More strange sounds courtesy of Public Eyesore. Hair and Nails are actually Walenska and Dino, a duo who have a fondness for static, drones, and peculiar sounds. Experimental? Definitely. Exotic-sounding? You bet. They also favor brevity -- there are 36 tracks on this disc, each averaging less than two minutes -- so their odd sounds don't wear out their welcome too quickly. There are some harsh moments to be found here, but mainly they revel in peculiar, reverbed sounds and almost-random plinking of various instruments as drones swirl in the background. It's all a bit chaotic for my taste (I prefer my weird sounds to be at least somewhat rhythmic), but the sounds are definitely interesting and varied. I like their fondness for amp hum and background drone. Their sound is often a bit busier and more cluttered than I'd prefer, but that's a matter of personal taste, I suspect. They certainly make use of variation over the length of the disc. Worth checking out if you are hep to the whole sound-collage thing....

American junk noise, yes -- the sound of chaos, the sound of things being broken, incoherent shouting, violent power electronics, heavy objects being dropped off rooftops... sounds like my neighbors at this place I used to live several residences ago.... Hair Police are apparently from Kentucky (where there's more noise and hardcore sludge happening in garages and bedrooms across the state than you think) and they are down with abrasive junk-noise power mantras (the title track is a particularly nice one). This is their first full-length release since 2002's BLOW OUT YOUR BLOOD, and the first recorded as a trio with the lineup of Robert Beatty, Mike Connelly, and Trevor Tremaine. Violent feedback-fu on "Forged by Wreck" collides with hysterical shouting and overturned objects for an unnerving shaking of the psyche; on "Boneless," C. Spencer Yeh (moonlighting from Burning Star Core and Death Beam) shows up to help forge a screeching, shifting landscape of crunch and bluster; real, recognizable instruments show up in "Open Body," only to be soiled by noise, feedback, and muffled shouting before bursting into frenzied thrashing and wailing. "Full of Guts" features more righteously wailing feedback-fu and proto-Swans drumming on what sounds like oil cans, while the sonic perversions of "Skull Mold" are leavened by cymbal-fu swaddled in reverb. The overall effect is very much like the sonic explanation of chaos theory as interpreted by fanatical swamis armed with pedals and translated by excitable drug addicts arguing over who gets to shoot up first even as their van disintegrates while rolling down the side of a mountain. In other words, noisy, chaotic, and intense. If you don't check this out and dig their action, they'll probably show up on your doorstep and slap you silly, then tie you up and force you to listen to the album. One way or another, they will get your attention....

Strange experiments abound here, mostly in the realm of mixing country death-folk, mantra-like repetition in places, and abuse of noise 'n efx. Think Jandek, Fires Were Shot, primitive natives turned loose in a recording studio and beating wildly on guitars, random drums, the radiator, the glass, sometimes hooting, as an increasingly agitated narrator rants about cryptic stuff that's alternately bizarre or threatening. It's a pretty hallucinatory experience, like listening to a devolved psych band playing across the hall from a bleak folkie while people in the hallway run amok with with the mikes and the mixer controls. There are seven individual songs, but they run together and the disc works better as an extended outing of growing paranoia and weirdness. Easily the strangest and most otherworldly-sounding disc under the microscope this issue, and that's saying something. Don't listen while you're on acid unless you like being badly freaked out. Serious mojo, brutah.

I'm not sure what to make of this... it appears to be an unholy cross between spoken-word and strange experiments in disconnected sound. I gather Halaka is primarily a vehicle for found-sound collages augmented by minimal instrumentation. Some of it is mildly unnerving in its unpredictably and creeping volume shifts, sheets of background noise and shouting are largely the order of the day on several of the songs. The eccentric percussion is definitely a plus, although i find the vast array of voices a bit chaotic for my taste. This is seriously deranged-sounding stuff -- at times it sounds like it should have been a Zenflesh release (for the background noises), at other times (especially on "madswill") it's creeping around to the territory of Eugene Chadbourne's experiments in grossly deformed guitar primitivism and background chaos, and on occasion songs actually come close to being semi-traditional songs (well, for a moment or two anyway), such as "Left Believer" (even though the mix is peculiar enough to scratch it from any hope of "commercial" consideration). Seriously, this is a bizarre fucking album, even by DEAD ANGEL standards. A bit busy and eccentric for my taste, but probably more of interest to those from the whole Chadbourne school of thought.... [pym imitating rkf]

Lo-fi minimalism of the haunting sort, by a bunch of cryptic dudes who may or may not be an actual band and apparently like to make up stuff (including band histories, among other things) as they go along. I approve of this direction already. This is Halaka in tortured Jandek mode, all twanging country doom guitar and the pained wailing of a country boy who's been drinking too much and listening to Nick Drake albums too long. Keeping track of the songs is tricky since there's seven songs in five tracks, but they're all pretty much in the same vein of twangin' country death blues. Occasionally they're augmented by disturbed experiments in bass hell and various other distractions, but mostly it's the spirit of some doomed blind delta blues picker as channeled through these eccentric chameleons. The presentation is a tad stark 'n lo-fi -- fine by me (i like my naked terror raw 'n black, thanks), but possibility a distraction for pussies used to listening to "radio-friendly" homogenized mainstream bung-heave. They include a fair bit of "look, musicians are hanging out getting ready to record" chatter that probably could have gone on the cutting floor, but it doesn't distract from the actual songs themselves, some of which are considerably less traditional in their primitive country blues mantra, especially toward the end of the disc (one song on here sounds more like a toned-down PiL circa FLOWERS OF ROMANCE). Proof that you don't necessarily have to be loud 'n blown-out to be laden with spooky reverberating doom.

Half String -- TRIPPED UP BREATHING [Independent Project Records]

Just when it seemed like maybe Independent Project Records really had ceased, along comes a fresh batch of releases to quell all fears of demise. I received the following cache of goodies recently. Briefly, IPR has a long-standing rep for putting out solid, exquisite works -- both asthetically and aurally. The items i've reviewed don't stray from that well-beaten path.

My only serious gripe has to do with the actual press releases. It's probably just a matter of semantics. or maybe... maybe i'm just more musically savvy these days. In either case, i'm willing to cut them some slack because as someone who has had to write press releases, I know just how difficult it can be. One doesn't want to mislead people, but at the same time one does want to hype it up... to come up with such an interesting spin so as to make your stuff seem unique against the myriad of vast choices out there. That's all laudable, but when you start making comparisons for the sake of name recognition, that's just inexcusible. Let the music stand up for itself on its own merit, y'know?

With that aside, it's important to mention that Bruce Licher -- founder, owner of IPR, and all around super nice guy -- has invented a new packaging alternative that is sure to create some serious competition for the DigiCrap stuff that claims to be more environmentally friendly than a jewel box. He calls it a "Discfolio" and there are a number of different styles i've seen so far. The basic design is a piece of beautifully letter-pressed board that is folded a number of ways to hold the CD snugly.

In a way, the Discfolio design makes the CD seem more like a miniature vinyl release which should prove to be a hit with those who miss that kind of attention to packaging detail that is often lacking in the CD world. On the other hand, I'm still not sure what I think of all the unfolding and re-folding that goes on just to retrieve one disc. I will say this much, i remain completely in awe of the utter beauty of Licher's graphic design sense and this usually distracts my attention enough to not notice the effort i've put in.

A four-piece from Arizona, stepping up to get what's long overdue to them. Half String doesn't particularly do anything new or different, but it's still some of the most refreshing shoe-gazing pop music available out there. My favorite track on this EP is the moody, yet shimmeringly beautiful instrumental titled "slipknot". Absolutely brilliant! nothing more need be said. [yol]

Huh. So Judas Priest have apparently... reformed. So odd that Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing are going by the names Patrick Lachman and Mike Chlassiak. And since when did Ian Hill become known as Ray Riendeau? And this other dude Bobby Jarzombek... anyone with ears can tell that's really Dave Holland. Rob's still Rob, though, and he's still bald and scary lookin'... and that sure is a big, uh, cycle he's got between his legs on the cover....

Okay, so it's not really Judas Priest reformed, but merely an incredible simulation. Hey, if Ripper can imitate Rob, then fair is fair, dontcha think? And for my $$$ Robbo's imitation of classic Judas Priest is much more convincing, right down to the "aw God it hurts when you drive hot pokers through my balls like that" squealing (how does he still manage to do that? the man's got to be my mother's age, and i'm not exactly young myself). the chunky-chunky guitars, and borderline ridiculous lyrics. Of course, only an insane person even attempts to divine meaning from Judas Priest lyrics -- that's not what they're there for, dammit, they're there to give Rob an excuse to impress you with his wailing skills, it doesn't matter what he's actually saying, okay? He could be screaming "Buy used Cadillacs at Crazy Bob's Used Car Lot or i'll set this teenybopper pop star on FIRE" and that would be perfectly okay, because listening to Judas Priest for context is like... uh... um... like expecting lyrics about calculus algorithms from Ozzy Osbourne. Pretty damn ridiculous idea, don't you think?

So what we have here is a pretty impressive recreation of Judas Priest, approximately early eighties, with a smidge of guitar-tone updating. This is probably the album they should have made after SCREAMING FOR VENGEANCE. Certainly this is better than anything they've done since then (real or simulated). (DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH doesn't count since it's essentially a track-for-track rewrite of SCREAMING FOR VENGEANCE, and i think we'll all agree that the albums after that get real inconsistent real fast.) They have the same mix of balls-out rockers ("Resurrection," "Made in Hell"), catchy radio-friendly tunes ("Locked and Loaded," "The One You Love to Hate"), and brooding semi-pretty "artiste" songs that turn into crazed barnburners along the lines of "Under Blood Red Skies" (here it's called "Silent Screams"). They have topical references ("Cyberworld") and motorcycle references ("Drive"). The one thing that is new is that Rob has apparently decided to embrace his godhood; witness titles like "Resurrection" and "Saviour," not to mention lyrical snatches like "I am pure, I am right, I'm the God that makes you fight , yeah -- hate" and "Here I am now, your saviour." After years of trying to blend into the background, Rob appears to have embraced his ego. This... is a good thing. The best heavy metal is made by arrogant motherfuckers and who has more right to be arrogant than the God of Metal? Listen, heavy metal singers are divided into two categories: Rob Halford and everybody else. It's about time Rob woke up and remembered this.

It's true that nothing on here is equal to "Sinner," but that just makes me think of Joseph Heller's response when a snot-nosed journalist told him he hadn't written anything the equal of CATCH-22 in the rest of his career: "Well," Joe said, "neither has anyone else, have they?" The same logic applies here. Buy this album.

You may recall that I reviewed their split with Alabama Thunderpussy back in DA something-or-other. [tmu: Me? Recall? Fuck, i can't even remember where i set my drink down two minutes ago... have you seen it, perhaps?] Since then they've, uh, signed with Small Stone Records and issued their first full-length.

HIGH FIVE picks up where their half of the ATP/HtG split left off. The production is much better. The guitar,s bass, and drums sound much thicker. Lou seems to be a bit more comfortable as a vocalist. The songwriting is quite strong. You can hear the influences (Sabbath, Skynyrd, Trouble, a touch of punk?) poking through but they've managed to synthesize them in souch a way that nothing sounds overly derivative.

My only complaint (and this is a personal thing) is that I wanted everything to be HEAVIER, dammit! Like Alabauma Thunderpussy and Solace, Halfway to Gone are one of those bands that fall in the "grey area" between stoner rock and sludge. Fans of Fu Manchu and Kyuss might find them a bit too heavy while fans of eyehategod and Grief won't find them heavy enough. [n/a]

Strange doings in Australia... this is the second release on Embryo, apparently an Australian label dedicated to releasing weird music in limited quantities on CD-R. Sort of like the more modern equivalent of a cassette-only label, eh? So anyway, this band sounds sort of like a grim cross between Merzbow and Godflesh -- the occasional burst of freakout white noise vs. plodding, thunderous beats and huge downtuned guitars. On the noisier tracks like ""Transit," "Whore," and XZK$X" they veer wildly between the extremes of Merzbow and Skin Chamber where the noise is concerned; on others, notably "Absence of Light" and "Worm," they have the Godflesh act down to a shuddering T. Death metal is a pretty solid influence here, although they have stranger ideas about mixing and fading than most death bands (see the wobbly fades and lurching volume shifts of "Like Cancer," for instance), and "Tranzmission" is just plain strange -- rippling ass-wave bass and some skittering business riding over the top, with totally subliminal drums. Oddly enough, "Null" sounds like a mad cross between death metal and hardcore punk; downtuned vox meet hypermad drums on high velocity with fuzzed-out death guitars for a brief, spastic moment or two. The last track, "Guilt Shift," returns to Godflesh territory again, even though they favor more midrange than Broadrick in their guitars. Strange but oddly compelling. Find out more at the Embryo site.

Halo, a two-man (???) deathmusik unit from the land o' the pixilated kanagroos, is essentially Australia's answer to Godflesh (sorta). And we're talking early Godflesh. Their instrumentation is mainly drums, sampled dialogue/noise, "voice" (or screaming, if you prefer), and a wall o' processed bass; the effect is pretty much oppressive and soul-crushing. Strong elements of grindcore saw through everything like steel teeth o' hate. Still, while the Godflesh/Swans influence is obvious, Halo manages to wring something new out of the slo-mo brute force sweepstakes by being even slower and more sparse than its influences. "Among Stones" lumbers along amid a layer of ominous sampled dialogue and the occasional blast of subsonic bass shudder, eventually running into "bright shining light," where the pace picks up (just by a hair), the bass groaning gets more frequent, a whining guitar in a wind tunnel appears somewhere in the murk, and the singer starts shouting about... um, something. (They didn't provide lyrics so i can only guess, but it sounds grim, whatever he's shouting about.) On "Terminal:$" they start to get creative, tinkering with the sound in truly scary fashion, beginning with a looped sound of indeterminate origin, then slowly fading in a cyclotron loop and slo-mo drums that sound more like the tolling of drums on a slave ship than an actual kit. The sound is very much indeed like being a stowaway in the hold of a ship navigating its way through a cavernous terminal while machines grind and steam belches. That segues into "Cleanse:Purge:Purify," which -- aside from a few riffs worth of ching-ching guitar that sound startling in this context -- is a pure blast of death croak, like fire belching from subterranean furnaces in regular washes of heat and filth. "Slugbait" (an obvious nod to both Godflesh and Throbbing Gristle) begins with more muttered sampling, rumbling bass dissonance, and factory sounds. After a few minutes it turns into an actual beat in crawl mode with a growing wall of guitar and bass that act less as chord progressions or any kind of tune than as a pure physical wave of force. Attitude and title notwithstanding, it doesn't appear to be a "cover" in the traditional sense, but more of an homage. It's certainly potent and forbidding. I suspect the bass waves, performed live and at sufficient volumes, could seriously cause you to shit your pants. Aiiiieeee! Just to make their fetishes perfectly clear, they end with a clanking industrial cover of "Black Sabbath" that's every bit as heavy and almost (but not quite) as scary as the original. Fans of early Godflesh should track this down. Be forewarned: all the Embryo releases are on CD-R (although they've all sounded just fine to me), in case you worry about these things....

