A four-track EP, this release is to precede a full-length album by 15 Degrees Below Zero, and it's a fine way for them to segue into that promised full-length. I liked this from the moment I heard the first grating notes. Beginning with "Waiting for Laraine," we begin to see the modus operandi of this group of artists. They create great washes of sound, dark and ambient in nature, as well as more noise-based grumblings. There is indeed something "cinematic" about this recording-it allows your mind to wander and dream while still retaining some control of that mental voyaging. It takes you places pleasant and dreary, sinister and stark. The second track, "Is Anybody There," stands out as my personal favorite, with odd chimes sounding in the beginning while a droning hum quietly fills the background. At times it almost sounds as though there's a voice, indistinct words perhaps, but you never can quite tell. In "Downs, Part One," we?re treated to the pleasant sounds of an acoustic guitar, slightly effected and backed by unobtrusive static-sounds-sounds which build up over the course of the song, slowly making their presence felt more and more. Ending with "Sunshine" (a song which opens with a voice repeating the word "surreal") the final impression this release leaves is a favorable one. Hopefully the wait for a full-length is not a long one. [Amanda] I'll leave it to Stylus (and the other review websites run by overthinking grad students) to ponder the dilemma of the modern man's quest to rock in a subculture that devalues any kind of genuine expression of enthusiasm or enjoyment as embarrassing or kitsch, ok? "After 9/11"... and all that. I know 25 Suaves started off as some kinda no-wave or noise band or something -- at least that's what the currently functioning 5% of my brain tells me -- but on 1938 they discovered the unabashed joy of ripping off Motorhead, Accept and the Kiss songs where Gene Simmons sang (you know, the only good ones). And on I WANT IT LOUD they do exactly what I wanted from a followup -- they don't change a fucking thing -- they just get heavier, the vocals are yet more grating, the songs still catchy as fuck. For some reason I really feel like there's an early Death influence floating around here, dig the opening riffs and they have a song called "Born Dead." It isn't a cover, but the spirit's there. This isn't the sound of college kids eager to dip their wicks in the rapidly evaporating piss-puddle of ironic metal fandom, this is the sound of love. Awww! [Gafne Rostow] The title is accurate enough -- this is definitely noise, but it's noise rendered in a lovely and romantic fashion, suitable for blissing out or making out. The band has been active since 1994 under the leadership of Jason Coffman (his only other partner in crime on the recordings is vocalist Teresa Santoski), beginning with cassette-only releases and culminating in this, the band's seventh full-length release. The album's sound is in the same ballpark as bands such as Stars of the Lid, Troum, Hollydrift, Flying Saucer Attack, RE-ENTRY-era Techno Animal, and other masters of noisy drone and minimalist beats. I have to wonder why I'm just now hearing about this band, because this is frankly amazing stuff, which means I have been missing out in a big way. WAH! While beats come and go and noise levels vary (the band's noise is not really intense at all, more about texture than power or volume), and the vocals are only intermittent, the one constant is a serious need for overwhelming drone. Heavily-reverbed washes of pure drone hold sway over nearly everything here; this is a good thing. Teresa's vocals only show up now and then, and then mainly as a faraway, disembodied chanting (see, for instance, "Tomorrow Romance") that blends perfectly into the shuddering drones. This is mysterious-sounding stuff, with drones imported from the deepest, coldest reaches of space; much of it is beatless, and when the beats do arrive, they remain basic, even minimalist. It's all about the sound the UFOs make -- when they take off, when they land, when they're drifting from one planet to the next. This is what the aliens listen to while necking in the shadow of the monolith on the dark side of the moon. Interstellar space overdrive has rarely sounded this dreamy (or sexy). Drone-rock enthusiasts should definitely check this out. When Public Eyesore started to seriously rock the house, I was hoping that head noise-tyrant Bryan Day would take advantage of his Japanese connections to bring more of the happening Japanese indie / avant scene to these shores. And he has -- more and more of the label's output is dedicated to documenting the works (studio and live) of Japanese bands such as this one. Do they bring the rock? They bring the rocks, in tiny li'l plastic cups filled with copious amounts of vodka and joy juice. This is a rockin' bunch of cats, built around the mad gyrations of snake-charmer guitarist Hiromi Unakami, devil bassist Yukio Hasegawa, and pogo drummer Yoshiro Yamauchi. Occasionally they convince their good pal Toru Kato to strap on a guitar and get up and warble along with them, but mainly it's all about the trio. The sad part is that I have no idea if the group even exists anymore; this is actually a reissue (or first issue of long-lost material) of stuff that was recorded back when I was still gaining my black belt in drunken hoodlum-fu, which was quite a while ago. The first five tracks were cut in a studio in Tokyo in December, 1982; the remaining four tracks here are from a live show in Tokyo in November, 1981. The scary part is that none of this sounds dated at all -- in fact, this is so fresh, so now, that I can fully understand why nobody back then had the balls (or brains) to put this out, because they did not understand about bringing the rock. But this does, and the Angels are (were?) swank motherfuckers and you should hear this. Swell, swell stuff. Perhaps if we're lucky PE will uncover more recordings from the madhouse and give us another dose of manic Angel-fu. Crunchy tunes somewhere between indie-rock, rap, and industrial from a band in the Czech Republic (or maybe the Slovak Republic, it's hard to tell). The first track, "Boston Baltics," is a hefty yet bizarre song about American basketball players; the second song, "While," is a strange funk-rap raveup about... about... well, I don't know what it's about, but it's catchy, very catchy. Weird, wonderful, idiosyncrastic vibes, to say the least. There's only two songs here, but they're surprising and energetic. Good things are happening on the other side of the big blue puddle. Six tracks of punishing, overamped power-electronics and antimusic from Austin noise guru Matt LaComette. This is sound violence from the Masonna / Macronympha / early Merzbow / Whitehouse school of busting shit up just for the thrill of watching people writhe helplessly on the ground with blood streaming out their ears. There's no grand artistic statement or political vision or even dirty pictures to distract from the real agenda here, which is simply destroying electronic gadgets and seeing if the speakers will catch on fire. Feel the PAIN, doom childe! Feel it! FEEL IT DEEP DOWN IN YOUR BONE MARROW! Note that the fourth track, "ARG" (all the titles are three-letter combinations beginning with A; no, I have no idea what that's about) starts off quietly and gradually, over twelve and a half minutes, builds into a high-pitched psychotronic noise hell. The sixth track, "ARJ," follows a similar aesthetic but gets down to the pain much more quickly. The rest of the tracks are the sound of angry robots sodomizing each other in the midst of electronic Armageddon. Gruesome but perversely liberating, like bathing in hydrochloric acid. Intense doesn't begin to cover it. Limited to 30 copies, so you better act fast and hope there are still a few left. The band is actually a duo of Paul Kirkpatrick (who wrote the songs and plays all the instruments, although guitarist Gordon Foley provides additional guitar on several tracks) and former Kirk & Kushty singer Adelle Kirk, and the songs on this album are thematically linked by a fascination for death and murder. The lyrics mine the same uneasy territory as TWIN PEAKS, BLUE VELVET, and similar films, with twelve songs exploring the disturbed thinking of serial killers and their victims. Given the gruesome subject matter, the songs are actually fairly tasteful and introspective; the entire approach is far more arty than lurid, with songs that incorporate elements of electronica, melodic rock, goth, and (less frequently) metal. The subject matter and unsual song structures make the album eerie without resorting to heaviness as a crutch. The feel is somewhere between Bloodrock's infamous second album (the one with the seventies cult classic about an accident victim's terminal ambulance ride) and the Golden Palominos death-rock classic DEAD INSIDE, although musicially and lyrically it's far closer to the latter. Strange, unsettling stuff -- probably not heavy or straightforward for metalheads, sure, but perfect for goth listeners in search of the latest creepfest. This futuristic jazz soundtrack is the third (and apparently final) album in a three-record cycle by this collective of musicians from Norway, and is based on the screenplay for Trista Namo's RDTR. The opening track, "Sci-Fi City," sets the tone for everything that will follow -- a mournful trumpet and tinkly piano washes are drowned out by the ambient noise of a busy city. The rest of the album incorporates elements of jazz, noise, soundtrack music, found sound, techno, and other musical disciplines to construct a complex audio narrative of a city of the future. The mood and the backdrop change from one song to the next, creating a flow much like navigating different neighborhoods in a large and varied city whose ethnic eccentricities cannot be restrained by the burdens of modern technology. Titles like "Automated Bathroom," "Police Chasing Police," "Ministry of Police Affairs," and "Going Commercial" offer an interpretation of the overall work as a comment on the Orwellian possibilities of this fictional city of the future, but the music itself (even when accompanied by cryptic narratives) provides few clues about the work's meaning. Nevertheless, the album moves from one song to the next with jazzy, droning trumpets gliding over techno beats and lush, complicated layers of sound, inviting the listener to create their own interior movies to match the mysterious soundscapes. The mysterious droning sound of the opening track is mirrored in the closing track, "Stellar Epilogue," creating a nice auditority bookend of sorts. (The actual album is followed on the cd by two untitled bonus tracks of a similar nature to the rest of the album, possibly remixes.) The ultimate result is a dark and cerebral soundtrack album filled with interesting sounds over lush, jazz-influenced orchestration, a collection of work equally suitable for close inspection or as background music. Nice, not to mention enigmatic. The spirit of improvisational jazz takes flight on this series of collaborations spearheaded by saxophonist David Borgo. Over thirteen tracks he appears in a variety of configurations (solo, duet, trio, quartet, and quintet) with a wide range of interesting players (drummer Nathan Hubbard, percussionist Gustavo Aguilar, tenor saxophonists Jason Robinson and Robert Reigle, soprano saxophonist Andy Connell, bassist Bertram Turetzky, and pianist Anthony Davis). The pieces featuring only sax players ("Sync" and "Swarm") are particularly interesting, with droning lines that weave around each other, sometimes in harmony and at other times in opposition, while the duets with pianist Anthony Davis ("Miko," "Rivers of Consciousness") sound lovely, even romantic. Borgo tends toward a quiet, reflective sound, especially on the solo piece "Conversations with the Not-Self" (in which he plays the chalumeau, an instrument I've never heard of), and even the larger ensemble pieces reflect this sensibility; this is music for contemplating the twilight and relaxing in the evening, not for jumping around in nightclubs. Even in some of the duets with percussionists (such as "In the Land of In-Between," with Gustavo Aguilar) the sound remains spare and largely sedate (although his percussion on "Beantown Bounce" is considerably livelier); it's only on the larger ensemble pieces with percussion ("On the Five," "Oddity," and "Reverence for Uncertainty") that the sound ever gets busy (and even then it never gets out of hand -- even when they're jacking up the excitement index, things still remain largely meditative). This is the sound of improvisation in a contemplative mood. Pour a martini, loosen your tie, and put up your feet to enjoy the sound as it flows around you. Ahhh... Buzzov.en. I can remember picking up a cassette copy of their second full-length, SORE, way back in 1994 at Sam The Record Man in the Village Mall here in St. John's. (This was back when you could still find intresting music at a record store in the mall.) The tape caught my eye because of the band name (Buzzoven? What the fuck is a Buzzoven?) and the intense cover art -- a warped semi-biomechanical surrealist painting (done by a guy named Craig Lima). The piece is almost indescribable -- there is a Jesus figure with a wolf's head growing out of one side of the face, a semi cat-faced woman, a body twisted and pulled into the shape of a skull, yellow and blue babies, playing cards, snakes, fish tails... I figured that if the music lived up to the art, it was going to be something. The record started with a tweaked and vari-speeded sample of some guy saying "Welcome to violence" over another sample of a woman screaming, both over a