really wanted to ask.

The Captain caught up with her as the unseen band lit into "40 Words on Worship." The Captain was huffing, out of breath. "I say," he muttered, "that weasel just didn't want to give up the funk. I had to throw him in a tree... ah, what's this I hear? This sounds almost like mutant Dixieland jazz. I approve of this."

"Shhhh," she said. "We're almost upon them. Don't scare them away."

The gruesome sound of dissonant, droning violins rose through the forest. "Ah," she breathed, "now they're playing Tony Conrad's part from "Swami Vivekanada Way." And they were -- the sounds swelled into an orgy of screeching before dying away as a piano began to play, introducing "Buried in the Wall." A lonesome sax blew through it, making her long for the club crawl of New Orleans.

She stopped at a thick cluster of vibrating ferns. She could see movement through the green haze and knew that they were on the other side. At least, her question could be answered! As the unseen band worked its mojo, she -- with the wide-eyed Captain by her side -- pulled the reeds aside and looked into the clearing....

"HEY!" The Captain shouted with amazement. "It's... the band... they're ANIMALS!"

And so they were. A monkey lolled at the piano as a mole wrestled with the saxaphone; a weasel laid down the beat with sticks on a log as a gazelle plunked away at an upright bass. In the middle of the animals, sitting on a rock, was the enigmatic Mr. Grubbs himself. Sunlight glinted from his glasses as chords burst from his guitar.

As the band barely acknowledged their presence and jumped into another song -- a reprise, this time, of "On Worship" -- she leaped forward, her gun drawn and trained on Mr. Grubbs, and shouted, "I -- I've got to KNOW! Where... WHERE... oh, where did you get that fabulous jacket you're wearing on the back of the album cover?"

"That?" Mr. Grubbs said, his voice mocking. "Oh, that thing. I picked it up at a second-hand store out on the harbor."

Smirking, he bent back to his guitar as the birds began to saw at the violins.