Were you saddened when Swans gave up the bludgeoning 2/2 -time bludgeonfests in favor of melodicism when Jarboe came on board and Gira decided to start "expanding his palette"? Did you weep bitter tears when Godflesh started incorporating all the Broadrick-related splinter bands into the original one and essentially went death-techno? Do you mourn the passing of noize, which lately appears to have fallen beneath the radar screen again? Do you just plain cry yourself to sleep at night wishing there was a band out there somewhere that sounded like construction equipment being dismantled and dragged through a sewer in extreme slow motion?

Then mon... i have... a band for you.

Halo are a couple of dudes (there used to be another one, but he probably retired in a desperate last-ditch effort to save his ears from complete destruction) from Australia who apparently worship early Swans, early Godflesh, and early Black Sabbath, but feel no pressing need to bother with things like melodic content, lyrics, aspirations of "commercial success," and so on. Their main mission in life appears to be to damage as many central nervous systems as possible. This is the most stripped-down howl of alienation i currently know of, okay? They don't call themselves a band, but rather, a "sound-excreting entity" (with emphasis on the excreting part, i'm sure), and that's certainly true... if industrial waste spilling from a sewer had a sound, it would be this. Extreme music does not get much more extreme than Halo, who are uncompomising in their endless quest for the perfect wall o' noisy sludge.

As mentioned earlier, the band currently consists of two members, a drummer and bassist who push walls of sonic ugliness through speakers in hopes that they'll explode, mixing in liberal doses of noise roughly equivalent to the sound of freeze-frame shots of glass being pulverized with a sledgehammer. They generally don't bother with lyrics (although some kind of crazed shouting does appear on the opener,"Rise"), but instead pound out slocore rhythms in minimalist fashion while excreting jagged bursts of noise and shuddering basslines. My favorite track on the album is "The Entwined," which is very much in the vein of early Godflesh, only slower, with thundering subterranean bass waves and jagged bursts of noise obscuring doomed wails. "Now Hollow" is equally slow and apocalyptic, but even more minimalist, lurching in the direction of early Swans; "Wasps Encircle the Shroud" continues the Swans-worship with some serious drum-plod while the bass hovers in the background in ambient-waves-of-brooding mode; "20,000 Tonnes of Machinery to Smash Matter," though, is basically pure white noise with a beat and bass waves radiating from somewhere under the avalanche. It sounds more like radioactive fallout than actual music, which is fine by me. "Perpetual Rust" may be even slower, if that's possible (it's hard to measure time when the beats drop below 20 bpm, eh?), and sounds almost like an endless introduction to something else -- all shuddering bass drone, the occasional beat, and snippets of sound dropped in periodically just to remind you that, yes, something is happening. After all this serious slo-mo death rattle business, the closing track "Swarm" is practically speed metal by comparison... although its sound is certainly consistent with the rest of the disc, a sound akin to rats disembowling each other in some corner of an abandoned warehouse behind a mercury-poisoned river of waste.

Truly one of the most unrelenting, uncompromising bands ever, Halo are so good at what they do -- and so grimly extreme -- that i have a hard time imagining that they'll ever be picked up by a label to get the wider exposure they deserve. Then again, it may yet be possible that some death-oriented label out there might come to its senses.... If you're down with early Swans and early Godflesh, you absolutely must hear this. This is probably the best of their three self-released discs (i find it most encouraging that their destructive capacity has increased and sharpened with each new release), and an excellent place to start having your central nervous system dismantled.

Do these guys ever sleep? Apparently not, because about every three to six months they unleash another slab of gruesome slo-mo hatred. This... is a good thing. As far as i'm concerned Halo are now the undisputed kings of eternal noise slocore (now that Godflesh has gone technoish), rivaled only by Grief for sheer excruciating (and endless) sonic agony. On this, their fourth release proper (okay, there are technically five, but SUBLIMINAL TRANSMISSIONS is actually a remixed version of their self-titled debut), they make a radical move toward songs that actually approach being songs as opposed to merely long stretches of radioactive waste seeping from the speakers. Not that they're going to be mistaken for Neil Diamond anytime soon; the opener, "Constriction," uncorks with mammoth groaning feedback drones over a plodding beat that eventually mutates into a wall of sonic ugliness punctuated by double-bass drums (???) so heavily reverbed that it sounds less like drumming than the speakers shaking themselves to death. Plus there's a lot of screaming from the bottom of a well about... uh... well i dunno what he's yowling about, but he doesn't sound happy....

"Contortion" keeps up the pace with moderately faster drums and an ominious, slinky/rattling riff over a bed of noise and subsonic bass amid much hoarse shouting. As with most Halo offerings, the hefty noise quotient and twin bass attack make for a sound so thick that when the basses drop out toward the end, it's actually jolting. Those magical subterranean basses reappear at the opening of "Suspension" sounding like they've been so radically detuned that the strings are just flappin' in the breeze like the flannel on a fat man's shirt... we're talking el hefe here. As the noise swirls and the beat kicks in, so does death-march riffing. This is psychotic stuff, like early Swans on bad PCP. "Manipulation" continues in a similar vein, albeit with nifty "look, my guitar is dying" waves of decaying ambient sound at the beginning (before the carnage ensues). "Deprivation" thrashes about (but slowly) like a wounded rhino rolling around in broken glass -- think early Swans mating with early Zeni Geva, especially circa "Slamking," then wince at the ear-splitting cyclotron noise generated toward the end that damn near drowns out everything else. Ouchie! My ears are ringing now! Then the whole thing implodes like a building caving in... most suave....Things "lighten up" a bit with "Suffocation," which opens with looped droning and moderate feedback waves as the drum track fades in. When the guitars come in, the comparison that comes to mind is Prong's "Coliseum" slowed down to half-speed. The final track, "Immolation," is another deceiver: opening with ambient bass waves and shuddering but low-key feedback, only to gradually build into pure sonic death. The bass waves in this one are so deep and so immense that your speakers may levitate. The drums are so slow and pokey, and the waves and feedback so protracted, that it's less an actual song than a demonstration of equipment giving up the ghost. This continues for some time until they pick up the pace a tad with spooky percussion and increasing layers of sonic filth that all ends fairly abruptly....

Bottom line: Can you imagine the sound of "line noise" in the neuron transmissions of a complete psychotic? Well, that's Halo. Listening to this disc is somewhat akin to committing suicide by drowning in a cement mixer. You need this. Badly.

Hammercocks -- s/t [self-released or something]

Color me amused. Seeing as how i was never a tremendous fan of hardcore punk, i am probably not the best person in the world to review this, but really -- how can i fail to be impressed by a band that actually took the time to compose a pornographic ode to Betty Boop? Turns out the disc (all 23 songs worth -- they know how to keep shit short) is not at all bad. A trifle underproduced, true, but hey, this IS a punk band... and this is about as DIY as you can possibly get, a big point in their favor. If you wanna listen to Boston, by all means; it's your $15... but we'll not be playing any overproduced radio-friendly sludge in the DEAD ANGEL offices.

The agenda here is absurdly simple: pounding three-chord rock and lots of it, short songs with cheerfully vulgar lyrics, and vaguely surf- influenced guitars. Actually, these guys would not be out of place on tour with garage-poopsters like the Oblivians and the Mono Men. It certainly doesn't hurt that they can actually play (and play fast) and the singer can actually sing (although he's not above occasionally just shouting). Some of these songs (like "Pervert" and "Pussy and Her Asshole") are close to the sound of early Dead Kennedys; others, like "Scared to Fuck," are much weirder but still indisputably punked-out. They all definitely thumb their collective nose at this scummy new wave of shiny happy MTVpunkpopcrap. Even though punk is generally not my "thang," they win me over for this alone.

Some favorites include "He-Man is an Asshole" (well, he IS), the loopy "Alien Girl" (like the Ramones after watching too many episodes of X- FILES), the hysterically funny and supremely surreal "Mr. Roger's Satanic Tape Recorder," "Kill The Innocent" (whose Thunders-ish riffing proves that they have conclusively rejected anything post-1979 as being worth a damn), and the aforementioned "Betty Boop," which is all about spanking the helium-voiced one (among other things). Other worthy moments of hardcore mirth include "Stupid is Cool," "Masked Avenger," "Drink Till I Throw Up," "Installing A Fishes Eye," and "Drinkin' Drivin' and Fuckin' in a Fast Car." The song titles should be a pretty clear indication of where their hearts (or, uh, something a fair bit lower) lie. As hardcore albums go, this is solid, full o' meaty riffing, and totally without socially redeeming value, the way a punk album SHOULD be. If you were gonna go out and buy the latest spoo by Offspring, do yourself a favor and buy this instead; your $$$ will be better spent....

This is hands-down my favorite album of the issue. This is why i continue to put out DEAD ANGEL, so cute Chinese girls in punk bands can send me such swell listenables. I didn't even know they had punk bands in China, much less all-female punk bands. And forget about what passes for punk these days, these women are a throwback to the first jolt of punk and new wave bands -- they have more in common with Blondie, Television, X-Ray Spex, Berlin, and the Specials than they do with anything current. (This is a huge point in their favor and greatly increases their listenability.) They also reference the likes of Boredoms, Cibo Matto, and those Wu Tang troublemakers, so they're not totally retro -- just enough to beat the pee out of nearly everything happening right now. Not only do they have incredibly swank taste in influences, they're also an excellent band -- i'd pay good $$$ to see them on a bill with Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, who share a lot of their tastes.

This is actually the band's second album (i can only imagine how the first one sounds), and a fine one it is. They play in a classic configuration -- drums, bass, guitar, and vox, , with no other bullshit to clutter up the songs -- and they play, for the most part, old-school melodic punk (the catchy kind) that's short and to point. This is music for people to jump around to, okay? They're clever enough to pace the singalongs with more exotic fare, too: witness the swell punk-by-the-seaside ballad "Leave me," where the band goes to Honolulu Beach to wave their hula hoops while Wang Yue turns in an amazing vocal performance -- like when Blondie did "The Tide Is High" but better, because this one has a better groove, natch. Even better, the slo-mo lullaby on "Summer Time" turns into outright psychedelic pop with diva vox... only to launch into pure driving metal that turns into outright high-velocity punk. But their real strength lies in their talent for building catchy riffs that also double as irresistible melodies, as they do in "Be my seed," which also swings in a major way -- let their melodic hypno-ray sweep over you and resistance will be futile. (This is also the point, about halfway through the album, when you will suddenly realize that bassist Yilina and and drummer Shenjing are actually kind of brilliant -- and that while you had already gathered that about the other two, it will suddenly dawn on you that Li Yan Fan plays one mean lead guitar on top of everything else.) They do a nifty waltz (it's a heavy one, but still...!) on "Blue like the sea," and that's nice to hear, but it's "Di Di Di" -- with a central melody / riff straight out of 1980's Boston new wave -- that's the next really brilliant moment, especially with Wang Yue's vocal histronics and the mother of all catchy riffs popping up again and again. I particularly like "There is a City," which not only has some seriously pounding bass and spiraling, corkscrew guitar riffs like surf city on cruise control, but also manages to sound like Romeo Void with catchier melodic content, always a plus in my book.

TMU: Hey, this has beats. I didn't think this was gonna have beats.... What do you think, mon?

TTBMD: I dig the title of the CD.

TMU: The art's pretty nifty too. Got a bit of that Rudimentary Peni thing going on. I like.

TTBMD: As far as the music goes -- decent production, somewhat original sound....

TMU: I like that it's really, really repetitive at the core.

TTBMD: Kinda technoish. Slowed-down Atari Teenage Riot. Lots of noise.

TMU: This third track starts out with conversation about... um... can you tell what he's saying?

TTBMD: He's talking about buttholes.

TMU: Buttholes?

TTBMD: Buttholes.

TMU: Uhhhhhh, what was my original point...?

TTBMD: That it starts out with conversation about buttholes and turns into a guy smoking a bunch of crack and playing with his Casio keyboard and sampler. Around 1983.

TMU: 1983? Ah, a fine year... I remember it well... (thinks) Well, maybe it wasn't a fine year, but i remember it anyway... uh, i think....

TTBMD: Def Leppard's PYROMANIA came out in 1983.

TMU: Fuck, that's right -- i saw them on tour before that actually started to sell, playing to a third of the Erwin Center. Next thing i know, they're all over MTV and everywhere and i can't go three fucking steps without hearing "GLOOBEN GLEETEN GLOTEN GLOTEN" out of every radio... this thing that's playing now, this is really hypnotic... oh wait, it stopped.

TTBMD: "Whores Born From Womb of Nutcase." Do you like that title? I like that title.

TMU: That title fucking rocks. (conversation on CD leads to:) What the fuck are they talking about? 

TTBMD: They were talking about some dude reading poetry about chaos.

TMU: And now they're making thuggish noises with loops or something.

TTBMD: This is repetitive.

TMU: That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. They're talking again on this one, "Until You're Dead It's All Life." They like samples. How are the samples, mon?

TTBMD: They're okay. I like the titles of the CD and the songs a lot. The music... hmmm....

TMU: Repetition is your friend! The music's all right to me. I like this percussive beat-box-swaddled-in-noise thing they got goin' on. Like they gone on dah noise tip, brutah! BLING BLING!

TTBMD: (looks at him dubiously)

TMU: They use a lot of reverb on this album, don't they? Check this out, "All My Creations Have Reached Perfection."

TTBMD: I like this one. This is the best one so far. Power-drone electronics -- a classic sound. Subtle, though.

TMU: It sounds real pneumatic. I approve of men and women using gadgets to emulate the sound of heavy machinery. I like this other one here, though, "To Equate Love With Self Denial Makes A Mockery Of Human Life" -- i like that subtle electric drill thing, the atmospherics....

TTBMD: The last two tracks, "My Name Is Death And Life Must Turn To Me" and "After Life -- After Birth -- After Rave -- Splash It All Over!" are the same thing. What's up with that? I am bored now....