filthy, sub-Sabbath bassline. Whiskey-soaked rock with a Chapman Stick?!?! And trumpet? And mandolin? Whoa, something strange is definitely afoot in California.... Don't let the bit about the Chapman Stick fool you -- I have no idea where they got the idea to run with that particular instrument, but this has absolutely nothing to do with Rush or King Crimson or prog rock in general. This is more like Black Heart Procession minus all the cryptic effluvia, Screaming Trees with more focus, a less eccentric and idiosyncrastic Cindy Lee Berryhill, or something approximating straight-ahead roots rock. The kind of music they're making here has nothing to do with scenes and trends; this album could have been made fifty years ago (well, they would have had to live without the Chapman Stick, but somehow I suspect they would have managed) instead of in 2000. This reminds me a lot of the new-school hill country bands in Texas, only with roots in rock more than country. These are the kind of songs you would expect to hear on albums by John Prine, Steve Earle, or Townes Van Zandt. In other words, swell and timeless stuff. Favorites include "King & Queen," "Harbor," "Ocean Light," "St. Mark's Place," and "Through the Trees." If Neddal were reviewing this, I suspect this would be his favorite album of the issue. Highly recommended. This is disturbed shit and if you're over thirty, your girlfriend / wife will probably refuse to have sex with you again until you "turn that horrible shit OFF!" The band consists of six musical perverts who like to bang on metal objects, like to juxtapose very different kinds of sounds, and have the attention span of gnats on crack. They've shared the stage with the likes of Kites, Lightning Bolt, Mindflayer, The Flying Luttenbachers, and other like-minded people who prefer to dismantle music with wrenches and screwdrivers rather than do something as boring and mundane as actually, you know, play it, so you probably have an idea already about where they're coming from. "Singer" Anya Davidson also likes to shout a lot, which is always a good thing. I'm not sure exactly what the hell she's yelling about, but I get the vague impression it might be sort of obscene. Meanwhile the rest of the people jumping around and breaking shit around her sound appropriately possessed. Sometimes, as on "Elimidate," they get some swell rhythms going when they bang their gong and get it on. Imagine Pineal Ventana with a stolen saxolphone on real, real bad drugs and possessed by Satan while in the grip of a Tourette's seizure and it all becomes horribly, terribly clear, doesn't it? No? Well, that's okay -- musical obfuscation is kind of the whole point here, I think. "Fright Makes Right" is a pretty hep (and borderline smutty) ass-shaker, too. They also have a song called "Give peace a chance" that sure as hell doesn't sound like anything Lennon ever did (although the psychotic yelping does bring to mind Yoko at her scariest). "Narwhal" even manages to sound sort of like a pop song (well, maybe if you squint) buried under twiddling synth filth. There's plenty of percussion madness taking place as well, which always helps. Devolved scariness abounds across all sixteen disjointed (sometimes VERY disjointed) tracks. Andy from Panicsville mastered the thing for maximum earhate. You know you need it, if only to seduce that nice Catholic girl across the residence hall into joining you on a mattress on the Dark Side while this romantic act of sonic defilement hides your pained grunting. Five tracks from a meeting of the minds in Berlin -- San Francisco treated-guitar wizard Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Brooklyn electric guitarist Chris Forsyth, and Hamburg alto saxophonist Lars Scherzberg -- recorded by Scherzberg in Berlin on March 13, 2002. The five tracks are generally lengthy (all but one are over nine minutes each; the "short" one is only 6:15) and feature improvised noise made from the various instruments in minimalist fashion. The musicians play off each other, against each other, and sometimes even with each other, wresting peculiar and often unfathomable noises from their instruments. This is not a wall-shaking noisefest, however -- the action is largely restrained, and on some tracks (like the first), there's plenty of silent spaces between the bursts of sonic anarchy. These are exercises in patience, as disparate sounds are drawn out slowly and in cryptic fashion; wherever it is they're going, they're taking their time about it, and you'll just have to wait until they get there. As the title suggests, this album is about simple sounds, and frequently more about the spaces between those sounds than the sounds themselves. The fourth (and shortest) track and the fifth one are the only ones with the most action, and even then that only rises to brief levels of intensity before settling back into the pattern of subdued thumping and bumping. The overall effect has less to do with music in any accepted sense of the word and more with spatial composition and the deep, burning need to make strange noises. Powerfully cryptic stuff for your minimalist inner child. This odd collection of nine tracks from percussionist Brad Dutz, in concert with a shifting army of collaborators, is inspired by gardening. All the titles reference gardening, and for all I know he came up with the concept while working in his garden. The result is a series of pleasing improvisational jazz tracks with a shifting group of guests that includes Chris Wabich (drumset, steel drum, percussion), Kim Richmond (B-flat clarinet), Bob Carr (bass clarinet), Sara Schoenbeck (bassoon), Ellen Burr (C flute, alto flute, piccolo), John Fumo (trumpet, piccolo trumpet), Kris Tiner (trumpet, flugelhorn), William Roper (tuba, spoken word), Trey Henry (acoustic bass), Dean Taba (acoustic bass), Anders Swanson (acoustic bass solo), and Jasper Dutz (bass clarinet, B-flat clarinet). The sound is equally influenced by world beat as by jazz, with supple percussion on tracks like "Look at the pretty weeds... they're dead" and "I like brown leaves especially when they're torn" creating a highly infectious (and groove-laden) bedrock for the others to improvise over. Other tracks like "Rotted vegetables... too late to pick" and "Rotted fruit... infested with insects" are calmer and more meditative, but it's the funkier and more upbeat, percussion-driven tracks like "Norbert rakes bark... and mulch" that are the real backbone of the album. Par for the course with all the discs released on this label, the musicians are all excellent players and skilled improvisers, and the humorous concept they're working from lends a light and playful air to the proceedings. Bonus points to Dutz for roping his nine-year old son into playing along, and to Jasper for the swell cartoon gardeners that decorate the artwork. The sound of pure psychedelic hippie bliss being beaten and sexually molested by teenage hoodlums wrecked on paint thinner after listening to too many obscure Amon Duul albums and Thrones singles. Or something like that. This is far less spastic and noise-dependent than most Load releases, but like everything else on the label, it's obviously the product of kids with peculiar ideas about warped music. On "Jrone (three)" several vocalists warble in a weird and hallucinatory fashion over an endless psych loop; this segues seamlessly into "Jrone (two)" as they start slathering on perverted efx-laden sounds like a dub crew hoggin' the hooch, and at some point they start sounding like a deeply perverse American answer to One Inch of Shadow, an idea guaranteed to mess with anyone's mind. At some point it occurs to somebody that rhythm is good, so he starts hitting things in something that approaches a steady rhythm without technically being one. And it just gets weirder and weirder.... "The Heart Beat" returns to the looped drone and processed vocal tip, throwing in some dive-bombing guitar frippery just to keep things from floating off into the ether. Things get a bit noisier on "(the ass)" but the hypno-mantra remains supreme; in fact, hypnotic and repetitive are good words to keep in mind throughout this entire release. Somebody from the No Neck Blues Band is on this album, if that's important to you. More evidence that the kids are not only all right, but stoned completely out of their fucking minds. Fake is the EBM / dark industrial solo project of Clint Carney of System Syn (who also moonlights as the live keyboardist in Imperative Reaction), with an aggressive and largely beat-heavy sound that mines old-school industrial and electronic body rock without sacrificing any of its more modern impulses. While some of the tracks are in the same ballpark as NIN on steroids, the lyrics are far more sophisticated and often politically pointed, and other tracks incorporate elements of noise, goth, and orchestral music into the pounding rhythm assault. The disc frequently comes across as a diabolical cross between old-school Skinny Puppy and more recent NIN minus the self-indulgent bullshit either of those bands have sometimes favored. The eleven tracks are well-produced and executed, and frequently intense and forbidding. There are melodic, even pretty moments, but by and large this not even remotely wimpy music. Strong stuff that never loses sight of the beat, even when goosing the aggression meter up to the sky. Best tracks: "To This Land," "Burning You," "Blood and Skin," "The Massacre," and "We've Come To Take Your Life." Whole-grain hate for the body-rock crowd hasn't sounded this good in quite a while. This band has been around awhile (since 1989, actually), but this is their first new album in six years. The band is a duo of brothers Robert (electronic and acoustic instruments) and John (vocals) Bustamente, and their sound is one of highly rhythmic, melodic electropop. Their attack is frequently reminiscent of a stripped-down Massive Attack, especially on "Pigs Feet," but they're definitely not a trip-hop band; they probably have more in common with eighties keyboard synth-pop than anything else. Unlike a lot of EBM bands these days, they pretty much avoid aggressive displays of testosterone in favor of piling on layers of percolating, melodic, rhythm-happy keyboards. It's danceable without being obnoxious, filled with pinging keyboards and rhythms worthy of an early Depeche Mode album. "Through the Days" even downplays the keyboards, building everything around a catchy acoustic guitar before adding keyboards and beats to the layers of sound. Well-written songs and energetic performances make this enjoyable listening, and the willingness to switch between keyboard and guitar-driven songs keep things interesting. Worth checking out if you're down with catchy melodic dance-pop. As the cover indicates, it's a rabbit thing. I'm not too sure what that's all about, but this is ex-Inferno Jay Peele at work, and seeing how his aesthetic is all over the map, it could mean anything. (Actually, if you've ever read the Richard Adams classic WATERSHIP DOWN, some of the meaning might become apparent.) The disc itself, though, is a series of unusual experiments in sound (nineteen in all), with instrumentation that varies from track to track, including Fender Strat, fretless guitar, turntable, trumpet, AM radio, kalimba, Roland D-50, micro-Moog, five-gallon plastic jugs, ink pens, and so on. The tracks themselves are short, eerie, often mediative pieces, less about structure and "music" and cognitive thinking and more about the creation of unusual sounds, spontaneous behavior, and creating new music from old and unconventional instruments. A cool series of experiments from a guitarist who continues to demonstrate a wide range of talent. I know nothing about Gerritt and tragically misplaced the poop sheet in the move, but the grotesque, mulched sounds of this album are all you need to know about. On this 12" vinyl release, Gerritt sails through four tracks of broken sound and distressed electronics, frequently sounding like a series of machines breaking down. "Bon Voyage" combines noise, glitch electronica, and sratching sounds over a loop of distressed electronic sound, building in intensity and chaos as the piece progresses. "Vapor Wakes" is built on loops of rumbling, crashing waves over which broken electronic noises and disturbed grunting sounds rise and roar like wounded rhinos, with things growing steadily out of control over time -- the background loop keeps things somewhat anchored as the near-random thumping and bumping and squeaking and creaking on top grows into an avalanche of sonic anarchy. The mayhem continues on "Tongues," with the flanged sounds of high-pitched glitches giving way to subterranean growls and unexpected sounds of physical movement, combining the alien sounds of doomed electronic processing with purely analog sounds of microphone abuse and background noise. "Blindly Follow" is every bit as perturbed and inscrutable, filled with echoing sounds and rattles that come and go with a minimalist sensibility -- the effect here is more sparse and ghostlike, but still every bit as surreal, alien, and unnerving as the tracks that came before. Peculiar but oddly thought-provoking stuff. Their aim is to "bring back the danger that is missing in much of today's music," and while I'm probably the wrong guy to ask about that -- I tend to think the only real "dangerous" music being made these days is by psychotic dudes in corpsepaint who burn down churches when they're not making brooding epics about how grimly cult they are and all that, and even then there aren't many of those left -- these guys are certainly trying to bring the rock. They try real hard, actually, and are largely successful. What we have here, basically, is catchy, radio-friendly alternative rock with crunchy guitars, a rock-steady rhythm section, with ten highly listenable poptunes about all the usual stuff the kidz sing about these days. They remind me of Seether sometimes, except I thought Seether's first album (the one with the hit single, which turns out to be the only listenable thing on the album) sucked, and this does not suck. They are also largely angst-free and do not insert bad rapping / nu-metal / non-rock foolishness in their crunchy poptunes, which makes them a lot smarter than most bands around them these days. This band is actually pretty good, and while they aren't doing anything astoundingly new, they're doing it real well and the songs are consistently good; this is not an album with one or two good songs and a lot of filler. If you're down with this band's alt-rock sound, you should like the entire album. I'd certainly rather hear this on the radio than the horrible stuff I currently hear when I'm forced to endure spinning around the dial in the car. Ten songs, all of them good; I'm not so sure about their fashion sense, but the disc is well worth hearing. Green Andy has an interesting aesthetic: He prefers doing everything in one take, doesn't like going on endlessly (most of his songs clock in at less than two minutes), and doesn't like shoveling tons of stuff onto a cd just because there's room for it. The songs themselves (there's an even ten of them here) are loud, frequently distorted blasts of rhythm and cryptic instrumentation that lean heavily toward repetition and unexpected movements from one kind of sound to another. This is fractured sound-collage dementia, like something you'd hear from a band on Load Records but far more concentrated (and sometimes far more intense -- Andy's a fan of gut-busting volume hell). Cool, concentrated, and presented in a manner that gets the idea across with each song, then moves on to the next without overdoing things. It's an interesting approach, and one worth checking out. Flutist and vocalist Emily Hay has appeared on a ridiculous number of albums by other people -- including the U Totem, I Am Umbrella, Rich West Ensemble, Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet, the 5 UU's, and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, just to name a few -- but this is apparently her first actual collection of material. It's not exactly a solo album, but more a collection of pieces from various musical projects she has appeared in over the past several years. In keeping with the label's improvisational schema, these tracks are all improvisations with no overdubs or second takes (the only exception is "A Year and Two Weeks," where a vocal track was later added). The spirit of "it is what it is" gets even more hardcore with three tracks ("Swamp Moss," "Waiting For Sara," and "Crooked Hopscotch") that were recorded directly to two-track tape with no subsequent mixing -- what you hear is exactly what went down. Brad Dutz and Marcos Fernandes appear on many of these tracks providing percussion and beats, which gives them a polyrhythmic, world-beat feel, but they are just about the only constants in a sea of changing faces (and instruments) over the twelve tracks. Hay contributes flute and voice on most tracks, but on occasion favors one over the other -- on "A Year and Two Weeks" it's her unusual voicings, calling to mind a more operatic Yoko Ono, that cut through the pulsing guitar and howling synth, while on "Hibiki," her trilling flute is the only thing happening over a smattering of opaque and peculiar percussion from Marcos Fernandes. While Hay's flute and vocal stylings provide a consistent theme to the tracks, the wildly divergent ensembles and their vastly different approaches give this disc a bit more unexpected variety than than most of the label's other recordings, which tend to focus on one ensemble over the course of a single disc. A fine release highlighting a side player who, from the sound of this, probably deserves more attention. Holzborn is an improvisational composer working mainly with electronics, and this release is his solo debut after appearing on a number of compilations and collaborations on Accretions, Dot Dot, and Circumvention. His method of attack is to begin with field recordings and custom-made samples, then mutate them into hideously unrecognizable shapes through severe efx processing. Normally a guitar player, here he wields a laptop in service of noise and fractured sound, creating fifteen tracks of highly unusual textures and noisy soundscapes. This is the sound of music being blown apart, reassembled in new exotic shapes, then blown apart again. Some of the tracks are emergency broadcast tests in reimagined sound and others are pure electronic creations on the laptop, and there's no way to tell which ones are which -- it's all exotic and alien-sounding, antimusic that serves as the building blocks of an opaque and cryptic compositional approach. In other words, it's weird-sounding stuff frequently made from grating noises that owes much to the world of glitch electronica, and your mother probably won't like it. There's no telling what the original sound sources were like, but he perverts them into some fascinating new shapes, that's for sure. Fascinating, if sometimes unnerving, excursions into the outer realms of efx processing and electronic sound creation. New vistas in sonic terrorism from a band that would be equally at home on Load Records. How excessive is this gruesome exercise in chopped-up tooth gnashing? So excessive that they had to spread the sonic bud butter over not one, but two cds. The "band" is built around the core of Colin Marston (formerly of Dysthymia and Behold... the Arctopus) and pal George Korein getting their freak on with loops, devolved rhythms, and a fondness for arctic drone. On the first disc (CANCER) they open with two spazzed-out bursts of crazed sonic violence, piling sound on top of sound at hyperspeed and sawing through the works with a buzzsaw set on stun... then they segue into "Damage Fractal Series I," a twelve-plus minute dark-ambient soundscape in three movements that seethes with malevolent intent before resolving into a pounding swirl of tortured rhythms, screeching, and diseased sonic ugliness. The sound of "bedridden" is somewhere between that of a trance ritual built from looped jazz chords and faraway drones and the ominous, forbidding crawl of the last Corrupted record. The trancelike rhythms and background drones continue in "involuntary emotional response," with a gradually mutating bell-like guitar sound that would make Troum proud -- a sound that grows teeth (and volume) as the piece progresses. The second disc (CANCER; DECAY) begins with the short and heartwarming damage report "Bedsores (for G.W.B.)" -- short, crashing bursts of broken sound that are eventually swallowed in loops of noise and glitch electronica -- before settling into the lengthy "Involuntary Physical Response," itself a series of devolved loops, noise tones, and other effluvia that mutates over time into a crashing swamp of agitated percussion, tape-mulched noises, and other grim sonic junk and droning noise. "Damage Fractal Series II" combines black metal noise and glitch fury over wild sheets of amplifier noise and hum, then moves into eerie ambient soundscapes built from processed voices and keyboard drama laced with percussion flourishes. Another burst of harsh noise and glitch madness ("The Extraction of Delicate Tissue") is followed by "Damage Fractal Series III," a disorienting collage of wildly disparate noises, sounds, and tones hurled into the void with a considerably wide dynamic range. The final track, "Temporarily Dissolving Into Plasma During a Moment to One's Self," builds over twenty-plus minutes from fluctuating amp hum to delicate piano and drone, addling layers of noise and electronica along the way, growing in both density and volume as the cyclotron warms up, until by the end everything begins to dissolve into an excoriating acid bath of blind white noise and the sound of jet airplanes dropping Kenmore dryers down the side of Mount Everest. Bold and highly ambitious stuff, to be sure. Very dreamy atmospheres choke this recording. We?re treated to sounds ranging from an almost loungy feel to more expected "post-rock" fare, which all blend together in a very quiet, nice way to create the whole that is TOSLEEPTODREAMTOWAKE. Admittedly, at times the repetitiveness can be too repetitive, but it still retains a certain charm that can't be denied. I was reminded, for some inexplicable reason, of Tarantino movies. Perhaps it's the "groove" they have going on some tracks, or the fact that I've only ever seen Tarantino movies on extremely lazy summer afternoons -- something this album also put me in mind of. Whatever the case, this is certainly good listening for an afternoon of reading, or a soundtrack for an afternoon drive to the country. [Amanda] This disc is a series of seven duets between Jeff Kaiser (trumpet, quarter-tone trumpet, flugelhorn, live processing) and Andrew Pask (clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano / alto / tenor saxophones, bass penny whistle, live processing), all recorded live in the studio with no overdubs or pre-recorded samples in October of 2004. These are largely extended workouts -- three are approaching ten minutes, two exceed fifteen -- featuring a variety of sounds created with traditional instruments, some of which are allowed to stand, while others are significantly mutated. The sound, especially on tracks like "Wheeling Rebus," is surprisingly vast and multi-layered for only two players being present, with a significant element of drone amid the traditional sound of wind instruments. "Dim Effigies" opens with a loud explosion of sound, as the instruments are processed in a wildly overdriven manner for several minutes before resuming a more "normal" (and less ear-frying) sense of interplay before mutant sound blasts begin to creep back in as the piece progresses, along with long, sustained drones. The album's center is taken up by the two longest works, "The Variability of Stammering Arrows" and "Blue Air Habit," themselves almost the length of a full album at over thirty minutes; the former is driven by more loud experiments in sound processing and drones, with a sense of dynamics that flow and ebb as the sound of violence dies away and is replaced by more serene playing, only to pick up again later. The latter is built more around natural sounds, although there are moments of processing that result in whirling, high-pitched drones and, toward the end, thundering waves of low-end bass rumble. The mixture of natural sounds and processed sounds makes for a shifting, drifting ocean of texture in which all things are impossible to pin down. There's something happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones? Better sit down while you try to figure out how it's possible to make ordinary instruments sound so otherworldly. Actually two releases in one, the first half of this disc consists of the Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet performing "The Alchemical Mass" in six movements, while the second half is the Kaiser / Diaz-Infante Sextet performing "Suite Solutio" in five parts. The first performance is best explained by this notation in the liner notes: "Nicholas Melchior Cibenensis -- chaplain and court astronomer to Ladislaus I (King of Hungary and Bohemia) and then Louis II -- wrote the text of THE ALCHEMICAL MASS between 1490 and 1516. Following the death of Louis II in 1526, Cibenensis fled to Vienna... where Ferdinand I would execute him in 1531. The original text is quite long and has been paraphrased for this composition." In other words, this is a concept album based on the liturgy of said document (stripped down to a more manageable size), with the Ockodektet performing as key portions of the Mass are intoned by the Ojai Camerata, composed of five sopranos, five altos, three tenors, and four basses under the choral direction of Dr. Wyant Morton. The Ockodektet this time around consists of woodwinds (Vinny Golia, Eric Barber, Jason Mears), trumpet / flugelhorn (Kris Tiner), trombone (Michael Vlatkovich), tuba (Mark Weaver), bass (Jim Connolly), prepared acoustic guitar (Ernesto Diaz-Infante), acoustic piano (Wayne Peet), percussion (Brad Dutz), and drum set (Richie West), as conducted by Jeff Kaiser and Dr. Wyant Morton. The sound is a curious and striking mix of traditional Latin Mass and experimental orchestration, in which the theme of the alchemy of metals is expounded through the alchemy of improvised sound. The ockodektet's performance is restrained when appropriate (sometimes dropping out entirely, or close to it, during the choral parts), yet robust and energetic during the more improvised moments, offering a wide dynamic range and the free exploration of sound within a largely traditional context. The rest of the disc is rounded out by "Suite Solutio," featuring Jeff Kaiser on trumpet / flugelhorn, Ernesto Diaz-Infante on prepared acoustic guitar, Scot Ray on trombone, Jim Connally on bass, Brad Dutz on percussion, and Richie West on the drum set -- the same personnel, essentially, as the first extended piece but minus the woodwinds and choir, with Kaiser in the mix. The results are similar, but considerably more active (especially in the percussion department) without the need to make room for voices. The other major difference between the two sets is Kaiser, who has a distinct and unique approach to horns, one that is put to effective use here. The sum of the parts results in a whole that is an unexpected but engaging direction for Kaiser and his cohorts. This is a live recording of a solo performance by guitarist Masami Kawaguchi