TMU: I think it's some kind of remix or ironic statement or something. Or an excuse to hang some nifty titles on the same songs. Maybe on their next one they'll record one song and run it out fifteen times with fifteen different titles. The new dada! Christ returns on a squeegee pad and basks in the glory of their weird-ass titles!

TTBMD: On to the next one, dude....

OK, i know this is being pushed down your throat constantly -- Island is promoting the PEE out of this album -- but that still doesn't negate its brilliant simplicity. Doubtless some are already lamenting that it doesn't "rock" like RID OF ME did, but i much prefer this one... where RID OF ME was explosive in spurts, it was also tremendously erratic, staggering all over the place without a lot of cohesion. This album isn't as "heavy" -- in fact, most of the tracks feature stripped down guitars or none at all, and Polly Jean has discovered the keyboard, radically altering her sound-- but it's a hell of a lot more consistent. It also helps that she's assembled some truly stellar personnel, with guitar assistance from Joe Gore (the mastermind behind the spooky and unique sound of Tom Waits' BONE MACHINE), Eric Drew Feldman (Pere Ubu) on keyboards, Mick Harvey (the Bad Seeds), and others equally happening. The entire album turns on a bizarre erotic religious fixation, echoing deeply religious themes of sin, temptation, and salvation at the same time the music itself is totally drenched in sex. From the avalanche-blues of "Long Snake Moan" (with the great line "It's my voodoo working") to the rumbling low-end keyboards of "I Think I'm A Mother" and everything else in-between, this is a great album to have going the next time you're fooling around with your favorite lust-object. And that VOICE... (!) My oh my.

Okay, just in case a few of you out there are still confused: this is Harvey Milk, the band (including one guy currently in Bad Wizard), not Harvey Milk, the dead guy. Just... just wanted to clear that up.... Anyway, during their brief existence (they're broken up, naturally), they released three albums, the middle of which is a bleak masterpiece of slow wasting doom (that would be the one we're discussing here, natch). And i mean slow. Parts of "Pinocchio's Example" are slow enough to make you think time's stopped -- but then other parts are surprisingly fast for a while, before slowing back down to a crawl again. As far as musicianship goes, these guys are absolutely tight. The song itself, like most of the other songs here, is long and divided (more or less) into movements from quiet and brooding to obscenely loud and heavy. Everything on here is so slow that it will fuck with your sense of time: you'll think you're surely getting near the end of the album, only to look up and see that you're still only on the fourth song out of eleven. The album's one drawback is that their masterplan doesn't leave a lot o' room for variety: most of the album is quiet, then loud, then quiet, then loud, etc., which does get a tad old after a while. But their sense of dynamics is so keen that it's easily possible to overlook this; besides, for something as dark 'n majestic as the stunning "Brown Water," i'm willing hang with 'em.

Taken separately, each song is like a cataclysmic wall of sonic fear wallowing in its stinking gin, depressed and suicidal and standing on the ledge shouting incoherently as the gawkers below; taken all together, well... short of being noise or the first Swans album, i'm not sure how you could get more oppressive. I'll bet i could use this disc to clear parties with no problem. I like the way on "Sunshine (no sun) Into the Sun" they start with a lovely li'l acoustic guitar motif then stop abruptly and launch into this monstrously heavy, bass-soaked tribal dirge that goes on for approximately an ice age or two. Kiss records notwithstanding, they betray their jazz roots on the heavily syncopated "Go Back to France," and any heavy band that manages to cover Leonard Cohen without fucking it up (as they do on "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong," featuring an exquisitely tortured vocal worthy of a Norgwegian black metal band). Plus "The Boy With Bosoms" is one of the heaviest things ever recorded and will fuck up your speakers. The only question now, then, is: why don't you already own this fine disc?

Eric Hausmann -- BACKBONES OF LOST DOGS (Spilling Audio)

Another interesting cassette from guitarist (and, judging from some tracks here, occasional drummer) Eric Hausmann. Favorites include "Arab League," a catchy instrumental with banjo and mandolin -- i'm a sucker for the plink- type instruments; the off-kilter rocking of "There's a Twitch in My Eye and I Can't Sleep"; "The Fungus Fire Death Chant," a waltzing song (of sorts) with "lyrics" consisting of bizarre laughter, recorded live with Ancient Chinese Secret (where Hausmann plays drums); the weirdly-devolved Morricone soundtrack mania of "Theme From a 70's Biker Movie"; "Dust," with its jaunty beat and semi-jazzy horns; the stark and pretty "Icicle"... all of which are under three minutes (well, "Twitch" is 3:08, if you want to get technical).

The longer pieces are on Side Two (or, according to the liner notes, Sides Three and Four), where there are only five songs. Odd percussion and and weird- sounding trumpets dominate "Winded in the Timber," while things get jazzy again on "Java and Some Cars," where tapes and manipulated voices augment the quiet keyboard and guitar arrangement. "Pavement" continues in a similar vein, with more emphasis on the unusual sounds, while "Slow Motion Smile" features droning keyboards and more slow and thoughtful guitar. And the sound of "Spilling Shadows" is like the sound of distant thunder in the setting sun....

Wow, talk about cryptic... this release, by a guy i've never heard of, arrived in my mailbox with no fanfare and accompanied only by a tearsheet review from Aquarius Records and a card pointing toward Hawk's web site. The disc itself doesn't even bother with trivialities like liner notes, musician credits, or even song titles... it's just cryptic shaky line drawings and a brief list of thanks. I know playing it close to the vest is a stylistic oddity of many experimental artists, but this is a tad ridiculous.... As it turns out, Hawk's web site is just as cryptic, so to decipher what's at work here we can only rely on the clues provided by the Aquarius blurb. Abduction, as it turns out, is the label run by Sun City Girls, so automatically we can expect that this will not be a pop album... and given the comparisons to No Neck Blues Band and Sun City Girls, plus the invocation of Jandek's name, even before the disc goes in the CD player i'm guessing "guitar primitive" aesthetic.

Surprise surprise, this turns out to be correct -- Hawk strums almost (but not quite) aimlessly at an acoustic guitar that sounds a million years old while rambling on like a demented country blues freak. Forget Sun City Girls, this is more like Blind WIllie McTell or Robert Johnson as reinterpreted by someone obviously influenced by Fahey's electro-collage period. Often Hawk's wandering vocal delivery is counterpointed by a genuinely creepy whisper -- Hawk himself, i assume, hissing like a bed of angry rattlesnakes -- and while i have a hard time figuring out exactly what the hell Hawk is rambling about, it sounds pretty ominous, whatever it is. While most of the action centers around Hawk and his lonesome guitar, there are moments where other instruments (usually of the horn variety) or strange collage electronics barge in, which moves him out of Jandek's territory and more into Fahey's (although he doesn't even bother attempting flashy on the guitar -- it's strictly a rhythm instrument to Hawk, and an erratic one at that). Bizarre, cryptic stuff, but perversely compelling. I've never been a huge Sun City Girls fan, but i can see how they would have found this interesting enough to release it. It's largely unfathomable, all right, but carries plenty of menace....

The cryptic Hawk returns with a mysterious collection of tunes with absurd titles (my favorite: "I bought you a lollipop store just to watch you suck on things"), a bunch of efx boxes, and an apparent desire to puzzle the listener. The songs (there are eight of them) are fragmented, drifting exercises in drone and reverb, littered with heavily processed and looped snippets of conversation. Occasionally (as on "if it's not your hair it's your underwear") he strums a tinny-sounding guitar and mumbles an indecipherable but ominous-sounding narrative of sorts. Sounds of nature (especially water) abound, and inexplicable moments of tortured rhythm and speech suggest a primitivist nature lurking within the disc's odd approach to ambience and found sound. Strange and indescribable stuff, somewhere between the guitar-primitive quasi-field recordings of Eugene Chadbourne and alien transmissions from a colony of ghosts. Simultaneously ambient and curiously unsettling. We do not recommend for use with hallucinogens.

Strange, unsettling stuff from the dark recesses of... uh, Maryland? Hmmm... the smoke factories must be taking their toll up north.... This actually isn't too far removed from the sounds emanating from Zenflesh releases. Deep throbbing bass rumbles, clunking rhythms, and other strange behavior create an ominous atmosphere on "a killing," while shuddering bass tones and lonesome piano plunking reach for a space bizarrely between the organic sludge of Turk Knifes Pope and the otherworldly moodiness of Angelo Badalamenti (the guy who did the TWIN PEAKS theme, you'll recall). Another track, "the law," is sort of like... uh... um, a soundtrack score rendered in dub with most of the dub subsequently removed, maybe? Ambient and skeletal, minimal and menacing. More sounds like shoes tumbling in a dryer and recorded at half-speed show up in "gratuitious sex scene," against a backdrop of shimmering wind, and the soundtrack motif springs to mind again on "killer eludes the cops," centered around a droning, revolving whine and augmented by destroyed bass rumbling, chittering fuzz, and a vaguely SHAFT-like rhythm composed from something indescribable. Dunno how well this is gonna play in Peoria, but Hayleck ought to be scoring soundtracks for depressing, violent underground flicks. Definitely worth looking into if you're hep to the whole Zenflesh thing, although you'll have to make the effort since this is self-released and has no distribution and all that jazz....

Haze -- [demo]

Self-described as an "alternative to the alternative," the music of Haze is much more. With a wide range of inspirational music to draw from, the music is fairly focused. The kind of focus that you get when you hold a magnifying glass up to the sun and let the heat drive like a needle on fire straight through your skin. With only three songs, there really isn't much to go on, but I like what there is. The heavy underground bass throbs clash nicely with the melting touch of the vocals. Vocals that come very close to cute, but are saved by a cold edge of cynicism that lies between each word. From a PJ Harvey-touched dirge covered with Haze to a couple of funky riff- ridden ballads that are sung like Tori Amos if she had a permanent sneer, this demo serves its purpose, which is to make wait anxiously for the next release, hopefully coming soon. [mf]

Headshake -- TABLOID ROCK [Tabloid Records]

Judging from the sniggering frat-boy humor stamped all across the lyrics and the hysterical tabloid-style "liner notes" (all lies, true, but they are HUMOROUS lies), i think it's safe to say that the guys (and they are definitely GUYS -- see Dave Barry for the in-depth explanation between men vs. guys) of Headshake got into this here rock 'n roll business for one reason only -- yes, the only SENSIBLE reason: girls. Preferably lots of them. With... dare we say it?... big blue eyes and, uh, bigger hooters. They are not ashamed to admit this, as the lyrics of "Suzy Can't Keep Her Shirt On" (hint: think Wet T-Shirt Night) make most evident. The leering double-entendres of "Big Cigars" ("I walked across the street to Sam's Drug Store / He said he could get Cuban for a little more / And when she asked to smoke my big cigar / I told her my place wasn't very far") only confirm this belief. And let's be frank -- everybody with any good sense is only in it for the girls. (Gawd, it certainly ain't for the $$$, that's for sure. Unless you're Mick Jagger or something.) Deep down, far beneath his deep and sensitive artistic sensibilities, even Jim O'Rourke is in it for the girls. Really! Would i lie to you? Hell, even Melissa Ethridge is in it for the girls! SEE HOW IT ALL COMES TOGETHER?

But lest you think that Headshake are just another bunch of giggling sexist pigs, they demonstrate on songs like "Heart on Breaking" and "Give Me Your Hands" that they can be smooth and sensitive dudes too. Of course, this may be all part of the smooth operator line, but at least they manage to pull it off, and that's what COUNTS, right? Right? In fact, the two novelty songs are actually the exception here -- most of it is quasi-weepy pop ballads, hardly what you'd expect from the packaging. The fact that they play it all well (their two guitarists are truly pretty swank) doesn't hurt either. You'd never guess from the goofy tabloid humor of the cover and liner notes that their hards -- excuse me, HEARTS -- held such tender romance, would ya?

So what are they, then? Why, they're... they're... they're LIFE ITSELF. The key to the cosmos. The cosmic glue that holds the crystal egg together deep inside the bowels of Buddha. Either that, or a pretty tuneful bar band with no real pretensions about art but a yen to entertain. And they're from Salt Lake City no less, Mormon Capital of the Universe, which probably explains everything. I don't know that they'll ever be the Next Big Thing, but they're tuneful enough for my taste. And they have the concept down cold that "the men don't know, but the little girls understand," all right. They're certainly well ahead of the curve on that tip....

Angie Heaton -- SPARKLE [Parasol]

Parasol has been recommending this as being heavily influenced by the GoGos and Let's Active, but it sounds to me more like Angie's got a huge stack of 60s garage-rock albums in constant rotation on her turntable at home. It's a far cry from her days in the godlike Corndolly, who generally sounded like a deranged cross between New Order and the Butthole Surfers after listening to lots of Neil Young records. As cool as that may have been, i think i like this even better. It's certainly caffienated enough -- i have no idea who the hell Nick Rudd is, but he's the guitarist this time and mon, he CRANKS. Particularly on the opener "Let Go," where he unwinds a blinding trash solo against handclaps flat-out cribbed from some Merseybeat song or something. "Flying" (as in "I'd rather be...") rocks even harder, and "Rollerskate" is not only obscenely catchy, but contains some truly hilarious stream-of- unconsciousness lyrics and more hep squealy guitar histronics.

But lo! There is balance -- witness the languid (almost pokey, even) "Hydroplane" and "Umbrella Sarah," which is essentially the former with more distortion and different lyrics. But then "Super Falling Star" is like spilling your coffee in your lap -- all stop 'n start buzzsaw pop riffs over a steady, steady, steady beat. (Which brings up an interesting point -- even though Angie is the drummer and it's her album, she actually has the drums mixed down throughout, evidence that she has no ego problems. This would never happen if it were a guitarist's album, ha!)

The rest of the album is more of the same, all of it immensely swank, including a boss cover of "Walk Away Renae" (originally by the Left Banke). I must say, though, that "Blacksmith" ("I am the blacksmith, I live on the 21st floor") is one of the quirkiest things Angie's played on since "Squirting Banana Dildo" from the Corndolly days. (Still most hep, however.) And "If You Ever Change Your Mind" is completely crazed, opening like a thundering surf-popmetal tune and closing the album in appropriately energetic fashion. My only complaint: argh, why is it only 35 minutes long? I want more... more....

Matt Heckert -- MECHANICAL SOUND ORCHESTRA (Catasonic)

Better known as an early member of Mark Pauline's Survival Research Labs (SRL), Matt Heckert was one of the core assistants who helped create and build the machines used by SRL. Heckert also came up with some of his own machines that often made loud, curious noises. In time, he parted ways with SRL. However, he still builds his own noise machines (a la the Italian Futurist, Russulo?). This disc comprises recordings from various installations and performances during 1993 and 1994. A symphony of crashes, grinding, loud booms, etc. tempting the listener to imagine what it might have been like to witness the performance. Fun stuff. [yol]

Helium -- PIRATE PRUDE [EP] (Matador)

This band sounds awfully BIG for a three-piece, which is hunky-dory by me. The three are Mary Timony (formerly of Autoclave) waving the guitar and wailing with the eerie angel voice, plus Shawn Devlin and Brian Dunton on drums and bass, both on loan from another band (but I forget which one). So anyway, "Baby Vampire Made Me" has up and down dynamics, scary little-girl crooning, stingy guitars, and a drum part ripped off from the Beatles' "Come Together," definitely a workable combination. "XXX" has a big, big, thudding bass and guitar lines that alternate between sustained wailing and flat-out stomp crunch... sort of like an American shoegazer thing, only bent on ripping your face off every so often. "OOO" sounds vaguely like it might be descended from the Dream Syndicate's "Until Lately," at least until the swinging squealy guitar comes in. Besides, Steve Wynn certainly never sounded this dreamy, although he DID manage to be about as creepy. The same elements come into play in "Love $$$," only augmented by lines about selling your body and how "you're not an angel." This doesn't even begin to explain how totally immense this is. Mary Timony has the kind of voice that manages to be dreamy, childlike, and fucking scary all at the same time, kind of like a ghost with a guitar. Give me more... more... more....

Helium -- THE DIRT OF LUCK [Matador Records]

Oh, the anguish... the wait... it's been so LONG... like the itchy stump of a drowner (note "clever" Brise Glace reference!) twitching in the middle of the Sahara... blah blah blah... but now... YES... Helium have RETURNED! Mary's BACK! Oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy!!!

Now that I'm totally blown any pretense of a "critical" review, uh-huh, let me point out that this album is very different from their previous ep, PIRATE PRUDE. This one relies less on a huge wall of droning guitars and is, uh, even MORE eccentric, which means that some of the songs take a few listens to "sink in." (Meaning that for many, the first spin will result in much head- scratching... "HUH? What the fuck did they DO? They SOUND WEIRD....") But there's some incredible stuff going on here. They still have a tendency to sound like a bizarre cross between Metallica and My Bloody Valentine -- witness the ping- pong bassline and lurching riffdeath of "Trixie's Star," for instance -- and guitarist/lyricist Mary Timony is STILL incredibly obsessed with dirt, angels, whores, and body parts, but creepiness abounds here, just as on PIRATE PRUDE.

It IS annoying that they all but buried her vocals in "Silver Angel," and I'm not sure what it means that there are two instrumentals (the tinkly piano thing of "Comet # 9" and the wall-of-sound-fury of "Flower of the Apocalypse," in which Mary and Ash Bowie are credited with "guitars of death) -- generally that's a bad sign that the artistes in question got "stuck" in their creative process, but they work, so... whatever.... However, they more than make up for it with the creepy, dominatrix-fueled roar of "Baby's Going Underground," in which their usual tinny chime-style guitars get steamrollered at regular points by a crazed martial drum/crush-guitar duet. Most impressive, though, is the last half of the song, in which Mary mumbles "Baby likes it like that/ When it hurts a million days after the fact/ undergroundundergroundundergroundunder- groundunderground...." while the drums and guitars flail away in a lock and lull pattern, set on hold during what must be the longest fade in history, summoning up the image of a slo-mo film of angels feeding their wings through industrial paper shredders until the room is full of blood and feathers.

"Skeleton" and "Superball" are a wee bit closer to "traditional" indie rock, but still a million miles better than most of the sludge that passes for "inspiration" lately. The crashing waves of sound come into play again on "All the X's Have Wings," as well as Mary's return to singing on helium, which means that I have absolutely no idea what the song's about, of course. (But it sounds good, whatever it is.) "Oh the Wind and the Rain" sounds a bit too much like "Ghost Car" (the flip side of the "Pat's Trick" single) with additional instrumentation... so much so that i'm about halfway convinced that they started out being the same song and got "split" somewhere along the way. Not that it really matters, I suppose... The pentultimate track "Honeycomb" is really cool though; it sounds like Mary borrowed Chris Isaak's Silvertone guitar after the "Wicked Game" sessions and just kind of dawdles along while Mary drawls about a devil-doll bitch who's "sweeter than honeycomb" even while planning to stick you out o' SHEER SPITE.

The bad part is that now I probably have to wait another year for MORE Helium (yes I know, I'm greedy)....

Helium -- NO GUITARS [Matador]

First thing: The title is a lie. There are plenty, plenty guitars on here. Second thing: Mary Timony is still godlike and full of weird, spiky guitar riffs and capable of generating lots of floaty guitar haze, like Galaxie 500 in bed with My Bloody Valentine. Third thing: I still want to smooch Mary Timony's feet. Fourth thing: This is, sadly enough, only an EP. One can never have enough of Mary and her floaty, spiky guitars....

And for all i know, it may BE just Mary; no one is listed in the brief and cryptic liner notes (well, producer Mitch Easter is credited with guest slide guitar on "Silver Strings," but that's it). It certainly wouldn't be out of character for her to be tossing recalcitrant bandmates to the side and doin' it for herself. Regardless of whether or not that's actually case here, whatever she's doing is working: this EP is rock-solid, considerably better than the "Superball" maxi-single of a while ago. It more or less picks up where THE DIRT OF LUCK left off... sort of. There's nothing here quite as apocalyptic as that album's "Baby's Going Underground," my personal vote for the quintessential Helium track (with "Lucy" right behind), but what is here is plenty swank enough.

On the six tracks here, she's largely taken a slightly different tack this time around: where the first EP was a massive roar of droning, wavering guitar bedrock festooned with weird elliptical noodlings, and THE DIRT OF LUCK was heavy on the dissonance tip, on this one she tends to alternate between the two extremes -- carving out verses that lean toward dissonance and moving into more harmonic moments on the choruses and vice versa. That's the master plan on "Silver Strings" and "The King of Electric Guitars," anyway; on "Sunday," she alternates pretty step-down single-note riffs with weird, ominous string bends over a background that could be faraway guitars or an oscillating synth, one never knows with her. The short "13 Bees" is even more puzzling -- a Moog waltz (!) overlaid with guitars that sound like saxaphones, most odd.

The big log this time -- the main dish, shall we say -- is the final track, "Riddle of the Chamberlin," which starts out with the same kind of slow, faux-military beat of "Baby's Going Underground" and a gradually building army of chiming guitars winding around Mary's singing. Said guitars and drums eventually fade out into a shuddering blur of gargantuan overfloater guitars and an ominous halftime beat, like towering storm clouds gradually creeping closer... closer... CLOSER... until it all explodes in an orgy of chiming overtone guitars circling around a heart- stopping riff. Yow! I... i... cannot resist....

Have i mentioned that i want to smooch Mary Timony's feet?

Sure do wish she'd pick up the pace on her recording schedule, tho....

Helium -- THE MAGIC CITY [Matador]

The thing i like most about Helium is that every album they do sounds different... but they all sound like Helium. A neat trick, and easier said than done, as way too many other bands could tell you. And this one, their second full-length release (their fourth overall, excluding a maxi-single and a million compilation appearances), throws plenty o' curves. To begin with, Helium apparently thinks it is now a psychadelic band (!); and -- in an interesting move -- they've hidden the big pile o' distortoboxes, which provides a new clarity that reveals all sorts of interesting shit hiding behind the spiky ping-pong riffs. Stuff like soaring keyboard lines on "Leon's Space Song," a violn (!!) on "Lullaby of the Moths," and on a great many tracks, instruments more appropriate to a country record (!!!): pedal steel, slide guitar, and mandolin, all courtesy of Mitch Easter, who produced this perplexing thing. There's even a trumpet on "Devil's Tear," and a weird noise collage on "Medieval People"... yip yip, what be goin' ON here? I yi yi....

The more things change, though, the more they remain the same. The core of the album's sound is still essentially what it was before: Mary's wispy vox riding atop a sea of lurching guitar and hypnotic bass, underpinned by that relentless beat. The main thing that makes this sound so different is that by paying even more attention to details and by removing the constant cloud o' fuzz, everything suddenly sounds brighter, clearer, and... dare we say it?... perhaps more accessible. (Eek!) At any rate, this is clearly a much more ambitious record than anything they've done before. What's most impressive is that they've been able to clearly retain the most readily indentifiable elements of their sound and then expand upon them with textural embellishments without getting carried away.

All of which sets the stage for two of their most ambitious pieces, "Lullaby of Moths" and "The Revolution of Hearts." The first is a slow, gorgeous pop crystal filled with crying slide guitar and violin, one of the most beautiful things they've ever done; the second (which is actually divided into two parts) is a long, pinwheeling collection of circular riffs that eventually blossoms into a kaleidescopic battle of spinning synth lines, chiming guitar riffs, and chamberlin sounds, with various other instrments snaking through at times. Helium's off-kilter version of psychadelia is both consistently engaging and actually sort of, you know, kinda... DANCEABLE. How... how SCARY....

So anyway, people who's been wondering what all the fuss is about might want to check it out. There are some mighty swell sounds on this disc....

Helium -- "Hole in the Ground/Lucy" (Pop Narcotic)

Color this mondo... the a-side could be shoegazer music at the beginning if Mary Timony's guitar weren't so mean and stingy, and then it turns into a sick approximation of My Bloody Metallica... shoegazer metal? What a scary concept. "Lucy" starts off with weird rumbling noises and soon turns into a languid bassline and a guitar that Kevin Shields could have engineered, only minus the avalanche of tremelo action... and then Mary Timony comes in with the snotty observation that "Lucy says boredom is the biggest word she's ever heard." Much wailing ensues. Hypnotic. Entrancing. Totally (I'm gonna say it, brace yourself) godlike. I wanna sleep at the foot of Mary Timony's bed. Does this mean you should own it? Sure....

Helium -- "Pat's Trick/Ghost Car" (Matador Records)

More whole-wheat fuzzy goodness from Mary Timony and company. It's not quite as godlike as "Lucy," but since that was one of those songs that appear only once in a band's career (it just happened kinda early for Helium), that's okay; besides, this is still spiffier than most anything else out right now. Lots of "oh-oh-oh-oh" wailing going on here, which sounds really cool, although I have the feeling it could turn into a cliche for the band pretty quickly, and of course more bucking, wavering guitar from Mary T. and a fuzzed-out rhythm section that's not quite so spacy as the stuff on PIRATE PRUDE. "You are the most beautiful thing" indeed.... The b-side, "Ghost Car," is so weird that I'm no even going to TRY to describe it. It has a real nice piano figure, though, plus the lines "I am the devil and he's my fist / I am evil but I don't exist," which sounds really deep... or something... aaaah, just go buy the damn thing.

Helium -- "Superball" + 4 CD-ep [Matador]

One thing i like about Helium is that they have an obsessive need to tack on extra goodies at the end of every single they release (which is, of course, a clever marketing move in itself, since it makes collecting the single utterly indispensable even if you already have the full album). On this EP they include four new songs (the 7" only includes two) beyond the album cut "Superball" (and the fact that they chose this track for the second single leaves the dim hope that they might release a THIRD single before it's all over with, including MORE goodies, since it would be absolutely criminal not to devote "Baby's Going Underground" to a single of its own -- but i'm rambling again, so sorry).

"What Institution Are You From?" comes across like Helium's warped take on the cocktail lounge phenomenon, and her vox on this one are indeed helium-like to say the least. "Lucky Charm" opens with a repetitive piano line before exploding into loud riffing, and includes some heavily reverbed piano melodies toward the end, but otherwise doesn't quite match up to the strength of anything from the full album (probably why it's HERE instead, eh?). "#12 L'Enfant," though, makes really cool use of a Moog synth and could have easily been on THE DIRT OF LUCK. "I Am A Witch" returns to the piano fixation again before descending down a crooked stepladder of really jagged guitar chording, the only thing that saves it from being disposable for me (i favor massive guitars over pianos, remember). Interesting, but probably only for the already converted... the unconverted should pick up THE DIRT OF LUCK first, eh?

I should really keep better track of my cheat sheets. Hermano is John Garcia (ex-Kyuss, Slo Burn, currently of Unida), Steve Earle (no, not THAT Steve Earle -- this one used to be in the Afgan Whigs), a guy from Supafuzz, a guy from Disengage, and Steve "Dandy" Brown. I believe this record was actually recorded back in 1999-2000 and due to be released on Man's Ruin, but it was shelved when Unida signed to American. (Or was it Columbia? Can anyone even keep track?) That feed the disc for release; of course, by that time Man's Ruin had gone under. So then Tee Pee stepped in. Convoluted enough?

The disc itself is pretty good. What surprised me is that given the players and the fact that the whole thing was helmed by Mr. Brown, the disc sounds a lot like John Garcia's other projects. Granted, it's not quite as stripped-down as Slo Burn or Unida and it's not as convoluted as Kyuss, but it definitely has that sort of feel. Actually, you could almost say that it splits the difference between Kyuss and Garcia's later projects. So fans of Garcia's other work, or stoner fans in general, will probably be all over this and people who have never heard Kyuss, Unida, or Slo Burn and are are curious might do well to check it out. [n/a]

Kristen Hersh -- HIPS AND MAKERS [Sire Records]

What a sad, eerie, beautiful record. I've never been all that enthusiastic about the Pixies/Throwing Muses spinoff axis -- i like about half of what the Pixies ever did, I think the Breeders are OK (mostly because I've got the hots for Kelley "oh dear, where DID I put that needle now?" Deal), I don't care for Belly, Frank Black's first album is OK but the second one is boring, and I've never heard the Throwing Muses, so I don't know about them. But THIS is a completely different beast. Borrowing liberally for the most part from artists who started their careers before Hersh was even ALIVE (we're talking Dylan, Beatles, Melanie, lots o' dead blues guys), this is one of those albums that manages to simultaneously sound brand-new and 20 years old at the same time. Neat trick....

Hands-down best track has to be the opener "Your Ghost," which sounds like it was recorded by someone standing alone a million miles from nowhere. Quiet and creepy and not even Michael Stipe's mildly annoying background vocals can knock the song off balance. "Beestung" starts off with a piano and vocal line imported from the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and trundles along like a tape loop for the rest of the song, while "Sundrops" thunders along with a violent string section like an unholy cross between Tchaikovsky, Miranda Sex Garden, and Melanie (!) -- which would be REALLY OBNOXIOUS if it didn't work, but it does.