at Penguin House in Tokyo on December 21, 2002. Kawaguchi sings and plays a Fender twelve-string Stratocaster on three long, heavily repetitive tracks. The recording is okay, but the performance is great (although some may find his vocals unnerving), and he gets a great, shimmering guitar sound, a lonesome sound that calls up images of wandering lost in the woods after dark. I would assume these are Japanese folk songs of (judging from the intensity of his singing) an intensely personal nature, although as the pieces wear on, he has a tendency to drift into passages of experimentation and unusual chords. It frequently sounds like folk music from another planet (which I suppose Japan is, in some ways). Somber and contemplative stuff that requires a fair level of patience to process (at least until you get to the third song, which opens up in a quite noisy fashion). The one area where I suspect American audiences may have a hard time hanging with Kawaguchi's vision is in the tortured, near-operatic vocals, but that's just too bad -- the man has an individual sense of vision and style, plus (as the last track proves) he's capable of being a totally crazed solo guitarist. Nifty, nifty, nifty. Just be prepared for that unsettling voice, okay? More madness from Japan, this time courtesy of H. Konishi (banjo) and T. Okazaki (electronics), with four lengthy, improvised tracks recorded live at Sonic Brew on March 17, 2004. Konishi has a bizarre approach to banjo playing, to put it mildly, with plucked lines and occasional strumming that is countered by odd noises and electronic filth from his pal with the gadgets. Their interaction quite often gets intensely crazed, but there are moments as well (particularly in the introductions) where the sound is more sparse, more devoted to the banjo going plink-plink-plunk! while the electronic death waits, brooding, in the background. There are moments on the third track where Konishi starts whipping up a storm, demonstrating that he can actually play the thing instead of just making near-random plinking noises, but mostly he's about less-organized sounds. The four tracks share certain similarities, but branch out in different directions at times, mainly through the deployment of different kinds of electronic devices. Strange and perplexing, even for a PE release. Is there such a musical category as "naif pop" now? If there wasn't before, there is now. Krakow is one guy with a keyboard, guitar, and some gadgets in his bedroom making simple but catchy lo-fi pop tunes about friends, girls, internet dating, first graders, and similar obsessions. The sound of these short but surprisingly catchy tunes is somewhere between Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair, although Krakow's attitude is generally far sunnier than Johnston's and more recognizable as actual music than Fair's. With 31 songs on the disc, things keep moving right along, covering a lot of stylistic ground that keeps coming back to the kind of groove-laden synth-pop that went out of style about two decades ago. Bizarre but amusing, often even fun, and delivered in a highly quirky and individual style. Some of this reminds me of the first Flaming Fire album, if that means anything. It'll be interesting to see where he goes from here. A bold assertion in the liner notes proclaims, "WARNING: THIS IS NOT NEW AGE MUSIC!" Well, no shit -- those moony New Age yahoos aren't anywhere this weird and entertaining. This is not wallpaper music for listening to while polishing chakra stones, to be sure. The band is actually a new-school psychedelic band composed of former members of Fifty Foot Hose with guests from Gong (Daevid Allen) and Mandible Chatter (Grant Miller), among others. The core consists of multi-instrumentalists Walter Funk and Reid Johnston, who have been playing with Fifty Foot Hose since the band reformed in 1995; FFH founder Cork Marcheschi plays on the title track here as well. Fifty Foot Hose were a huge influence on bands like Pere Ubu, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle, and the eternally godlike Angel'in Heavy Syrup, with their peculiar penchant for turning gadgets into oddly listenable tools of psychedelic sonic mayhem. The better-known Gong were probably an influence on seventies psych rock second only to Amon Duul (take your pick of which version), but FFH -- who released one brilliant album, CAULDRON, in the late sixties and then didn't bother to get around to putting out a second one until 1997 (perhaps they were too busy eating "special" brownies and building new noise-making gadgets, eh?) -- were always a much weirder band, and the bands they influenced have in turn been a huge inspiration to tripped-out noisemakers from the late seventies onward. This album makes it obvious they haven't lost their fondness for freaky and often homemade gadgets; following in the footsteps of Sun Ra and his Cosmo-everything tone tools, this album boasts sounds generated by such quirky items as the Cupid, the Ulysses, and the Hologlyphic Funkalizer, not to mention perverted uses for soda straws, jaw harps, sousaphones, and spark machines. (The Cupid is played by Fred "Spaceman" Long, which makes a deranged sort of cosmic sense.) The ten songs here -- with titles like "Dragon Titties," "Surrealistic At Large Domino," and "Ether Bunny's Music for the Massless" -- are deeply surreal and frequently hypnotic exercises in psychedelic funk that bridge the gap between Sun Ra and Funkadelic with lots of windowpane acid. Needless to say it's all incredibly swell, and anybody who was ever a fan of the above-mentioned bands (or just a fan of psych / devolved music in general) should want to hear this. The outer (and inner) spaceway monorail is boarding; come get your psychedelic hypnogroove on with the boys with the best toys. Kwisp -- TERIYAKI VEST ODYSSEY [Pinephone Recordings] If Walter Funk doesn't have a shelf full of Nurse With Wound, Faust and Vas Deferens Organization CDs, I'd be surprised. I know he worked with Mandible Chatter, remixed Daevid Allen and participated in the resurrection of 60s psych/rock/electronic band the Fifty Foot Hose (whose Cork Marcheschi appears on a track here). The Kwisp sound alternates between sparse and chaotic junk music ala NWW and weird, tribalistic disordered songs like liturgical music made by nitrous-crazed Alabamanian-Polynesian dwarves. Maybe a fond look back at when the Thomas Dissevelts and Tod Dockstaders of the world wrenched electronic and tape music from the hands of academia and shaped their own futuristic dayglo mushroomscapes and blacklit apocalypses. Maybe just a little less Jew's harp next time. [Gafne Rostow] This is heavy, very heavy and muddy and angry. The first song, "Baghdad," is actually one of the calmer tunes contained herein. It's a lovely song, really. Lush, winding, very full, yet still as heavy as all the rest. Then there are songs like "In the Dirt," which is short and to the point-words yelled, drums pounding. This recording is like that proverbial breath of fresh air, that album you listen to when you're angry at someone or something and despite its being just as pissed as you are it still manages to put you in a better mood simply by being executed so perfectly. The dissonance they display on most tracks, offset by what can be termed discordant harmonies, only serves to makes it more likeable, which reminds you of just how fine it is to come across well-crafted heavy music. [Amanda] Levit is a modern jazz cat who normally performs at places like the Knitting Factory, the Kennedy Center, and the Montreal Jazz Festival as the leader of the Rob Levit Group, but this immense double-cd is not a jazz album. No, this is an ambitious move into the field of experimental electronics, a solo album built from the ground up on the computer, in which synthetic beats are married to strange sounds, cut and paste textures, eerie processed noise, and other sonic effluvia to create forty wildly different tracks that encompass experimental music, noise, electronica, and a peculiar kind of ambient soundtrack music. Levit was weaned on the likes of Mingus, Metheny, Hendrix, and McLaughlin, but the tracks on this set have more to do with Stockhausen, Eno, and Telstar than anything in the jazz world -- the only real nod to jazz here is in the spirit of things, the manner in which tracks are assembled and sounds are juxtaposed. The cover bills these tracks as "electronic soundscapes," as good a description as any, and while their sound and construction vary greatly from one track to the next, they share a similar feeling of eerie otherworldliness. His talent for composition (he's won several prestigious awards for composition) keeps the tracks sharp and focused, and his attention to detail results in a large variety of different sounds and beats over the two discs. It's true that two cds worth of these peculiar experiments in sound might be too much for the average listener, but there's certainly plenty of interesting stuff to hear. The two discs don't appear to be broken down into disparate themes, although the second one does strike me as a bit more beat-heavy. Some of the the tracks actually approach the realm of modern techno, and even the stranger ones are far more accessible (and listenable) than you might expect from the project's description. The tracks are generally short (most are in the neighborhood of three minutes, and often less), which keeps them from getting stale; he obviously understands the power of brevity. Strange and exotic stuff, definitely not what you'd expect of someone steeped in jazz, but highly rewarding nevertheless. With photos of Little Fydor looking like a crazed lunatic with a guitar and titles like "Oh God I Feel Like Shit," "I Am Insane," and "You... Are So Stupid," I was almost afraid to listen to this for fear that the music could never hope to match the great titles. It's a good thing I did, though, because the music is just as swell as the titles and every bit as bizarre as Fydor's unnerving appearance would suggest. I think Fydor may secretly be one of the Doktors For Bob, who all went into hiding after the failed assassination attempt on J. R. "Bob" Dobbs. He's certainly out there, with a caustic appraisal of humanity to match his weirdness. This is not new stuff: This disc was recorded in 1994 and apparently just recently reissued, but it's every bit as devolved and entertaining now as it undoubtedly was then. Drugged-out, psychotic music segues into spastic proto-punk and moves on to wigged-out blues and unnerving chipmunk-rap, and all the while the music remains extremely idiosyncrastic -- the effect is something like the Dead Milkmen or Ween channeling a Subgenius devival. Disorienting doesn't begin to describe it. This is the kind of stuff that has the power to polarize rooms, with half the listeners falling on the floor in helpless laughter and the other half stampeding for the nearest exit. (Needless to say, a sense of humor and a high tolerance for peculiar shenanigans is a prerequisite to enjoying music like this.) The song "You're Gonna Miss Me" may or may not be an "extremely free" take on the 13th Floor Elevators tune (I don't think it is, but with these jokers it's hard to be sure). Bonus points for the swank psychedelic hippie guitar in "You... Are So Stupid" (I'm a sucker for psychedelic hippie guitar). Fydor is joined by a ridiculous number of people in making these songs happen, although you'd never know it from the largely seamless nature of the tracks and the way his eccentric personality dominates the entire album. This is some kind of lost classic of whacked-out strangeness and probably deserves its own entry in the INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC series. Check it out before it disappears again. Ryan and Marty Rex (and pals Adam Brilla and Dave Doom) return for more drone-o-rific pop rock. This is the band's second full-length (after an extended ep) since shortening their name from Lockgroove Lullaby to just Lockgroove, and while it's significantly different from their previous hypno-masterpiece THROUGH THE ELEPHANT FOG, it still retains the heavy drone-fuzz guitars that have dominated everything they've done so far. The biggest difference this time around, though, is a decided shift toward songs with a pure-pop center. Weird guitar frippery often introduces or rides out the tunes, but the songs themselves are nothing but pure jangly pop with reverb-heavy guitars dropping in from time to time to launch everything into the stratosphere. Much of the time the sound is built on a thick slab of rhythm guitar that sounds like something lifted from one of the early (good) Sugar albums as another dreamier and more psychedelic guitar noodles around the edges. It doesn't hurt that Marty gets a great drum sound all over the album, a sound (in both tone and playing) that owes more to the best of sixties pop and jazz than modern rock. Highlights include "I'm Leaving," "Faded Sun," "Waste My Time," "Payin' the Price," "The Suicide Kings," "The Worst Mistake"... actually, to be honest, the entire album rocks from start to finish, something that's unfortunately all too rare these days. Psychedelic pop rock this swank is not something you should want to miss. Like, OW, dudes. Lung Lunch is a noise / power-violence unit from Austin consisting of Dillon and Zach on tapes and gadgets and extreme volume-fu. I watched them totally destroy a bunch of pedals live one night a few months ago and I thought that was loud; well, this is even louder. This is, frankly speaking, way too loud for normal humans (hell, it's too loud even for me, which is scary). I don't know how either of them can actually hear anything any more after a year or more of inflicting this kind of