A lot of what makes this album so creepy at times are the juxtaposition (hah! I KNEW that English degree would come in handy some day!) of pretty acoustic guitar and strings with some really psyched-out lyrics, as on "Houdini's Blues," where she sings "oh no don't you put me in that box / you know what you can do with those locks / bet your life i'll come crawling out again / you'll have to deal with me later...." (The song, incidentally, was originally written by her father; she found the song lying around and, for reasons too complicated to go into here, decided to rewrite it and added the lyrics.) And on "Loon," the OTHER best track, she sounds like's on the verge of psychosis, ranting "some store / i'm not going back there any more / wandered in / don't think i'll do that again" like a paranoid schizophrenic getting delusional, leading up to the chorus of "you crazy... loon" amid loon cries. (Yes, I know it sounds goofy but on the CD it's kind of scary, trust me.)

The rest of the album follows pretty much in the same fashion -- combining the old with the new, such as on "Velvet Days," which sounds like a cross between the Cranberries and Dylan, and interjecting lyrics about confusion and desperation, as in "Close Your Eyes," which sounds (like everything else) absolutely gorgeous yet contains some truly poisonous lyrics. "Me and My Charms" gets bonus points for the lines "when i kiss the angel / i have a taste of you / when i take the angel / i have a piece of you." In "The Letter," apparently the "centerpiece" of the album, Hersh rambles in surreal, disjointed fashion over a guitar strum that could have appeared on the first Dylan album (and probably did). And then she gets more bonus points from stealing from Peter, Paul, and Mary's "Stewball" in "The Cuckoo" before ending with the peculiar "is-this-a-bizarre-sea-chanty- or-what?" title track. (Two instrumental tracks appear on the album two, "Sparky" and "Lurch," but they're negligible....)

Strong stuff and highly recommended. A word of warning -- Hersh has a little-girl-with-the-hiccups voice that apparently really ANNOYS some people (not me, though). Something to consider before you plunk down the $$$....

This is an import CD-single thingy from overseas which is mainly interesting for the covers of Nirvana's "Pennyroyal Tea" and the Beatles' "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey." Her cover of the Nirvana tune flat-out smokes the original -- she's got the right kind of voice for it and the addition of ominous, subterranean bass on the verses is a big improvement. And then she cuts loose with a blinding guitar solo capable of stunning a rhino at fifty paces - i yi yi! The Beatles cover is okay, although it's really difficult to outdo the Beatles, but she doesn't embarrass herself either, so i guess she comes out okay. Interesting but not essential....

Hersh returns with her latest salvo of bizarre observations, and this time she sounds edgier -- mostly because she's moving back in the direction of electric fever. The result is something that often sounds closer to a Throwing Muses album, which is kind of interesting. "Echo" is slow and stately, even quiet, but every so often the tranquility is shattered by a wall of fuzzed-out electric guitar. Several of the songs on this disc, in fact, are dominated by fuzzy electric guitars -- "Fog," "A Cleaner Light," for instance -- or swampy guitars, such as on "Faith." The rest of the album is heavily overlaid with touches appropriated from ambient and electronica genres, which makes for a really interesting sound in conjunction with Hersh's more traditional acoustic guitar stylings. Beyond that, the sound is a bit more open and less cluttered than on some of her other work -- gawd, i think she's made a full-fledged pop record or something. Of course, with that quirky warble and the cognitive dissonance of her free-association lyrics at work, i rather doubt anything from this will become an MTV staple, but it's definitely a solid addition to her catalog....

My personal favorite is "San Francisco," which opens with swirly junk and suddenly turns into an actual song with a walking bassline and violent acoustic slashing and lyrics like "i was born in America / born with the fists of a saint" -- it lurches back and forth between sounds like two entirely different songs duking it out before ending in sludgy ambience. With the rest of the album, outside of a couple of obvious tracks like "Echo" (the lead single) and "Fog," what i like more are the spooky ambient flourishes at the beginning and ending of songs and the eccentric stuff buried in the background. Recommended. The whole business of promoting the album by attaching a motel keychain was a daft idea, though.

The Hidden is an indie-supergroup of sorts, apparently, featuring members of Gaskill (a metal band from New Bedford) and Medea Connection (mutant music from Beantown) , and drawing comparisons to both Danzig and Morrisey. The key ingredient is shouter Kevin Grant, who comes across as a Morrisey enthusiast channeling the early glory of Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman, only far more unpredictable and energetic. Metal (and melodic!) guitars, tempos and fury worthy of either metal or hardcore, strange ideas about rhythm and song arrangement, and Grant's delivery -- one baby-step shy of outright possession -- make for compelling listening. Plus they steal blatantly from Led Zeppelin's "Communication Breakdown," always a good sign. I know absolutely nothing about the two bands who've joined heads here, but heaviness abounds and they're prone to strange, borderline-noise (in the vein of Sun Ra, not Merzbow) freakouts here and there. It was recorded by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, so you know it sounds good, and the seven songs here are available in a nifty and well-designed digipak for retro-nerds like moi. Good stuff.

What can I say about Wino that hasn't already been said? The guy is the king of THE RIFF. Mention his name and people like Dave Grohl, Greg Anderson, Lee Dorian, Henry Rollins, the guys from Fugazi, and Phil Anselmo turn into raving fan boys. "The Obsessed? Holy shit. They fucking rocked, dude!" "St. Vitus? Heavier than thou, bro, heavier than thou." "Spirit Caravan? Shit yeah. Awesome." After his last band (Spirit Caravan) collapsed, the word was that Wino was sick of the music business and was going to lay low for a while. He laid low for maybe three months, then hooked up with Place of Skulls as the second guitar player. By early last year he was back with his newest project, The Hidden Hand. Whatever he was doing during the downtime, it sure didn't mellow him.

DIVINE PROPAGANDA is one pissed-off disc. Almost all of the psychedelic elements that characterized his output with Spirit Caravan have been dropped and replaced with focused, driving riffs. It will probably put long-time finds in mind of the more uptempo songs from The Obsessed's 1994 disc THE CHURCH WITHIN. This is a good thing, as TCW was one of The Obsessed's strongest releases. It also doesn't hurt that the rhythm section of Bruce Falkinburg and Dave Hennessy are top-notch, matching Wino riff for riff. The most surprising thing about DIVINE PROPAGANDA is that lyrically Wino and company place themselves slightly to the left of Rage Against the Machine. Throughout the record Wino takes shots at Bush, Jr., stands against global warming, the American media, and religious fanatics. The liner notes even include a reading list, which tells people to check out books by muckraker extraordinaire Greg Palast, E.O. Wilson, and David Icke (yeah, the David Icke who believes that the royal family, selected world leaders, and other assorted power-brokers are giant alien lizards. [TMU: It's actually much, much worse than that, but I can't tell you because it's a secret.] I say this is surprising because as a whole, the genre formerly known as stoner rock is not known for its progressive politics. The bands either avoid politics altogether or are into a sort of redneck libertarianism (see the much-missed Man's Ruin Records and associated bands). It's nice to see someone coming at things from a different angle. [n/a]

Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson - CHILDREN OF NATURE (Touch)

After more than three years of advertizing and waiting, Touch has finally released this recording by the Icelandic musician known to fans of the World Serpent crowd as HoH. This is the soundtrack which HoH composed and arranged back in 1990 for the film titled CHILDREN OF NATURE. The film is directed by Fredrik von Fredriksson and takes place in Iceland. It deals with issues of growing old in a quiet, understated and powerful way. Part of this soundtrack initially appeared (with vocals and other changes) in a Current 93 Presents release, an album titled "Island" with HoH and Bjork (ex- of the Sugarcubes) amongst a few other Iclandic folks. In comparrison, the actual soundtrack is really quite a bit different. The music is quiet, introspective, but strongly stated and deeply moving. HoH builds from a foundation of sound textures and landscapes with a cast of others playing more acoustic and organic instruments in accompaniment. Joolie Wood (Nurse With Wound, Current 93) and Szymon Kuran on violin; Chhimed Rig'dzin Rinpoche playing Kangling and Damaru; Stefan Orn Arnarson on cello; and Sigtryggur (Siggy) Baldursson provides percussion. It's not always that music can draw a picture that equals the strong imagry and emotion we see in film, but this soundtrack captures the essence of that in way which is hauntingly beautiful. A wonderful release. [yol]

[Abrupt jump-cut to the Moon Unit and his entourage standing in a hallway on Sublevel 7, where the only light comes from one flickering fluorescent tube. The Moon Unit has his hands wrapped tightly around TASCAM-Girl's throat, having snuck up on her from behind; her Zygotronic Hyper-Fleem Handheld Phase Disruptor lies on the ground under her feet, which dangle several inches above the floor. The Moon Unit is crazed, his eyes filled with the same brand of blind, pinwheeling fury you might expect to see in a pit bull on the attack; TASCAM-Girl is turning blue. The entourage watches this new development with some interest as CyberLieutenant 12-Track sorts madly through the CD archives, hoping to pull out something that will distract the Moon Unit from his demonic goal.]

TMU (grunting): HA! Fiendish whore! Now I have you exactly where I want you!

TG: Urk. Grau! MEEP! (feet kicking wildly)

C12: Oh, I am most disturbed by this turn of events. Where's that CD? (searching frantically) Ah, there it is... now let us pray I'm not too late....

[Blinding waves of psychotic noise fury leap from the speakers. Pym crashes to the floor with her hands over her ears; C12 sits down abruptly, startled. M--w and M--a perk up, leaning into the speakers, suddenly interested. The Moon Unit loosens his grip, his head turning toward the speakers.]

TMU: Jojo?

TG (breaking his grip and slumping to the floor): Gack! Hurk! (spasmolytic coughing as color returns to her face)

TMU: It is! Jojo! I'd recognize this anywhere -- that sizzling, fried-out atom-smasher guitar, those scrabbling bushido-gone-kamikaze vocals, those out-of-control drums... this must be from Jojo's new solo disc, the one with busty Miki Sawaguchi on the cover.

C12: This sounds extremely out of control.

TMU: What do you expect? This is the mastermind behind Haijokaidan, after all.

TG (sitting up, hacking): Haijokaidan? Sounds like a sneeze.

M--w: More like one of the original noise groups, a band that has been in existence for two decades. Fine sounds of intense destruction.

M--a: Listen to this song, "death wish." Notice how the overamplified guitars sound like hovering UFOs bent on razing the earth. The joy of pain, do you not agree?

Pym (hands over her ears): I'll agree on the pain part, that's for sure. Do you suppose Jojo can even hear anything after so many years of subjecting his ears to this kind of ritual abuse?

TMU: I especially like this one, "no value people" -- it's all droning amp hum and shimmering feedback while Jojo mutters something... well, it's in Japanese so maybe it's his grocery list for all i know, but it sure sounds ominous....

TG (lurching toward her blaster): Everything sounds ominous in Japanese.

TMU: There's another instrumental here, "my tired nights and days," that is in the same ballpark....

Pym: At least this doesn't sound like knitting needles being shoved through my eardrums. He'll get loud again, though, won't he?

TMU: Yes. In the meantime, enjoy "black night, white snow" -- a walloping rock beat on what sounds like metal trash cans while Jojo intones 'n drones. Check out that guitar scratching, pretty suave, don't you think?

TG (raising her blaster): It'll be the last thing you hear, pigfucker. (starts to fire, only to be knocked over by a wave of rising feedback from the speakers)

TMU: Yes! The growing guitar-death of "my death" saves the day! (runs over and starts kicking TG)

[As the disc's final song plays out, the entire entourage turns into a whirlwind of flying fists and feet, shouting and kicking and screaming. In the confusion TG and C12 somehow manange to creep out from under the mass of bodies and crawl away. It takes several more minutes for anyone to notice, by which time they are already well down the corridor.]

His Name is Alive - STARS ON E.S.P. [4AD]

Warren and crew are at it again. His Name Is Alive are a band who know how to always keep their listeners guessing by altering the universe around us, then, like a black hole, sucking us in to their world. A tinge of withdrawal marks the end as the record comes to a close, but the trip is always a good one. In a bold attempt to decrypt the liner notes, it appears the material here is culled from odds and ends of recording sessions between 1992 and 1995. His Name Is Alive fuses a kind of bubblegum pop sensibility with angular, arhythmic playing styles, bits of noise, samples and tape collages. The result is something that on one level is either jarring or seems simplistically pure, but deeper listening reveals a complicated and intricate structure of themes and ideas. In short, a thing of beauty. For this album, along with the trademark lilting female lyrics, repetitive refrains and noise interludes, they add in a few more twists and turns to the repetoire. Some tracks sound like updated Beach Boys tunes, layered with a kind of "Sgt. Pepper's Loney Hearts Club Band"-era dreamstate. Here and there are hints of soulful choir singing against a background of acoustic guitars and ancient Casio synth noodling. On top of all this is the fact that the individual tracks are sequenced so closely to each other that the entire thing tracks as if it were single, long and unending piece. This world is not my home. [yol]

Now this is kind of intriguing... three tracks, all recorded at the Maple Tree State Conservatory, incorporating elements of ambient, spoken word, trip-hop, and goth. The cover art (a deliberately artless photo of a tractor trailer rig moving, blurred, down the highway) is so opaque that i didn't have any real inkling of what to expect, and this really kind of took me by surprise. I'm not even sure how to describe this overall, except that it's eerie and understated and (especially on the second track, "Lost in Flight") and full of surprises (especially on the bizarre third track, "Buried by the Briar"). The first track, "Smile For Me," opens with snippets of choral voices and sonic ephemera, followed by what might a cryptic shortwave radio transmission (over the sound of a grinding wall or something of that nature) before settling into a smphonic ambient drift, over which composer M. Anderson recites a "story" of... well, i'm not exactly sure, but it's cryptic, mon, very cryptic, like something David Grubbs might come up with. The ambient drift grows into an oceanic roar with muted percussion buried way in the background... the result is odd and unsettling. After that, the trip-hop beats and backwards whooshing of "Lost in Flight" come as a complete surprise, especially when it segues into baroque keyboards that surge, rise and fall, all while the beat never changes. Totally hypnotic; totally amazing. "Buried by the Briar" is another oddity, beginning with sound snippets that pan from speaker to speaker, bursts of vaguely rhythmic noise, and finally keyboards that signal an actual song, this one also anchored by a mechanical beat (although this time the beat's buried in the background). Noise is used as an interesting textural effect toward the end as well, in much the way Cheer-Accident's ENDURING THE AMERICAN DREAM worked to integrate noise into the framework of the song rather than just obliterating it. Can it be that Cheer-Accident's influence is greater than i had imagined? Regardless, this is a startling disc and i'd definitely like to hear more by this guy....

Hollydrift returns with a full-length (well, just barely at 36 minutes and some change) CD-R of experiments in sound collage. This one is a bit different than the previous ep -- it's intended more, i think, as background music, and while it remains ambient and otherworldly, there's more emphasis this time on sample material and voices. My favorite this time is "Floating on the Bellcross," a droning ambient funeral march with minimalist drums and... The loops are longer and less varied on this album, which makes for a lot of static backgrounds over which other things happen, which makes it something you either want to hear while paying a lot of attention (to catch the subtle nuances over the often-static songs) or almost none at all (with it a wash in the background that's just varied enough to keep from turning into sonic wallpaper while still being unobtrusive). This is elevator music for underground science installations, where they like their sounds intriguing without drowning out the physics conversation. Some of them are probably a bit too long for up-close listening, such as "As the World Rolls Back," but in all of them there are sounds and ideas that are unexpected and largely inexplicable. Some parts of the disc remind me of Crawling With Tarts, although has a better grasp, i think, of what to do with really baroque sounds. Another interesting release from a guy who defies easy categorization.

Hollydrift on Public Eyesore? This is a welcome development.... The third (i think) album from Mathias Anderson is a bit of a departure from his earlier work, yet still well within the parameters established early on as the core of Hollydrift's sound. Combinations of drone, found sound, electronic frippery, and the occasional hypnobeat. The main difference this time around is a thicker, generally darker sound and more emphasis on the drone elements. The attention to detail is getting pretty exacting, too -- i don't know what kind of equipment he favors these days, but this all sounds really good, clear and direct, and the drones really swing. I like the way the first song, "Rest Without Fear," opens with an amusingly appropriate sound sample and then gradually mutates into a repetitive festival of clanging drones, like machines grinding away slowly in the distance as the fog closes in and the sky grows dark. Organ-style drones that sputter to a halt, reedlike drones accompany a countdown, and then "Always Looking West" jumps off into a lingering corkscrew drone that eventually segues into "Colonial Skyway," which opens as clouds of white noise over clattering percussion and what might be horns blaring away in the background. Things get interesting when the noise abruptly turns into a sample from a station ID advertisement; as the ad fades away, the first beats of the album make their appearance -- simple, endless, hypnotic, as The Big Drone works its mojo. Like, swank, mon. "Overcast," one of the shortest tracks here, is a nice cloudburst of sound (like the blown-up sound of rain on a tin roof) that would probably get old after a while if it didn't appropriately keep things short. There's a lot happening in "Evening Carnivale," most of it chopped-up and layered chunks of found sound and samples... no inkling what it means, but the shape of sound is bent into some interesting configurations here. Beats 'n drone (and heavily reverbed vox) return for "Amphenol," which welds a tiki-tiki beat on a cowbell (or something similar) to vast acres of drone for a background of tidal motion that's nice in its fuzziness. "Distant Safety of Winter" is something of a companion piece ot "Colonial Skyway," and might even use chunks of the same raw material -- more clouds of sound, more sounds that may be from heavily blown-up audio, field-recordings run amok and greatly abused, and piles of noise drone. Another winner from both Hollydrift and Eyesore. The cover is lovely too....

Over the space of a few albums, Hollydrift (actually one Mathias Anderson) has rapidly evolved into one of the most interesting and enigmatic artists occupying the twilight territory bounded by dark ambient, sound collage, and noise. While frequently compared to the likes of Coil, Nurse With Wound, Scanner, and probably scads of artists on World Serpent, Hollydrift's sound is driven more by taking totally disparate elements (crickets in the field, advertising, scanner transmissions, odd beeping noises, the occasional instrument, conversations with no apparent bearing on the matter at hand, etc.) and somehow fusing them together through clever juxtapositions, and deriving from that raw material actual movements of sound as opposed to mere chaos. Anderson's sensibility is hard to pin down (other than that it's dark -- the liner notes offer brief commentaries that are oddly unsettling in their morbid implications, and the sound itself is frequently possessed of sufficient gravity and density to spook some people), but it can best be encapsulated as the sound of one man deliberately channeling vastly different sounds and emotions into one colossal stream of sound. While you could make an argument (sonically, at least) for Hollydrift being the American answer to Current 93, Anderson's obsessions are nowhere near as upfront or obvious. By avoiding politicizing his work or providing explanations / reasons for its direction, he leaves the listener open to interpret the sound collages in a highly individual manner -- the ten pieces of sonic experimentation here are the audio equivalent of Rorschach plates. But it's a highly controlled delivery, with considerable intelligence behind the sounds chosen and their arrangements, so the plates may not mean what you think... and your interpretation of the work may reveal far more about you, the listener, than it does about Anderson, the artist or person. Intriguing stuff, and it's reassuring to see that all the talent in this genre isn't off clubbing overseas.

Anna Homler, etc. -- MACARONIC SINES [Lowlands]

I don't know WHAT to call this, but it is weird and wonderful and really exotic and just obscenely brilliant stuff. Vocalist Anna Homler teams up with Geert Waegeman (violin, keyboards, sax, guitar, more stuff) and Pavel Fajt (drums, percussion, soundwheel) to churn out chopped-up, funky middle- eastern material that is beyond my ability to accurately describe but nevertheless is some of the most captivating and imaginative music i've heard in a long time. Consider me among the converted, mon.

The best songs here -- like "Volapuk Smile," Komida Kapak" and "Warp Sas" -- combine layered percusion with odd but expertly-placed bursts of percussion, sax and keyboards to create a shifting soundscape that still remains firmly anchored to a booty-moving groove while Homler chants, warbles, and wails in something akin to a language from Mars. Others, like "Roma," are moodier but not less otherworldly. "Bridge" combines heavy electronics with middle eastern elements for really twisted results (one of the few songs on which Homler doesn't sing; Fajt takes the mike on this one), while "Sine Wave Waltz" is exactly what it sounds like -- a waltz composed with synth waves. "M'bo Ye Ye" consists of layered vocals that form their own rhythm and beat, while "The Mystery of the Knife, Fork and Spoon" layers percussion, foreign melodies, and other unconventional musical ideas over text regarding table manners (written by Homler, read by David Moss). I am reasonably certain that few people have heard an album quite like this. What's most impressive is that what sounds unbearably cute or pretentious in theory actually turns out to be quite engaging and even accessible -- no small feat, and indicative of the caliber of these three musicians. Highly recommended for those looking for something truly new, original, and adventurous.

Honcho Overload: POUR ANOTHER DRINK (Mud Records)

First big secret to understand with this Illinois band, the Siamese twin to the better-known Hum: the secret's not in WHAT they say (regular guy and gal slice o' life stuff), it's HOW they say it. Lyrically they're reminisicent of Bob Mould, only nowhere near as morbidly confessional or vicious. Musically, they're like a humble farmer whistling a gentle tune while flowing the field, when ALL OF A SUDDEN his entire herd of cows trample him without warning.... (In other words, they got dynamics -- lots of shifts from quiet to loud and back; they wouldn't be out of place on a bill with Sugar. And no, there's no truth to the rumor that they're being sponsored by Anacin and Tylenol, that's just a VICIOUS RUMOR....) "Formula One Headache" comes on like an avalanche in progress and just gets louder and more obnoxious as it goes on, culminating in huge sheets of feedback and while noise (while the drummer's apparently given up using sticks and has turned to two-by-fours) as Bill Johnston rants are roars like a madman on the loose. "She Knows..." finds Bill sounding a tad more human, but the song itself is an osbtacle course of surprising twists and turns. Early on it dies down, making you think, "my, that was short"... only to come back bigger and louder than ever for a while before dropping into an entirely lower gear, almost pretty even. Bill croons, the bass burbles, the guitars make violin-like noises... then everything gets louder again, back and forth, when you least expect it. They like to keep you guessing, which is what makes them better than the average band.

The heart of the album though, and the band's claim to total godhead, is the supremely deranged "Bug." Opening up with slow-core drums and lots of exquisite fuzzy stuff, what follows is the biggest, fuzziest bass you've ever heard in your life -- no kidding, your speakers will levitate -- as Bill, his voice bizarrely processed, rants: "Why do you treat me like a bug/ Why do you treat me like a bug...." Then the Helmet-like riffs start walking over your face with hobnail boots. Then guitars starting howling like angry hornets looking for a small child to sting to death... then Bill's back : "Why do you treat me like a bug/ Each and every day/ Only took my little finger /To blow you away/ I think I'll get myself a bat /And show you where my love is at...." Uh-HUH... Then the bottom falls out as the bass begins sounding more like a mulching machine while the guitars spit out ugly serrated noises, howls, and thick, shimmering cascades of pure feedback, and the whole damn crazy thing just lurches over everything in its path like Godzilla in search of a happening blow-up reptile love partner. This is one of the WEIRDEST (in a very, very good way) things I've ever heard in my life, and that includes the noisefilth coming out of Japan right now. Plus the bass feedback at the end is suitable for decapitation.

So obviously I like them. And I didn't even mention the glorious cyclone riffing at the end of "Steroblaster," or the equally nifty fuzz- bass in "Two-Star," or the amusing in-joke end song "Everyone Smiles," or the immense production by Adam Schmidt, or the fact that every song on the thing is pretty damn spiffy. My only regret is that the advance cassette I have will probably break from repeated playing before the CD can come out (but the CD will be EVEN LOUDER, which will make up for that, I'm sure). You should want to own this....

This isn't so much a "forgotten" album as it is an "undiscovered" one -- it's actually the reissue of a legendary self-released album by an incredibly obscure psych band from the early seventies. Some may be familiar with it in theory from reading the Re/Search series INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC -- Jello Biafra raves about this album in the second volume. While info on the album is still sketchy, my understanding is that Hooker and his band recorded this album -- apparently a distillation of the best of a two-hour live performance (!!!!) -- and pressed a limited number of copies solely for their own amusement and to give away to family and friends. Inevitably a few of them drifted into the thrift stores, where the legend began. Unlike a lot of stuff from the "incredibly strange" fringes, there's nothing amateurish or gonzo about this -- there's no doubt in my mind that Hooker and his band could have landed a major-label deal without working hard, had they been interested in one, but i suspect that was never part of Hooker's game plan. It's certainly far better (and more listenable) than a lot of the psych albums of that period (it was initially released in 1972); in fact, it's better than most psych albums being made now. Not only is the band some seriously hot shit, but everything is done with far more restraint and taste than you normally associate with early seventies psych albums (which often tended to lean toward spastic freakouts or addled "experiments" in erratic sound manipulation), plus Hooker is an amazing singer. Track by track this album just absolutely kills. The only psych albums i've personally heard that match the level of consistency here are the third and fourth albums by Angel'in Heavy Syrup and maybe one by Nick Riff....

You know you're in for something different just by looking at the cover -- a black and white picture of the man himself with long hair and a big old beard standing on a hill overlooking some town while wearing a white robe and clutching an acoustic guitar, looking like a soul-strummin' Jesus. How mellow and earnestly hippieish is this guy? Well, the fact that he dedicates the album to his mother should tell you something... all i can say is that if this is really the best parts of another album (ARMAGEDDON, possibly a two-LP live recording, although i can only guess at that by the hints Hooker drops in the liner notes), then i'd really like to hear that album. In fact, i'd be happy to hear anything else by this band, because they're on fire and out there. Their lead guitarist (Carroll Yanni -- a man or a woman? dunno but he/she's a real fire-breathing dragon) is all over the place with spiraling psych leads while the rest of the band busts out the moves of a blues band after dropping a tab or two. They mix in nature sounds in a couple of places (the sound of the ocean on "The Sea," a storm on "Weather Girl"), but for the most part they bypass gimmicks, and unlike most psych bands, they are not absolutely drowning in reverb and spacy efx... they have just enough of it to make the guitars sound bright and vaguely celestial, but they don't overdo it by any means. Their inflluences are hard to spot -- they have a pretty original sound -- but it sounds like they're mostly influenced, oddly enough, by hard rock and blues (even though they are clearly a psych band and rarely "rock out"). For instance, the vocal melody on "Weather Girl" and bassline are strikingly similar to Nick Cave's "Sunday's Slave," which makes me wonder if both bands are using some other, even more obscure blues song for a springboard. Even more impressive is "This Thing," which opens with heavily twanged slide guitar and thunderous single-chord strums and cymbal crashes before seguing into the most uptempo thing on the album, which at its peak sounds like Alice Cooper's band circa "Halo of Flies" doing a psych-raveup. My favorite song on the disc would be either "Forge Your Own Chains" (which strikes me as something Richard Thompson might have come up with if he were in a psychedelic mood and not such as bitter and cranky as he usually is) or "The Bible," a heavy blues-oriented vamp with psych guitar noodling and flat-out Jesus-centric lyrics (dressing up like a Jesus figure may well not have been an affectation, one guesses after hearing this song). But really, everything on this disc is exceptional, and just to make the whole deal even sweeter, the CD tacks on six songs not available on the original LP, all them fine as well. Fair warning: this was released in a limited edition of 1,000 and i have a feeling those will go quickly, so if your interest in piqued, i'd strongly suggest you scoot on over to Subliminal Sounds' web site right now and get this while it's still available.

William Hooker -- GREAT SUNSET [Warm-O-Brisk]

So at long last i get the opportunity to hear the semi-legendary William Hooker... and, uh, i don't quite get it. Which brings up my ongoing problem with free jazz -- i can appreciate the bits and pieces, i can grasp that there's some kind of real artistic intent going on here, but the gesalt never arrives... it never quite adds up in my head. Which means that i'm probably a piss-poor candidate to be reviewing this disc, but they sent it to me and after reading several interviews with the man i've got a hep stack o' respect for his intellect, so i'm gonna give it a shot anyway....

"Sky Suites" sets the tone immediately by bursting into about a dozen different directions the moment the song begins. As Hooker flails away on the drums -- sometimes upfront, sometimes not, kind of interesting given that he's the man calling the shots -- the piano guy (Mark Hennen, a fine player, even though i'm not sure what the fuck his intent is here) tinkles madly, the trumpet and sax players (they have two of 'em) wail with abandon but without any real concern for song structure, and the whole thing is just barely-controlled chaos. Sometimes it's reminiscent of Sun Ra, which is a good thing, but i don't recall Mr. Ra getting quite this discombobulated... he may have been from Saturn, but his pieces were generally rooted in at least a fledgling sense of rhythm (although sometimes an extremely devious and inscrutable one), while this appears to be all over the place. But it never sounds like they're just winging it without a clue -- no, it's going somewhere, i just can't fathom where that is. Dammit, this song is messing with my skull! My brain, it itches like FIRE! I am rendered stuporous, for i DO NOT UNDERSTAND!