punishment on themselves, not to mention others. Five tracks of complete blinding noise and extreme pedal-fu, like the sound of squadrons of Stukas blowing up cities and then incinerating them in titanic walls of fire until only gray, smoking ash remains. Sort of like the remains of my stereo. The tracks have titles like "UFCOYONDAYAOOM" and "KKENZANYO" and they will shear off the top of your skull. "IPZURAI" is not quite as satanically violent and "KKENZANYO" have relatively non-painful moments, but the rest of it is diabolical earhurt at ridiculous volumes. A return to old-school noise and power-electronics, complete with perverse and unnatural packaging, limited to 24 copies. Ow ow ow. Providence, RI is home to Corleone Records and some of the strangest bands on earth. Mahi Mahi is one of them, a cryptic duo of V. von Ricci (vocals, noises) and Servicio (drums, noises), and the songs are essentially exercises in droning, pinging keyboard noise over hard beats while the vocalist intones vocals (often in the background, frequently through much processing). It's strange stuff, often deliberately irritating yet surprisingly danceable, with an aesthetic that owes as much to K. C. and the Sunshine Band as to Arab on Radar. The lyrics read like mysterious in-jokes and the entire effect is sort of like listening to a damaged SOLID GOLD soundtrack while stoned on crack. Corleone obviously shares a lot of the same fascination for eccentric behavior as Load Records, and I could see this band on tour with just about any band from that label (but especially Pink and Brown). This kind of madness is what happens when you give demented people drums and keyboards. Plenty of great beats amid the sonic bedevilment, though, not to mention keyboard tones lifted from Suicide and Devo. Best tracks: "You Can Feel Right," "The Fire Is On," "Downtown," "He Won't Give Up," and "Number Nine." The main purpose behind this band is in exploring the potential of unusual instruments; most of the instruments used on this album were made from clay by musician / sculptress Susan Rawcliffe, often based on handmade instruments from different cultures around the world. She appears here with Scott Wilkinson, who plays a wide variety of wind instruments, and percussionist Brad Dutz, who has collected over the years an enormous number of different percussion instruments from many cultures. Some of the more unusual musical tools employed on this recording include the harmonic whistle, claydoo, waterflute, ball and tube flute, howler, wind wands, triple pipe, pin chimes, superball, daff, makta, batajon, metal junk, and other equally cryptic instruments. Other, moderately more familiar instruments that come into play include various kinds of drums, ocarina, euphonium, Tibetian bells, and bass recorder. There's certainly a wide variety of unusual sounds ready to be made with all this exotic equipment, that's for sure. In spite of -- or maybe because of -- the esoteric nature of the instruments, the thirteen pieces that result are not all that far removed from the sound of other albums on the label (possibly because everybody involved with the label seems mildly obsessed with finding new and different ways to use instruments in every manner imaginable save for their "proper" methods). Dutz employs anywhere from one to five percussion instruments at a time to create tribal polyrhythms for the other two to blow over, and the lack of machine-made instruments gives the entire affair a tribal, primitive feel, like a musical jam session taking place in the jungle, or perhaps around a campfire in the age before modern tools. The tracks range from eerie and minimalist, near-solo efforts with few instruments and a sparse approach to sound to polyrhythmic workouts employing many noise-making toys and a more frantic, cluttered approach. There's also plenty of different strategies, set a different levels of tempo and pacing, across the tracks as they thoroughly explore all the possibilities for untamed sound through the use of mysterious materials. The results are intriguing, made all the more so by the trio's expertise at improvised structures and talent for discovering unique sounds and applying them in an imaginative manner. Swell, exotic stuff worth exploring. R. P. Collier returns with another odd assortment of quirky soundscape tunes created with guitar, synthesizer, toy synth, thumb piano, and drum machine (but not all at once). As with his previous release under the same name, minimalism is the key word here: Of the nine songs presented here, only three feature more than one instrument at a time, and those instruments are generally playing simple (but bizarre) and repetitive motifs. Nothing is what it seems -- the drum machine spits out beats that don't sound like any kind of percussion you've ever heard while psychotronic noise guitar blows over it in "swivel & gimbal," the toy synth on "nimbus" sounds like a groaning and overdriven drone machine, the sole guitar on "cepheid variable" sounds more like a demented synth loop... this is the music the Major was listening to out in the woods in TWIN PEAKS, where the owls are not what they seem. The tracks are all relatively short and grandly perplexing. For what essentially amounts to twisted exercises in minimalist noise and lo-fi instrument abuse, they're also oddly compelling. What we have here is seven tracks of slashing indie-pop rock from a band that frequently sounds like the Romantics with a busier drummer, an occasionally more psychedelic guitarist, and several pots of coffee in them. They're also unafraid to "borrow" from the school of rock that has come before them -- the beats on the first song's intro and some of the guitar riffs are pretty much cribbed from "Mississippi Queen," for instance -- but they make up for any lack of originality with driving performances and torched guitars. Their overall sound is somewhere between Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Seether, and a whole bunch of other bands who favor that churning, squealing, heavily-compressed guitar sound over a steady hard-rock groove. This is not the most original or earth-shaking disc you'll ever hear, but it's energetic and well-done, and it rocks. I'll bet they bring the rock live. The trio consists of Tom McNalley on guitar, Jonas Tauber on bass, and Ken Ollis on drums, and they're good enough that legendary crank / reviewer Richard Meltzer, who heard the disc while it was still in pre-release form, loved it so much he begged to write the liner notes, which appear on the inside of the booklet. As for their sound, think of a version of Last Exit that's okay with standing near the cliff above the abyss but less inclined to dive in headfirst. Or maybe William Hooker and Borbetomagus leaning toward more jazz, less chaos. There's certainly a cerebral element to the six tracks on this disc, but the band's playing is often ferocious enough to move from the realm of nuanced improvisation into the more familiar territory of purely rocking out. As Meltzer points out in the notes, McNalley is obviously influenced by the likes of Sonny Sharrock, Pat McLaughlin, Derek Bailey, and Nels Cline (among others), but purely in the spirit of building on what they have done before him rather than "borrowing" riffs and ideas. Think of him more as a diabolical melodic outrider, with the other two running along at a breakneck pace to give him a structure and a backbone that will keep everything from falling apart. They do this well -- McNalley is not the only genius here; drummer Ollis is one of the few recent drummers I've heard who matches Ronald Shannon Jackson and Mick Harris (in his role as drummer for Painkiller rather than Scorn) in sheer bombast and intensity while still retaining a firm grip on the mighty beat, and bassist Tauber provides the propulsive bridge between the two of them that keeps things cohesive. They manage to cram more activity and ideas into the first two songs than some bands do into their entire careers, and not only is this their debut release, McNalley is barely even old enough to drink in my state. No wonder Meltzer shit his pants when he heard this. Check it out and you just might too. MBS is actually Chris Stepniewski, who also releases material as Noisecore Freak. In this guise he unleashes ten tracks of pummeling, beat-heavy industrial dance music in the old-school style of bands like Severed Heads, Front 242, Cabaret Voltaire, and early Skinny Puppy (you know, before they started spending all their $$$ on heroin and started to suck). You can tell it's all about the big beat, too, because he doesn't bother with vocals (a good move, if you ask me -- too many of the old-school bands inevitably hung themselves with cheesy overprocessed vocals while yelling about nothing substantial). He does make a nod toward more recent developments like glitch electronica and chopped-up beats, and there are ambient interludes here and there, but by and large this is an ass-quaking throwback to the hard style of late eighties / early nineties electronic body rock. That he's a Canadian is probably a point in his favor -- Canada always had the quirkiest and most interest IDM bands back in the day. Clubbers looking for a reminder of how the old-school was probably better could do much worse than to look into this. Nadja is the ambient doom vehicle of solo drone artist Aidan Baker (credited here with guitars, flute, vocals, and drum machine), aided and abetted by Leah Buckareff on bass and vocals. This, their latest release, consists of three long tracks (one over ten minutes, two over twenty) centered around the theme of a rare congenital disorder, Firbodysplasia Ossificana Progressiva, in which the bones of the body literally lock up and ossify. The resulting sound is very much in the ballpark of Earth, Sunn O))), and other death drone bands, although Baker favors a lot more high end in his guitars than most death-drone bands. On "clinodactyl" they also have a phenomenally slow drum machine going too, as a dark, eerie drone riff is repeated endlessly over amp hum. The drone of doom is gradually joined by a cascading whirlwind of white noise, until -- nearly nine minutes into the piece -- it finally takes off with a thunderous beat and shimmering, apocalyptic walls of wailing guitar. The whirling dervish riff that opens "autosomal" stops and starts abruptly, and by the third time it does it becomes obvious that another layer of sound is happening behind it... then the riff settles into a cycle of endless repetition as the drums eventually come in, slowly but surely, building from a slow, pounding patterns to patterns that are... um... not quite so slow. The final track, "ossification," gets off to a quiet start with shuddering drone in the background and pinging reverb in the foreground. As the song progresses, layers of sound and drone begin to build as the ping-pong guitar recedes into a morose ambient fog. The drums don't even show up until somewhere past the ten-minute mark, and even then they're nearly drowned out by the hovercraft guitar. Nadja's minimalist death-drone shares the stunted tempos and epic sensibility of such time-challenged bands as Khanate and Sunn O))), but without the metal component -- in many ways the band is closer in intent (if not necessarily execution) to Maeror Tri or Troum. Suitable for floating away into the ether, with or without the aid of hallucinogens. Newbould is a pop-rock singer / songwriter who moved to Austin from NYC in 2002, and that makes sense -- he sounds much more like a quirky Austin artist than anything I could imagine going over well in blase and avant-garde New York. He's done well enough in indie circles that the first track, "See You On the Other Side," was featured on the dvd for DAWSON'S CREEK: SECOND SEASON (you know, the series that launched the career of Tom Cruise's current zombiefied Scientology slave, excuse me, fiancee). This is indie-pop rock with Americana leanings plus a solid grounding in roots rock and the singer / songwriter tradition, and it's my understanding that this disc is actually a collection of tracks from three previous EPs and the aforementioned track, rounded out with a demo and several live tracks, all recorded in Austin at KUT, Antone's, and KO-OP FM. No information is given about the backing band (who are a solid bunch), but they work well together with Newbould, and the tracks all have plenty of depth and energy. The live tracks are also well-recorded, which makes this disc a pretty comprehensive picture of his sound both in and out of the studio. The disc includes thirteen tracks, divided equally between studio and live / demo tracks, as well as an enhanced video for "See You On the Other Side." If you're in Austin or happen to catch him on the road, drop in and see what the fuss is about. Trent's last studio outing was the beyond-overblown double-disc THE FRAGILE, a beautiful but intensely excessive collection of pretty sounds in search of some actual songs. This time he's pared everything down and largely abandoned the search for Epic Grandness in favor of composing actual songs -- what a concept, huh? The funny thing is, this is probably the most consistently listenable album he's released since CLOSER. A lot of people have compared this to his first album PRETTY HATE MACHINE, largely because it's more basic and song-oriented (and it's far more beat-heavy than most of the material he's favored over the past few albums), but that's a misleading comparison. For one thing, the songs here are better -- PRETTY HATE MACHINE was swell-sounding, sure, but a bit deficient in the songwriting department. Trent supposedly wrote an enormous number of songs for this album and then weeded them down to the best thirteen, with excellent