Then again, maybe that was the intent.

"Candlelight" is more to my taste -- sedate, with trilling flutes to accompany Hooker's mysterious poetry. I like hearing Hooker speak; he has a real poet's sense of timing and drama. The more i hear this disc, the more convinced i am that Hooker is a Sun Ra discipline to some degree or another. Things take on an even more contemplative mood with "Electrical Storm," at least initially - -untill the sax starts to growl and Hooker starts rattling his cans in a fairly fearsome manner. The work grows and metasizes like a trembling carcinoma, then recedes for a brief piano interlude before the entire band crashes back in for "Breathing... Counting....," with the saxes wild and dissonant, as Hooker attacks his set like the Man With One Thousand Arms. The saxes spiral up and up, until finally it segues into seamlessly into "Assignment Three," where the relentless shake of Hooker's hi-hat and cymbal opening (growing and fading in both speed and volume) sets you up for a fury that never quite comes (although he does execute some pretty impressive rolls and thumps along the way).

One thing that puzzles me is that Hooker has always been described to me as a hard-hitting kind of guy, an absolute powerhouse, and i didn't really get that feeling here (although i'm plenty impressed by his skills)... but that could be the difference in expectations for jazz enthusiasts versus guys (like moi) who are hep to the likes of Godflesh and Swans. By that comparison, Hooker isn't terribly heavy at all -- but by free-jazz standards, perhaps he is. He's certainly a whirlwind of action. This will bear further study... perhaps someday i'll be manly enough to understand this....

Bill Horist -- SOYLENT RADIO [Unit Circle]

For a guy i've never heard of, Horist sure has played with a hell of a lot o' people. Essentially a treated-guitar stylist in the vein of Hans Reichel or Henry Kaiser, he's played with Nobadaddy, the Tourniquet Trio, Phineas Gage, Incubus Octet, Fuselage, Fin, and several others; he's also scored several soundtracks for television in general and PBS in particular. So obviously he must know what he's doing, eh? And here i've never even heard of him... i feel like a dolt now... o well....

So what we have here, then, is a disc full of strange soundscapes, two solo and five collaborations. The first solo piece, "Soylent Radio," is aptly-titled; it sounds like a garbled radio transmission of an wildly exotic prepared-guitar piece, one that's frequently being overridden by static, wave interference, and spoken bits from a completely different broadcast, if you will. Apart from the sputtering rumble that often serves as a rudimentary rhythm track, there's lots of strange scraping noises, odd guitar lines, and just plain weird bits, all carefully arranged in a fashion that is somehow both intensely cryptic yet engaging. The second solo piece, "3 Cloven Staircase," opens with shimmering drone and shining feedback guitar that gradually includes the noise of random movement and jittering peals of squealing bursts of squelch. If it weren't for the clean overall sound, it could almost pass for a particularly busy Skullflower track, oddly enough. (I suppose that this would be as good a place as any to note that Evaline Muller is credited with "sharp metal objects," although her presence is not otherwise specifically delineated in any of the song credits.)

"The Teeth of our Skin," recorded with T. Swanson, is presented in two parts. Part 1 is a dense collection of bassy rumble and boxlike chittering that grows into a stuttering, muffled hypno-riff that abruptly breaks off, only to be replace by bowel-loosening bass shudders. It is... odd. Part 2 is a variation on the same general themes, only employing drone and a higher tonal register. "Clowder," a collaboration with E. Muller-Graf, revolves around a meowing guitar and more percussive elements, among other things (many, many other things). Another one with same playing partners, "Epilepticify," elaborates on these motifs with the addition of other percussion elements and violin-like sounds toward the end. The last track, "Penumbra Hotel," with R. Hinklin, is built around an eerie Moog riff that sounds like a backwards guitar; the Moog plays throughout while Horist makes unfathomable noises in the background.

This is hard stuff to describe, to say the least. It may (or may not) be helpful to suggest that Horist is loosely aligned with the school of thought that produces both extreme improvisational soundscapes and free jazz (uh, EXTREMELY free). Fans of the previously mentioned artists, Jim O'Rourke, Sonny Sharrock, and other like-minded individuals bent on making guitars sound like anything but guitars should find this of interest.

If all the sounds on this disc truly came from a guitar, then God walks among us and his name is Bill. I spend many hours making strange sounds with my own guitar and i have absolutely no idea how he came up with some of these sounds. Bill is either a genius or he has a lot of time on his hands... or maybe both....

Even better news is that while his first release, SOYLENT RADIO, was an excellent exploration of new frontiers in wonky guitar sounds, this one eclipses that album in terms of the mutant sound quotient and improves dramatically on his compositional skills. Here the sounds are actually structured and assembled in service of something resembling songs (although not even remotely traditional ones), rather than being presented as sound for the sake of sound itself. He's apparently discovered the exciting world of loops -- "Inhibitat" is grounded by various loops (one of wonky noise, one of what sounds like detuned percussion, and so on) that come and go as he layers various other sound effects over the top, creating a shifting bedrock leavened with horn-like sounds and squeaks and squawks, sort of like an industrial Borbetomagus, perhaps. Industrial clanking sounds appear with regularity throughout the disc, actually -- often, as in the case of "Tangenesis Factory" -- acting as the rhythm element while other treated sounds (what sounds like dueling horns and groaning strings on that particular track, for instance) weave in and out of the mix.

"Pulse Generation" is even better -- almost like industrial dance music done with actual attention to detail, opening with ambient wails and eventually turning into a pulse rhythm over which loops of treated guitar and ghostlike ephemera build and mutate. "One Ear to Water" is more ambient, almost like the quiet passage of some orchestral piece, with watery reverbed guitar and shining viola-like drones that build and reverberate like the sounds of an echo chamber. "Mirth and Demise" demonstrates that he has strange ideas about rhythm -- it begins with a loop of what might have begun life as a bass riff, but almost as soon as it appears it starts dying away, only to return a bit later accompanied by other snippets of sound. Then it fades out altogether as another rhythm loop takes over, augmented by what sounds like nearly-random slide guitar. Talk about alien soundtracks, this is it -- this may well be what Chrome was really hinting at with their half-machine lip moves... which makes me think that it could be really interesting to see a collaboration between Horist and Helios Creed. That would be a mind-melting album, i'm sure....

I like "The Architect of Snowfall" just for the title alone. It turns out to be another collection of drones and watery efx, very desolate in sound, haunting and gorgeous at the same time. More evidence that Bill should be doing soundtracks for the film industry. More ominous rhythms emerge on "Old Man Smithereens," with more strange efx snippets as well. Parts of the guitar track sound like it's being disassembled with the pickups still intact, and yet it never sounds out of control. What interests me is that, as with most of the material on this disc, there are several layers of sound to focus on; exotic sounds lurk in the forefront, the background, and around the edges, and what captures your attention most probably says more about you than about Horist. "Twilight Pistolrake" has a minimal rhythm element -- a combination of percussion and guitar scratching looped endlessly -- that leaves plenty of room for drones that swell and fade and unpredictable twitches of brief guitar. This is truly exotic sounding stuff....

This collection could well appeal to industrial, free jazz, and experimental guitar fans -- not a bad combination. I particularly appreciate the rhythms that invoke machine movements, since so much of the experimental guitar field appears to be beatless and i really like beats. An excellent album in general and one that definitely pegs Horist as one to keep an eye on in the future.

Horist's latest solo outing takes place in a much different context than previous releases; it was developed in 2002 for a Canadian dance performance (courtesy of choreographer Davida Monk) and recorded at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta. The differences are obvious right away: "Overture" opens the suite with lush and heavily-reverbed ambient guitar. The twelve compositions that follow are a mix of similar ambient excursions, bursts of electronics and loop-fu, and droning experiments that take advantage of the hall's beautiful sound. Most of the tracks are considerably more rhythmic (not surprising, given their composition as part of a dance routine) and droning than anything he's done before, and he gets some nice wailing feedback on a number of tracks (most notably on "Dice Dance"). I like the unnatural (yet hypnotic with repetition) figure that opens "Gesture" -- probably a backwards sample -- and the gruesome squealing and rumbling that follows. The cyclotron drone of "Doubt" is a smooth move as well. One of the most interesting tracks is the heavily rhythmic "Entropy," which builds from stark hypnobeats reminiscent of Scorn's early drum sound into polyrhythms and noise and strategic clouds of sonic effluvia. He deserves attention for this track alone, although the entire album is intriguing. This is by far my favorite Horist release; not only are the sounds themselves inventive and well-executed, this time the ghost noises and screeching are anchored to a beat, and Horist is a lot better at layin' down the beat than I would have previously imagined. Swell, swell stuff....

Hosemobile -- SIX FOOT HATER [Hosemobile]

I don't know which is stranger, this disc or the fact that the band is based (more or less) out of Nashville, home of the kings and queens o' country. I imagine it must make their lives hellish trying to get gigs, because this has about as much in common with country as Merzbow has with Dolly Parton. For starters, they are a progressive (are we allowed to use that word any more?) band, weaned on everything from Pink Floyd, harcore jazz, King Crimson, Megadeth, Zappa, ELP, and probably lots o' obscure wonders like Amon Duul and Gong. Which means they play really tricky, convoluted pieces that wind and unfurl like byzantine mazes, with abrupt tempo shifts, ridiculously complex counter-rhythms, unpredictable passages of guitar wizardry, etc., etc. They probably practice more than any other band on earth (with the possible exception of Swans, but they are no more, so they don't count now, eh?).

All of which would probably be the kiss of death (anybody who actually listened to any of ELP's long-winded endless drum solos all the way through, raise your hand... yah... that's about what i thought), except that they have wisely left most of the scary, bloated prog-baggage behind (in other words, they don't get fixated on ten-minute solos or grandiose orchestrated synth stacks, plus they have better taste in fashion than Yes ever did). They aren't afraid to demonstrate dazzling skill -- "big bird and the pot empty" employs so many arcane guitar riffs and skewed rhythms that Zappa would rise from the grave (and Carl Palmer from his equally dead career) to weep with joy -- but they also manage to keep it all under control, without wandering into excessive bombast, which is a lot harder than it looks....

I'm not sure there's much point in attempting to describe the songs themselves; they're all so complex and stuffed with goodies that it could all turn into a major thesis in a hurry. (I will say that my favorites are "big bird and the pot empty," "the grinwheel," "black the table," and "nellie is.") I like the way they manage to work in heavy, semi-metallic riffs from time to time right along with the "artier" stuff without having it sound out of place; metal bands with this kind of technical skill rarely have the taste to employ it with restraint (which is why we're forever saddled with Yngwie), but it's good to hear the thunder employed in judicious fashion. I also like the way Tige Casey does spoken word bits (in the songs that have words) instead of singing. I like lots of things about this, actually, down to the impressively swell artwork/photography in the booklet and the amazing cover (my early vote for cover of the year). This is interesting stuff and highly recommended, particularly to devotees of King Crimson and the like....

Hubbard's primarily a drummer, but he's also a member of the Trummerflora Collective, so everything you thought you could assume immediately goes out the window. He's also hep to electronics, inexplicable percussion (the insert comes with a vast collage of pictures of his tweaked equipment), and the use of homemade devices (most notably his "frames," metal instruments strung with various objects and amplified -- they look really bizarre, too). On this, his debut release, he proves that jazz percussion is not dead, it's just gotten noisier. I like that he has background noise (hiss, echo, something minimal but definitely there) happening during his bursts of percussive fury, waiting for when the tumult dies down, as a defense against complete silence. In fact, his entire approach here is pretty inventive all the way around, as he incorporates live drumming on a standard kit, drum machine abuse, treated instruments, sampling, the use of homemade musical devices, efx processing, and background noise into his compositions.

His use of electronics comes to the fore almost immediately -- the overprocessed sound of a drum kit and a frame device on "in the year of the dragon" create a broken, glitch-electronic feel that sometimes obscures the nice 'n natural sounds of the instruments. That track is short, however, and launches the listener into "born on tuesday," a longish and involving ride through movements of sound, said sounds built from a drum kit, percussion, sampler sounds, and the processed sound of a frame in action. It ranges from minimal stretches in which only the background noise of the efx processing provides any forward momentum or anchor at all to wild, rattling waves of percussion in which it frequently sounds like they're recording a fat-ass truck full of pots and pans all bouncing up and down over a really bumpy stretch of highway. Hubbard takes the rules o' the game and uses them to make toast (crispy, too): on "12 + 4 -- voice in the machine ii," he sounds utterly machinelike using a conventional drumkit (well, maybe the conventional part is in question, but it's definitely an acoustic kit as opposed to a drum machine), building up repetitive and metronome-like pulses and layers of percussion. He makes interesting use of a shrieking Echoplex in "enabler," and "turn the tide of the tale" is a complicated mess o' polyrhythms, waves of percussion fury, and exotic sounds, the result of overlaying beats 'n patterns from an acoustic kit, one of the frames, a drum machine, sampler, stuff from minidisc, echoplex, processing... a lot of action going on for just over five minutes in several distinct movements, each with its own set of baffling noises mackin' on the beat. One of the more interesting tracks is "voice in the machine," where he starts with a junk drumkit and processes it into sonic oblivion, turning the tracks into a collection of jagged, droning fuzz that sounds absolutely nothing like a drum set. This is where acoustic instruments and grim power electronics meet, with unnerving results. (I especially like the squealing mike o' doom toward the end.) Tonally speaking, "student studies" is a benchmark test of sorts, one of only two songs here recorded using strictly an acoustic kit. (Treated or not i'm not so clear on, but whatever, you get the idea, right?) Lots of cryptic and unpredictable rhythmic collisions, rendered with the clear and pleasing sound of a good kit, and a well-miked kit at that (this song and the other acoustic-only workout, along with "born on tuesday," were recorded by Hubbard and Greg Buhlert at Palomar College, and sound brilliant; the album in general sounds awfully good 'n consistent, in fact, for something that was assembled from three entirely different recording sessions, along with two excerpts from longer works). This song, like "azungu sa ndi tsitsi," is pure freejazz improv solo freakout, with no assistance from outside sources, live or recorded, and both pieces are totally swank. One of the later songs, "the gift," gets a pretty dense mojo working in places, as he gets a kit, frame, drum machine, sampler, Echoplex, and additional processing going in one large, pounding wave o' sound, only to back off again. The last track, "gate 6," is one of the noisiest ones -- metal percussion, drum machine sounds, and the overdubbed sounds of a junk drumkit recorded in analog and processed in digital come together to form harsh slates of machine-gun rhythm and textured sound.

Given the number of people Hubbard has played with (he's currently working in one capacity or another with Wormhole, Quibble, Cosmologic, the Nathan Hubbard Skeleton Key Orchestra, and with a variety of other solo artists, after years of playing and recording with some of these artists and many others), it's kind of surprising that it's taken him this long to get around to recording a first solo album. (Then again, he has been busy.) The wait was worthwhile, however; this is a fine disc both on its own merits and as an argument against any nonsense about jazz being dead. Between releases like this and existence of labels like Accretions, Circumvention, and Public Eyesore, i'm pretty sure we're actually in the early years of a coming renaissance of jazz... one that promises to be well worth hearing. A fine release, one you should pick up right now.

Human Skin Lanterns -- SKIN STRIPPERESS [Mother Savage Noise Productions]

OW! You definitely want to watch how loud you have this turned up... it'll fry your ears without any trouble at all if you don't keep the volume under control! This is a collaboration between Macronympha and Taint (from Waco, Texas, home of the Bar-B-Que Seventh Seal Guy!), which means that it's REALLY LOUD and will make you wonder at times if your speakers are imploding. In fact, some parts sound like they playing hard electronics through a speaker whose wattage was rated far too low for this kind of punishment, resulting in the pleasingly harsh tones of total speakerdeath. The main attraction here is the rhythmic quality -- far more so than anything else I've heard on the MSNP label so far, this harnesses all the sonic mayhem into repetitive loops, which I like a lot (of course, I listen to kings-o-repetition Zeni Geva, don't I?). Portions of this drift into the direction of Gerogerigegege's 45 RPM PERFORMANCE, only with much more happening on top of the basic avalanche. This is also a true collaboration, meaning that you can't really tell who did what -- the work of all the artists involved blends into a seamless whole, resulting in something that is more than the sum of the parts. Noise gesalt! Music for skinning people alive by! Noise mantras for the serial killer in you! I definitely have to hear Taint on his own now....

Hum Machine -- THE TRANCE VOLTAGE SOLUTION

Disguised by a press kit that heralds Hum Machine as "experimental" is a band that should be sitting in a Starbucks somewhere in the Pacifc Northwest wondering what happened to grunge. These guys put together a bunch of rock with a sample here and there. I'm not talking White Zombie rock -- I'm talking Bon Jovi rock. It's rock that tries to talk about computers and TV and sex. Sorry -- it's boring, really boring. There aren't even any guitar-hero solos to make things more interesting. [bc]

Gawd, Lida Husik is so cool I wanna feed her grapes all day or something. This CD is just total fuzzpop godhead and hasn't left my CD player since i bought it. Shit, the chorus of "Persinthia, Lawdro and John" is on my answering machine (call me up if you don't believe me).... For those of you who haven't heard her, Lida is a sort of loopy neo-psychedelic hippie -- not even a hippie really, but more like one of those cute li'l wood nymphs who run giggling through the woods having fun at everyone else's expense in all those long, tedious Greek mythology tales you had to read way, way back in grade school --who believes in guitars. Many, MANY guitars. Plinky guitars, fuzzy guitars, tinkly guitars, LOUD guitars, etc., etc. Plus she has this weird, exotic voice like she's been either smoking LOTS of dope or sucking down equal amounts of helium (and probably both); imagine a voice somewhere between Mary Timony and Cindy Lee Berryhill and you're getting the picture in STEREO, buddy....

The coolest stuff here is the drony, stoned "Flower of the Hour," the loopy (but pretty) cover of the Dentists' "Strawberries are Growing in My Garden (and It's Summertime)," the bare-bones "Star" (the same song as the single i foamed at the mouth over a few months ago), and the insanely catchy "Persinthia, Lawdro and John," which is the potato chip of the CD -- you can't play it just once.... "Mickey Minnie" gets bonus points for its sly androgynous lyrical slant ("He's a regular Mickey Minnie/ and the woman of our dreams/ Boys on boys, that's such a joy...."), which could be about androgyny, homosexuality, or transvestitism... or maybe even all of the above....

Lida Husik and Beaumont Hannant -- EVENING AT THE GRANGE (Astralwerks)

Hmmm... imagine if Laura Nyro went techno... sort of... and you essentially have this EP. "Promenade" has a quiet, lazy beat with Lida sort of, well, yodeling (!) over it, sounding beautiful and eerie at the same time. Actually, it occurs to me that this is probably closer to Bongwater than Nyro (might explain why Husik and Bongwater originally shared the same label, Shimmy Disc). "Textured" starts out in a similar fashion, but then it gets going with a weird synth pulse for a beat. "Now I'm Older, Silver Girl" comes across like Liz Phair (the mumbling thing) with chiming guitars and ebow, while "Gregory Peck" offers minimalist lyrics about -- yes -- Gregory Peck (and "Elizabeth," Taylor I would assume) over a beat that's a wee bit harder. Which leads, of course, to the thumpadelic "Starburst 7," from the single described earlier. All in all, pretty interesting if you don't mind your "techno" a little on the light side. And that voice.... (!) Guess we can add another one to the growing list o' women who could sing the Yellow Pages to me and sound rapturous....

Lida Husik -- FLY STEREOPHONIC [Alias]

Okay, i've figured it out: Lida is actually the lost li'l sister of Paul McCartney. Look at the similarities -- gorgeous and crystalline pop vox, impeccable taste in harmony (both vocal and guitar), a tendency to do it all themselves, fondness for vast quantities o' weed....

I know Oasis (those boorish bastards) get all the props for cribbin' from the Beatles catalog (like just plain stealing is supposed to be a good thing these days? whatever, mon), but Lida has more of a right to the term "Beatlesque" than those arrogant shitheads. At least her songs all sound different, while still retaining the same unmistakable imprint of her personality. Come to think of it, she HAS a personality, which is more than i can say of Oasis, who just have bad manners.

For the uninitiated, Lida is a modern-day hippie chick (her own description) with a fondness for bouncy beats and towering stacks of trippy harmony guitars. She divides her time between albums of ambient techno and albums of swirling, beat-happy guitar pop. This is one of the latter, and while it's not quite as staggering as her previous guitar album JOYRIDE, it's nothing to be ashamed of, either. Some of her techno leanings start to muscle their way in this time around (especially on "Death Trip" and the burbling "Dancing Pants"), with generally interesting results, possibly an indication that she should give up separating the two and just let it all run together. But for the most part, the guitars (and there are plenty of them) dominate, coming on in arpeggiated waves, building on top of each other until the songs are all swirling clouds of bright sound. Clean guitars, fuzzy guitars, guitars drenched in reverb, guitars washed out ambient style, she just piles them all on in staggered fashion so the sound is constantly shifting. It's been her trademark from day uno and she's never had a better grasp of it than she does here, although i'm not sure the songs themselves are quite as sharp as they were on JOYRIDE. It's too close to tell....

The obvious highlights would be "Soundman," a loopy slice of cascading guitars in which Lida chronicles the hell of being abandoned by your band and soundman while on tour, and "Dancing Pants," an amazing slow drone with a stuttering synth line and almost-but-not-quite techno beat in which the guitar drone is supplanted by swell bagpipe drones. The rest of the album isn't too far behind these two in the quality department, but these are definitely the most memorable two of the bunch. It's interesting to note that while the sound itself across the album is pretty peppy and bright, the lyrics tend toward tension, uncertainty, and just plain fear and loathing. Talk about a conflicted personality... but that's part of what makes Lida interesting, eh? I have to admit that i'm disappointed that her cousin Anne Husick (formerly of Band of Susans) isn't on here after all, as i thought she would be from advance reports (she is thanked in the liner notes, tho)...

Lida's a puzzling one. She hopscotches between genres so regularly that each time she puts out a new disc, you're never really sure of what you're going to get. This time i'm guessing she's been listening to a whole heap o' electronica, because this album is full o' heavy beats and techno moves and blips and bloops and all that kind of fun stuff. As it happens, i tend to prefer Lida when she's cranking up her multilayered wall of pop guitar, so i'm kind of lukewarm to this. It's certainly an improvement over most techno, however, especially since she can actually sing and has a talent for reasonably original beats. She's also heavily into minimalism and repetition, especially on "dynamite," which is largely a static beat and riff only occasionally broken up by added beats and grooves. It's also good when she goes for the deep bass on "state of the empire," and the beats on "tantilize" are most shagadelic. Ultimately the level of your need for this album is heavily dependent upon your fondness for techno; act accordingly if that's your bag, otherwise consider waiting for the next album (which maybe, just maybe, might be another full-tilt guitar extravaganza).

Lida Husik and Beaumont Hannant -- "Star/Starburst 7" (Rough Trade, UK)

Two versions of the same song, basically, both different enough to be equally interesting. "Star" is built around a spooky twanging guitar (?) figure looped indefinitely, backed by mushy little synths, while Lida sings in this real droney kind of voice, spouting surreal lyrics about a "flag stretched out over the water" and a rising star. I have no idea what it all MEANS, but it sounds really spooky and kind of beautiful and ultimately really nifty, ok? The flip side is the same song with tweety synths and a thumping beat, built for the dance floor, I guess. It's pretty cool too, but I still like the bare-bones version better... this is just funky, not spooky....

More exotic, lo-fi strangeness from these crazy fucking Italians. Strange-sounding stuff that wouldn't be out of place on Public Eyesore -- "By Opening the Petals You Have the Explosion" is a droning slice o' rock with a looped piano bit (???) and fuzzcrud hovering in the background like drifting black ash while someone mutters in loopy yet menacing fashion. Remember nitrous-huffin' Frank in BLUE VELVET? This is the kind of song he would record, i'm sure. I like the vibes or bells or whatever the hell they are in "Leche Moi / Leche Moi," along with that incredibly minimal beat, over which guest vox-spewer Silvana Bartolini recites sexy-sounding stuff in... well, i can't really tell, but i'm guessing it's Italian since they are from Italy (see what a genius i am?). Of course, while this is going on, ugly noises like machines gearing up briefly to sandpaper your face keep happening sporadically in the background, which makes for some unnerving moments amid the hypnogroove. "Bazooly Gazooly" is louder -- much louder -- a diseased synth riff repeated endlessly while they pound away at other stuff and babble a lot. It sounds pretty insistent and chaotic.... I don't know if the title of "We Always Play Our Instruments Dancing Completely Naked" is a statement of truth or not, but based on this track -- an electrovamp with lots of wailing and muttering and other unidentifiable sonic effluvia happening in the background -- i could certainly believe it. I think "I Want You" is a cover of the Beatles song from ABBEY ROAD, but, uhhhh, it's real hard to tell... the Beatles certainly never sounded like this, that's for sure. These people sound like they might be sort of psychotic. I greatly approve....

TMU: "Attack of the 30-Foot Toothed Vulva" is the first song -- i like this band already. Doesn't this sound like a choir of diseased angels to you? Angels writhing in the grip of infernal ecstasy after dropping too much acid?

TTBMD: Si, senor. Very abstract, in a Severed Heads kind of way -- the early stuff. Keyboards, samples, repetition --

TMU: Repetition is good.

TTBMD: -- and a hefty dose of experimental ambiance. These Italians would be something worth seeing live, one would think.

TMU: I like the wavelike drift and hypnotic slo-mo keyboard motifs in "Aquis Submersis."

TTBMD: The soundtrack to a piece of wood drifting in and out with the tide.

TMU: Shades of Hybryds -- HEEWACK! The crashing glaciers in "Astral plane crash" are pretty nifty, too.

TTBMD: Helicopters on the hunt. The searchlight sweeps the dead night sky. There are no survivors. And Hypersexual Nymphomaniacs are blasting through the speakers in the death camps. Their forbidding sounds fall on dead, maggot-infested ears.

TMU: I like this washed-out psych sound they got goin' on in "Oni-Gomon."

TTBMD: This is good shit. They use an array of sounds to create a cosmic shelter against other bands whose attempts at the same don't sound anywhere near as good. I would think a label with good taste would be more than happy to put this out. Did I tell you how good it was yet?

TMU: They have forged their own style indeed here. I like their approach to rhythm, using the bell-tones and delays to generate their own rhythm. There is freedom in the sound waves, o my brother.

TTBMD: Sparse and expansive. "Oni-Gomon" is a highly-recommended track.

TMU: This fifth track leaves us cold, but "Unconcerned but not Indifferent" is most soothing.

TTBMD: This track goes into the same territory as Megaptera and Lustmord. Earth tones, soothing to the soul.

TMU: These droning sounds of space make me realize suddenly how small, how insignificant, how worthless we are in the eyes of the blind idiot god sleeping at the center of the burning Hell Eye. We are not even the shriveled membrane separating the clotted blood cells in the belly of a dying paramecium. This is the sound of isolation... sensory deprivation... a rest from the distraction of being alive.

TTBMD: The end of the journey. Meeting your maker. The comfort zone.

TMU: Fear not the Stark Fist of Removal!

TTBMD:  There's an organic feel on "Baron Samedi" with a weird melody -- alien, drunken, hypnotic. A drunken accordion player with a cheap tape recorder. He goes to the bathroom. Relief!

TMU: Is this a good thing? I like this song too. There's this feeling most of the time that it might, at any minute, turn into an actual song, assuming it sobers up anytime soon.

TTBMD: "Suppose They give a war and No One Comes" is repetitive, isn't it? I dunno....

TMU: Repetition is good. I like this. (sways like a snake) I can charm snakes with this. Or charm panties off girls who like to play with snakes. Whatever.

TTBMD: You could be right. But the song with the long-ass French title sounds more like a tribal rite of passage. In the jungle with the natives.

TMU: Slow. Purposeful. The shining light flickers in the distance through the fog as the natives swat away the burning spears. Destiny is coming. The white man approaches with guns and fire and Bibles. We are all fucked now. So we can only react with grace and dignity, and play our slow and sorrowful music, while around us our brothers are clubbed down and forced to pray for their killers. But we have our dignity, for we know -- o my brother, we KNOW -- that someday we shall rise, as one, with the wolves before us and beside us, and in the name of all that is UNHOLY we shall kick their fucking asses! HEEWACK!

TTBMD: These guys are from Italy, remember? I don't think they have jungles in Italy. Could you repeat what you just said?

TMU: Fuck no. Do you think this last song, "Tomorrow Never Knows," is actually a cover of the Beatles song?

TTBMD: I don't know. The original is probably better.

TMU: I like these big-ass noises and shouting and stuff. Those big-block riffs... that thunder... i'm pretty sure Hank didn't do it this way. Or Lennon. Even before that dumb-ass fuckhole filled him so full of bullets they needed a crane to lift his body. This is really repetitive, too... repetition is good....