results. Sure, he's not exactly doing anything new here, and lyrically he goes as far as to steal lines from previous albums, but he's tinkered with the plan a bit with interesting results. The sound this time is a lot cleaner -- the noise element has been pushed into the background, and there's a lot less emphasis on the wall-of-sound approach and more on quirky rhythms by a small number of instruments. The piano that overwhelmed the tracks on THE FRAGILE is employed far more judiciously here -- in fact, the more I listen to this, the more I think this is the album that Trent really intended to make the last time out, only to have it turn into an overblown monster. It doesn't hurt, either, that nearly everything on here (especially "Every Day Is Exactly The Same," "Sunspots," and "Beside You In Time") is insanely catchy, or that the beat (Dave Grohl contributed drums on at least part of the album) hasn't been this big and pounding since CLOSER's "Eraser." Trent may have some game left in him yet. This is the harder-rocking side (sort of, kinda) to Chris Stepniewski's other band, Murder by Static, one that combines beat-heavy dance and rock rhythms with metal guitars and shouting to mixed effect. This disc was apparently first released as WELCOME TO THE STITCHFACE SCAR SITTER EXPERIENCE in 1999, and has since been extensively remixed and remastered. The thirteen (mostly short) tracks here combine industrial, metal, and speedcore in a metal reminiscent of early Ministry doing hardcore tunes. I don't know that there's anything "new" about it, but it's certainly energetic. Unlike his other band, this one features vocals, mainly angst-ridden metal-punk stuff shouted through miles of distortion. The tracks are rampaging and borderline out of control, which is a good thing, but they don't particularly go anywhere, although they are heavy and menacing. It's not bad and certainly in your face, but I think I like the other disc better. The sound of Null Objct (actually guitarist / composer Gary Hebert) is one of approaches and strategies, a sound that mines from both indie rock and techno, where loops and sequenced parts battle with free-form sections, and guitars (real and processed) are every bit as important as the synths and machines. The techno impulse is prevalent mainly in the insistent, repetitive machine rhythms; on top of these mechanical beats and loops, however, are layers of evolving sonic architecture. Hebert's doing interesting things here as the tones move from one set to another over a shifting bed of rhythmic intensity, and the results are every bit as atmospheric and mysterious as they are danceable. The nine songs don't stray far from a midtempo groove, giving the album a flow and consistency that never grows boring thanks to the constantly changing layers of sound whirling around over the beats. Compelling, highly listenable stuff with the potential for appeal even to those not necessarily fans of techno or indie rock. Okay, now this is kind of interesting -- operatic metal from San Antonio, Texas that fuses elements of death metal, folk music, goth, and opera into something resembling a collision between Opeth, October Project, Fear of God (the metal band, not the hardcore one) and Mercyful Fate. In other words, expect lots of drama, soaring keyboards, abrupt shifts of tempo and texture, and above all, excellent vocals from Alessandra Zinicola, who has an impressive vocal range. This style of hybrid metal has surged forward in popularity since bands like Lacuna Coil and Evanescence started heaving up piles of platinum records, but Of Infinity -- who've been together for over five years -- pretty much predates all of that. The band behind Zinicola (Nazareth Sando -- guitars, Kurtis Kyllo -- bass, and Carlos Teller -- drums) includes former members of Fallen Empire, Pinkeye, and April Death, and they're all excellent, which is hardly surprising since you have to know just a wee bit more than basic bar chords to play music this complex. The three songs are all long enough to allow for plenty of changes in tempo, intensity, and texture without getting bogged down, and everything sounds excellent -- the recording and production are excellent throughout. This disc passes the DEAD ANGEL air guitar test as well. Fans of Type O Negative, Lacuna Coil, Dream Theater, and the like should find this of interest. I know little about this (apparently French) band except that I like this EP a lot. There's a lush sound and hypnotic sensibility to "Helice," which is filled with constantly-strummed pop guitar, swelling keyboards, and expanding layers of melodic sound that eventually resolve into pure lush pop over a steady beat. "The Punishment of the White Rose" is a more straightforward pop song (in English, no less) that sounds like it could have been in regular rotation on the American charts in the late eighties / early nineties. The remaining two tracks are a langorious ballad ("L'Ebloui") and a live version of "Helice" (recorded in Prague in 2002) that's more piano-driven and considerably more bombastic. This is great stuff, and one of my unexpected favorites of the issue. The live track is also on the limited-edition live cd PRAGUE 2002; both the cd-ep and live cd are available by mailorder directly from the band. This disc is the audio documentation of a live performance at Jackstraw Productions in Seattle on April 12, 2003 with the Phonographer's Union and special guest Marcos Fernandes. The Union consists of sound artists and manipulators Steve Barsotti, Christopher DeLaurenti, Mark Griswold, Alex Keller, Dale Lloyd, Robert Millis, Perri Lynch, and Toby Paddock. For those not hep to the terminology, "phonography" is essentially the art of field recordings -- and as anyone who has experimented with field recordings will tell you, when you aim a tape recorder (or any recording device) at a sound-making subject, what ends up on tape is not necessarily what you heard floating through the air. Tape and digital recordings can also be processed, manipulated, slowed down or sped up, and so on, until the original sound is unrecognizable; even recognizable sounds (or at least sounds that, on tape, distinctly resemble what was recorded) can sound totally unfamiliar when taken out of context and placed in another. This, then, is what the Phonographer's Union is all about -- the use of field recordings in unusual settings, juxtaposing vastly different sounds to see if a new sound will emerge, laying down sounds in a compositional format to create compelling soundscapes. For this recording, nine phonographers gathered together with their cd players, md players, and one laptop, then performed two improvised sets using only their field recordings from a wide variety of sources. The only requirement for their interaction was the use of largely untreated material (equalization, filtering and / or compression were deemed acceptable for the purpose of making certain sounds more equitable in terms of volume levels for recording and broadcast). The first improvisation is tracked on the cd as the first five tracks, while the second improvisation takes up the final three. Both pieces appear here unedited, with a sound that consistently evolves as different phonographers step forward with material reflecting their own distinct interests and sensibilities. The result in both cases is a series of flowing, evolving, overlapping sounds, including sounds from nature, the city, conversations, and basically anything that could be captured on a recording device. Random location-based sounds (man-made or otherwise) are integrated into new and distinct shapes of sound, with intriguing results. Credit for the brilliant engineering and mastering go to Doug Haire at Jackstraw Productions, himself a producer and engineer associated with the art of phonography was has released similar work on Anomalous Records. This is a must-have disc for anybody seriously interested in the mystical recording art of phonography and field recordings in general, not to mention the individual artists involved, many of whom have released powerful works completely separate from this fine slab of audio. The Poetry Band is the brainchild of Wilson Sherman, and this recording is one hour-long track, a long and winding and frequently devolved psych jam with poet and automobile safety activist Sherman singing / reciting over the top. Originally from San Francisco and the author of two books (EXIT and ROOMS), he founded the Automobile Safety Foundation to raise public consciousness about the dangers of automobile steering locks. The band behind him on this disc consists of guitarist Darrell Fields, drummer Jim Guercio, bassist / pianist Steve Blake, and saxophonist / flutist / clarinet player John Rekevics. As the band plays an endless death psych jam, Sherman holds forth like a man possessed, going on with genuinely apocalyptic fervor about the terror of dangerous automobiles, angels, devils, greed, guns, government run amok, Jesus rising from the dead, children in graveyards, rape and plunder, the air turning to poison gas, and even scarier-sounding stuff. Terror and paranoia reign supreme as the band plays on with improvisational fervor. This is one of the most genuinely fervent and demented recordings I've ever heard. Somebody should lock the doors of Congress and pipe this into their sound system and force them to hear it. Wild, wild stuff. I have no idea if anybody's paying attention to him or not, but this is destined to become a lost psych classic somewhere down the line. When they get around to doing an INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC volume that catalogs the amazing, underappreciated weird musical artifacts of this decade, this recording will listed there. This will be this decade's version of D. R. Hooker's THE TRUTH; trust me on this. Of course, you could check it out now and get a copy while it's still available. You probably won't, of course, but a decade from now you'll wish you had. Prine returns with his first full album of new material in nearly a decade after being momentarily sidelined by throat cancer, and it's a good one. It's also a lot more laid-back and less rock-oriented than his last two studio albums, but with musicians as stellar as the guys backing him this time around, that's okay too. It's a bit more serious and more concerned with the mundane but revelatory pleasures of ordinary life than his last few albums, but that's hardly surprising given his boxing match with the angel of death -- these things have a way of making you reexamine your priorities and interests, nu? I was worried that his bout with throat cancer might have had an adverse effect on his voice, but while he does sound mildly different, he's still got that same distinctive voice that I always look forward to hearing again. (And let's be honest here -- the number of people who listen to Prine expecting him to sound pretty is probably the same number expecting Bob Dylan to sound like Roberta Flack, which is to say, not very friggin' many, right?) The instant classics this time around include "Crazy as a Loon," "Some Humans Ain't Human" (in which he takes aim at the "cowboy from Texas" responsible for the current mess in Iraq), "She Is My Everything" (a simultaneously humorous and touching paean to his current wife), and my personal favorite, "Bear Creek Blues," a rocking take on the kind of country-rock the Band used to do back when they were still all on speaking terms with each other. The disc also includes two live bonus tracks, the absolutely hysterical "Other Side of Town" (which he introduces as a song about a man imagining himself somewhere else when his wife starts going on and on -- "I read about this guy," he says with a cough that makes it clear that he's just playing a bit of CYA), and the loopy (so loopy that he actually cracks up halfway through) "Safety Joe." A great return. This unusual track by Radulovich (who sometimes fights musical crime under the name Titicacaman) was commissioned by members of Lower Left for a performance called "Mars," and is focused on George W. Bush's lurid obsession with terrorism. Samples taken from news broadcasts, mainly of Bush lecturing the nation on the evils of terrorism and the fight against Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, are arranged over an electronic soundscape to create a satirical dialogue that questions the validity of the war on terrorism and its effect on the United States. The soundscape beneath the samples was constructed from short wave radio, Airsynth, cat-litter tubs, and digital processing, and sounds suitably ominous, even violent at times. Scary, unsettling stuff. Satire can be that way, you know. The band sent this to me quite a while back, and I'm just now getting around to reviewing it, possibly because I suck. Random Touch, however, does not suck. The band is actually a duo of Christopher Brown and James Day who have been collaborating together in both visual and auditory mediums since the late seventies. This time around they're also joined by guitarist Scott Hamill and video guy Matthew Ebbin. On this, their fifth release, they combine the two disciplines with a cd (nearly seventy minutes of enigmatic listening material) and dvd (over an hour of short video clips). The music is exotic and interesting; unlike their previous disc, A PARADE OF DUSTY HOBOS, the music on this one has less to do with traditional instrumentation and songs than with improvisation incorporating traditional instruments employed in odd fashion, vocals, samples, found sound, field recordings, and other strange auditory behavior. Over the course of 17 tracks ranging from twenty seconds to more than thirteen minutes, they throw down complex soundscapes that sound very much like a film soundtrack, or perhaps the soundtrack to a cryptic interior monologue. Given that their sonic palette encompasses everything from rock, folk, prog rock, free jazz, field recordings, and the joys of studio manipulation, there's plenty of imaginative sound stylings to keep things interesting. While the overall sound definitely leans more toward the experimental / free-jazz tip, there's a structure and melodic sensibility at work that keeps it all hanging together even when things get strange. There's a lot more vocal improvisation than I recall happening on previous outings, which adds a nice new dimension to the proceedings. As with earlier releases, the combination of their years of experience as eccentric tone scientists, fevered imagination, and attention to detail result in multilayered tapestries of sound sure to reveal more elements with each repeated listening. As for the dvd, many of the short films here were originally shown at film festivals in 2003 and 2004, including the New York Video Festival, the South by Southwest Film Festival, and the 47th San Francisco International Film Festival. Nine of the clips are videos made to accompany tracks from this cd release and earlier ones, while six of them are performance clips recorded at various shows between 2000 and 2003. More cool stuff to check out. They used to be just the Eyesores until a band in California with the same name started giving them grief, so now they're stuck with a much longer name. More reasons to hate lawyers, to be sure. The band is currently main songwriter Redfearn (accordion, vocals), Margie Wienk (upright bass, cello, vocals), Matt Everett (viola), Alec Thibodeau (electric guitar, AM radio), Matt McLaren (drums), Sara Stalnaker (cello), Ann Schattle (French horn), Erica Schaffle (bassoon), Chris Saraullo (percussion), and Jason McGill (alto sax, percussion, short wave radio). Thibodeau is also in Noney; McLaren and Ann Schattle are also in Barnacled. This is the band's third full-length cd (they've also released a split single with Iditarod and a six-song cassette ep under their previous, shorter name), with eleven puzzling tracks total. The band's sound is a bizarre mix of experimental chaos, country death folk, klezmer, and a funeral dirge, a lunatic combination that actually works better than you'd have any right to expect. Probably the best way to think of them is as a largely straightforward folk / klezmer band with a fondness for incorporating elements of noise, antimusic, and unusual rhythms into the more traditional sounds. Songs often start out in a traditional manner only to mutate into freeform chaos, while others largely maintain a familiar klezmer sound that is augmented by weirdness in the background, or transformed into a new hybrid of sound through the use of unexpected instruments. The collision of worlds works more often than not -- the band is really good, and regardless of their eccentric moves, they know what they're doing and take it pretty seriously -- and the results are surprisingly listenable. Somebody should put them on tour with Flaming Fire and Wolfmangler and let them all destroy the minds of the unsuspecting sheep. This music was originally recorded for the radio piece "The Time and the Room" by Botho Strauss (directed by Elio De Capitani) in the RAI Studios in Milano in September, 1999. The work was later edited in 2003, and recently released as this swell disc. The personnel at work consists of Renato Rinaldi (guitar, bowed strings, and other sounds), with assistance from Christian Alati (guitar) on "girls (the room)," Alessandro Bosetti (soprano sax on "the column" and "the funeral"), and Giuseppe Ielasi (pedal guitar on "out of the room"). The four longish tracks are dominated by bowed strings, guitar, and other ambient room sounds. I would assume this was intended to be background music playing behind a play or commentary, as it usually stays fairly quiet and sedate. It's background music, soundtrack music, a combination of musical passages and musique concrete that manages to remain interesting while not overwhelming. The most overtly musical of the tracks is "the column," with droning sax lines and guitar, while the grittiest and noisiest parts are on "funeral." The opening and closing tracks are more cinematic, generally more restrained and subdued, with guitars prone to minimalist plucking amid ambient background sounds. Interesting stuff, and well-recorded, although it would be nice to know what the original broadcast was all about. Still, it's not like you desperately need to know to appreciate the interplay of guitar and other instruments at work here. This is the solo debut of Robert Montoya, an improvisational percussionist and sound artist who has been active in San Diego's experimental scene for decades. Over the past few years he has begun to focus on sample-based computer and electronic music, and it's this sound that emerges on his debut, an eerie blend of electronica, IDM, and dark ambient sound. "You're soaking in it" is a dark-ambient death drone filled with howling white noise like a cloud with shuffling electrobeats that come and go; "Sinistre" is built on an electronic pulse and ominous loops, with echoing snippets of conversation and sound that float in and out of the mix like ghosts. Other tracks follow in a similar fashion, fashioned from drone loops and samples of conventional instruments, field recordings, and snippets from radio and television; they all have an eerie, twilight quality, like the sound of distant dreams in a broken media landscape. There's an unearthly beauty to the droning sandstorm at the heart of "Pastoral," where the beat comes from the pounding of a huge but distant metronome of sorts as samples rise and fall, lost in the swirl. The sounds in "Landing Craft" are appropriately otherworldly, all science-fiction beeping and chittering over a rumbling loop that serves as a minimalist beat. There are some interesting drones and textures amid the sample-fury on these eight tracks, and they go well with the combination of subdued tribal beats. This is an intriguing bridge between the worlds of electronica, dance music, and dark ambient, well worth exploring. Sideaton automatically got some amount of respect from me before I heard a single note of their DRESS ME UP demo simply because it's packaged as I like: slim CD case, typed and cut out insert, black and white cover picture. There's something to be said for those who do it all themselves. No labels pushing it on you, no PR crap, no pages and pages of info on them to tell me exactly why I should like their music. And I do like their music. We begin with a minute and a half of noisy ambience, "Start" -- a theme that flows throughout the album. Very minimal, with odd rumbling sounds and bursts of static fuzz. Moving beyond the brief intro, we wander into strange country. Processed sounds, noises, voices, all distorted beyond recognition. Nightmarish and sinister, the whole recording feels like a descent into a maelstrom. At times it becomes unendurably nerve wracking, then abruptly you're given a moment or two of silence, only to be immediately thrust back into the contorted realm these sounds emanate from. You're finally released from the labyrinth, "End," but the convoluted images this recording brings to mind linger on a while longer. [Amanda] [...] computer or what the fuck is going on, the end result is this spectacular mechanical crush of sound from Sightings with Smith ranting incoherently in a kind of doomed lounge-singer howl. Not miles removed from regular Sightings stuff, but it comes off as a little looser, dirtier, an avalanche of oil-soaked fertilizer and Boy Scout canteens and medical waste and McDonalds bags and liquor bottles and jumper cables and glass glass glass. Happy war, Christmas is over style funk noise [...] [Gafne Rostow] At this point Skullflower is basically Matthew Bower plus guests (this time around, the guests are Mick Flower -- who provides percussion on "Forked Lightning" -- and guitarist Mark Burns, who appears on "Starry Wisdom" and "Ghosts Ice Aliens"), but that's okay; even when Skullflower was an actual band, it was largely Bower's baby (which probably has a lot to do with why guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn left after XAMAN, still the band's best album). This is one of Skullflower's better releases, although it's less about bringing the rock and more about canyons filled with processed uberdrone. In spite of the near-total lack of beats, this is not an album that drifts and floats; there's a nice pulsing drone happening in the title track that could be a pipe organ or a heavily processed tremelo guitar. Either way, it gets the blood pumping. The same kind of pulsing noise rhythm shows up in other tracks like "Ghosts Ice Aliens" and "Star Hill" as well. There are more violent, pounding sonic moves as well on "Annihilating Angel" and "Goat of a Thousand Young," along with peculiar unidentifiable noises. A lot of this album sounds like standing at the rim of a vast, wind-filled canyon while listening to machinery running on autopilot on the ground far below. It's not quite rock, to be sure, but it sure as hell isn't ambient, either -- corrosive power drone is probably more like it. Of course, the album ends with screeching black death on "Forked Lightning," whose percussion is buried under a towering mountain of landslide guitar and noise drone. The entire album will make your ears bleed and probably induce motion sickness if you listen to it loud enough. And you're certainly not going to listen to a Skullflower album at low volume, right? Despite their name, this is not a metal band. (I know that because the poop sheet says so.) They describe themselves as "post-apocalyptic elctro-jazz for the pre-apocalyptic listener." What that means in reality is that they're a funked-up collective creating semi-jazzy tunes with samplers, percussion, theremin, synths, melodica, turntable, dub bass, drums, trumpet, alto sax, guitar, electronics, and probably the kitchen sink as well, even though it's not listed. Jazz phrases abound over funked-up trance beats, seasoned with odd chanting, samples, and a whole smorgasboard of unusual-sounding objects they can hit, strum, or manipulate to their bent will. Imagine Miles, George Clinton, and Tricky meeting up for drinks at a trance club and taking over the DJ station. Over eight ass-shaking tracks they weave through the corridors of jazz, funk, trance, and dub with equal assurance, and sound like they're having a pretty good time in the process. The spirit of King Tubby is with us tonight! The dub king demands that your buns rise, then shake and bake on the dance floor. Fans of Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, and Bill Laswell's endless forays into mind-melding electro-dub terrorism are greatly advised to take a listen. The TOC stands for Tropic of Cancer or Tropic of Capricorn (which one, I think, kind of depends on their mood), essentially a jam band under the nominal supervision of former Inferno guitarist Jay Peele. Since the dissolution of that band (essentially Florida's answer to Queensryche), Peele has played in a dizzying number of bands and one-off projects, some of which he's released himself, some of which have been released by others. All have been significantly different from one project to the next, but all have been tenuously linked by a spirited joy for playing and a wild improvisational streak. This album goes one further by being a live album (recorded in 2004) of strictly improvised music from Peele, Chris Spohn, Colin Westcott, Jason Lewis, Chris Gibbs, and Brian Hicks. This is a jam band at work, improvising at will over twelve tracks with a sound that builds on the spaced-out hippie moves of gurus like the Grateful Dead. Funky moves and swell psychedelic playing abound as the band incorporates a lot of different styles and textures, with a laid-back feel presiding over most of the songs. This is not a frantic bunch of players; they're very groove-oriented, down more with old-school improvisation more so than the new state of noise and clatter. There's a fair amount of polyrhythmic, world-beat feel to a lot of it as well. Worth checking out for those into the whole jam-band thing. Improvised noise in a band format that doesn't tread near rock or jazz idioms, or any others really. The players are all over the place, layers of taped, electronic and mangled instrumental noise, sometimes so lacking in direction that your teeth grind, at others mustering an impressive tidal crash that has to be directed but sounds totally accidental. Smith's harangues bob in and out of the music like the crooning yowls of a happily drowning man, or desperate preaching by someone with burnt-out language centers. For me the album really starts to work after track 6, when things get less dense and some of the effects work grows profoundly fucked and delicious -- drums sliver into digital beeps, vocals stretch into modulated croaks, "laptop" processing triggers a weird crooning and cornet jag, metal blast beats erupt seemingly in defiance of the rest of the music. Oh, and Bill Orcutt (of Harry Pussy) on guitar. Yeah. [Gafne Rostow] Dark ambient / darkwave / dark whatever from Italy. I'm not a fan of the style -- too much reliance on really dreadfully unconvincing orchestral keyboard patches and digitized kettle drums -- but the best tracks here have a weird, fascist stomp and twittering 70s electronics that can be fun ("This is the World" being a prime example). The rest tend to remind me of Shinjuku Thief, inasmuch as I can remember anything by Shinjuku Thief. The best track on the disc is actually the mp3 of "Inside the Tomb," which comes off as a synthesized tribute to the soundtrack of Tomb of the Blind Dead until the weird little horn part kicks in near the end -- and that just makes it better. [Gafne Rostow] As a noted misanthrope and gallivanting asshole, I have no use for collectives. I sort of understand the ideal -- creative people inspiring each other, I guess -- but the existence of a collective implies lots of compromise, lots of watering things down. This compilation features compositions by the individual members, frequently featuring other collectivites, and I guess that's good. But in general the material is more Sundance Channel weird, art gallery weird, Wire Magazine weird, you know? Weird enough to alienate your grandparents but you might see your mom getting into it and nodding her head a little bit. If I had to guess at favorite albums around Trummerflora HQ, it'd be 60s free jazz, "conscious" hip-hop and any Asphodel Records compilation. Everything's kind of funky, kind of jazzy, and kind of experimental in really safe ways. Like Perfektomat's track, a sort of reservedly funky groove with really irkingly "smart" raps and some German poetry. That's great, but I could live the rest of my life without hearing it again and not think of it once. Titicacaman sounds like Living Colour as remixed by the Revolting Cocks. Really. Hans Fjellstad gives us a recording of a basketball game with pointless freejazzic tootling over it. There are a couple of dated "illbient"-style electronic pieces that I can't even remember as I'm listening to them. Damon Holzborn, Donkey (in collaboration with Fjellstad) and Wormhole are the only things verging on necessary to my ears, all three electro-acoustic / electronic music that actually manage to engage and don't immediately come across as trying too hard. [Gafne Rostow] I knew this was going to be obnoxious even before it started playing because I saw in the poop sheet that somebody from Noxagt is in the band (that would be bassist Kjetil Brandsdal). Sure enough, "Beautor" opens with percussive violence and Frode Gjerstad (leader of the Circulasione Totale Orchestra) working very hard to sodomize his wind instruments (alto sax and clarinet, if you must know these things) while drummer Morton Olsen hits everything in sight with frantic abandon and guitarist Anders Hana runs his guitar through a wood chipper shredder. These guys have listened to a lot of Last Exit records, of that I am certain. (Gjerstad has actually collaborated with Peter Brotzmann as well as Derek Bailey and William Parker. Probably not all at the same time, mind you, although you never know.) Rarely has freejazz sounded this diabolically violent outside of records by Last Exit or Painkiller. We're talking complete sensory overload, and that's just on the first song. "Pink Mood" brings on the bass churn as everybody else spins like whirling dervishes, but they slow things down a bit for bursts of heavy metal thunder on "Zooblast." Everything in "Brown Degree" is built over a shuddering, blown-out amp drone and pained feedback guitar, while "Glottality" is anchored by chugging downtuned bass hell over which they make like freejazz kamikazes whacked out on li'l black crosstops. "Last Resort" closes the album with an appropriate level of pure gut-busting bass sickness and mutant improv hell trying to escape the ruptured gravitational sinkhole. Everybody is everywhere in thirteen different places at once all over this album. This is manly freejazz, improv music made by people who deeply desire to move so much air your intestines flee in terror from your anal valve and run down your quivering legs like hot bug juice. This is the way improvisational music should sound -- intensely loud, devolved, and painful. Just be sure to put on your black rubber panties before listening so you don't soil your domme's clean white carpet, okay? Unsane. New York's finest blood-soaked noise-rock trio. You know them, you love them, you need their latest platter of sonic violence. They were starting to get into some iffy wheedly-wheedly metal business on OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD, their last full-length collection of new tunes, but here they've returned to the stripped-down basics and subterranean depth charges of TOTAL DESTRUCTION or SCATTERED, SMOTHERED, AND COVERED. This is great stuff, maybe their best album yet, full of churning bass death, amps on the verge of catching on fire, serrated guitars that sound like tin shears cutting through sheet metal, and more shouting (always more shouting). As always, I prefer the plodding death-drone tunes to the revved-up ones, but they're all exercises in extreme punishment, like having a group of thugs beat you senseless then drop you inside a garbage can and roll it down twenty flights of stairs. The album's final track, "dead weight," may be the heaviest thing they've ever done. If you didn't like Unsane before, this won't make you change your mind. If you were down with their earlier, less metal / more noise sound, then you need this real, real bad. Bonus points for upping the ante on the gruesome graphics with a full-color booklet filled with the "tasteful" pictorial progression of a naked suicide girl in a bathtub full of blood who changes her mind at the last minute, not that it does her any good. No wonder it comes in a slipcase. The second disc from Upland is a continuation of Knut Andreas Ruud's obsessive search for the perfectly fucked beat. Upland's sound combines classic drum 'n bass, glitch electronica, noise, and a talent for turning sound inside out. This the sound of techno trying to eat itself. Beats percolate over a bed of chaotic sound and stuttering glitch rhythms like a synchronized ballet of skipping cds, torched electronics, and mechanical alien robots zooming across the autobahn in disintegrating hovercars. Electronica has always been fixated on science fiction and the future for obvious reasons, but rarely are the concepts so elegantly articulated as on this disc. This is dance music for burned-out robot workers after a long day assembling weapons at the nuke factory; this is how they all sound on the dance floor clanging off one another after a few too many ion slingers. This is the sound coursing through the circuits of Cruise missiles as they scream through the sky in search of new and exciting civilizations to turn into smoking atomic rubble. The soul of the machine not only isn't as empty as you thought, it's actively planning to kill you in your sleep so you can't turn it off again. Churning, anonymous metal machine music for all the young robots -- the ritual is alive and it's going to fry you with a few million volts if you reach for the wrong switch. You better hope the clueless government technicians watching the missile silos never make the mistake of playing this while testing the launch codes. Okay, this one threw me. On the front cover, Usher looks like an urban cowboy; on the back, he looks like a sensitive singer-songwriter type (okay, one with tattoos, but since I'm apparently the only person left on earth who isn't inked, I'm not sure that matters anymore). So what's on the disc? Why, metal, of course. Big, thumping drums and fuzzed-out guitar and solos and everything. (They have keyboards, too, but everybody has keyboards now; I blame it on a diabolical plot on the parts of Kurzwell and Yamaha to replace the guitar, not that they'll ever succeed.) I'll bet people are really surprised when they start playing on stage.... And there is indeed a "they" -- contrary to the image the disc's cover projects, Usher is backed by an actual band (Francois Gehin on bass, guitar, and drums, plus Fritz Seigler on guitar) -- and they play real live no-frills four-on-the floor hard rock / metal with heavy riffs and solos (I thought that was illegal now, actually). Even the ballads like "Time Clock" sooner or later bring the rock, and they vary their sound with songs like "It's What She Wants" that feature keyboards upfront as the guitars grind away in the background. They also make a nod toward more politically-conscious rap-oriented bands like Rage Against the Machine on tracks like "Killin' Machines," but my favorites are still the straightforward pop-metal tunes like "Powerless," "Social Reformatory," and "In This Hole." I don't know how this stacks up commercially against mainstream metal these days (I'm out of touch, so sue me), but I'd sure rather listen to this than Slipknot any day of the week. If I were in charge of their image, though, I'd put the whole band on the cover in black leather jackets, just to clear up any potential confusion on the part of listeners and buyers. This double-cd is the audio documentation of the second No Idea Festival held over four days in Texas in 2004 (May 20-22 in Austin, May 23 in Houston) and featuring 23 experimental / improv musicians from around the country (and a couple from Germany), including Susan Alcorn (Houston, pedal steel guitar), Chris Cogburn (Houston, percussion), Jack Wright (soprano / alto saxophones, Philadelphia), Mike Bullock (Boston, double bass and electronics), Sandy Ewen (Austin, electric guitar), Michael Griener (Berlin, percussion), Leif Erik Sundstrom (Portland, percussion), and more. The event was curated by Chris Cogburn with assistance from Kurt Newman (for the Houston performance) and help from Jack Wright (who recorded the Red Door performance on the Austin disc) and Ryan Edwards (who recorded the tracks on the Houston disc at The Station). Cogburn, Wright, and Edwards offer informative and entertaining liner notes in the packaging. Both discs are very much studies in the unexpected nature of improvisational sound. The eight tracks on the Austin disc were recorded at the Church of the Friendly Ghost in Austin by Nicke Hennies, with the exception of one track at the Red Door (recorded by Jack Wright), and mastered by Doug Ferguson. The disc contains eight tracks featuring an eclectic series of ensembles. With the exception of the trio of Michael Griener (percussion), Sabine Vogel (flutes), and Jack Wright (soprano and alto saxophones), none of the ensembles had ever played together, offering plenty of opportunity for new and fresh attempts at improvisation. The ensembles were: Track 1 ("beach party") -- Linda Gale Aubry (electronics, samplers), Maria Chavez (turntables), Chris Cogburn (percussion), and Bryan Eubanks (soprano saxophone, analog tape); Track 2 -- Mike Bullock (double bass), Tucker Dulin (trombone), and Nick Hennies (percussion); Track 3 -- Michael Griener (percussion), Sabine Vogel (flutes), and Jack Wright (soprano and alto saxophones); Track 4 -- Tucker Dulin (trombone), Kurt Newman (amplified guitar), and Sabine Vogel (flutes); Track 5 ("percussion quartet") -- Chris Cogburn, Michael Griener, Nick Hennies, and Brian Ramisch; Track 6 -- Dave Dove (trombone), Matt Ingalls (clarinet), and Kurt Newman (amplified guitar); Track 7 -- Bryan Eubanks (soprano saxophone), Matt Ingalls (clarinet), and Jack Wright (alto saxophone); Track 8 ("two minus two") -- Dave Dove and Tucker Dulin (trombones) plus Chris Cogburn and Nick Hennies (percussion). Most of the ensembles are fairly restrained, although the ones with amplified guitar have their louder moments; all have a reasonable dynamic range and some genuinely unexpected juxtapositions of sound. There are moments of tentativeness (the inevitable result of musicians playing together for the first time) and exciting moments where they lock up and get their improv groove on, and the beautiful part is that you never know where things are going to go until they go there. Moments where people are obviously trying to figure out where to go suddenly resolve into pure freestyle excitement, which is, after all, the whole point, right? The Houston disc, which took place in one evening and with only three distinct ensembles recorded here, is a bit more focused, if only because there are fewer tracks and two of the groups had two shots at playing together. The first two tracks feature the quartet of Mike Bullock (double bass), Tucker Dulin (trombone), Nick Hennies (percussion), and Matt Ingalls (clarinet); the "strand party" track features Linda Gale Aubry (electronics, samplers), Maria Chavez (turntables), Chris Cogburn (percussion), Bryan Eubanks (soprano saxophone, analog tape), and Sabine Vogel (flutes); and the final two tracks document the quartet of Dave Dove (trombone), Michael Griener (percussion), Kurt Newman (amplified guitar), and Jack Wright (soprano and alto saxophone). The spirit of the performances is not radically different from those on the Austin disc, and while the recording of the Houston evening was apparently plagued by various technical problems (especially during the performance of the final grouping), the recording issues don't appear to have a serious impact thanks to extra attention in the mastering process. This is a fine double-set documenting not only the possibilities of improvisational sound but the range of performers in the Austin and Houston area (with a bit of help from other places). This is a good thing, especially since the current Austin and Houston experimental scene is absolutely ripe with brilliant players and criminally underrepresented on recordings. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a reversal of that trend. The packaging is nicely done as well, with both cds housed in a well-designed digipack with a foldout card containing the track listings and liner notes, all on heavy-duty paper stock. Essential listening for those interested in the current state of the experimental art in Texas. Now I just hope somebody had the good sense to record this year's Yeast by Sweet Beast Festival, and that it ends up being issued at some point too. v/a -- NO IDEA FESTIVAL [Coincident / Spring Garden / ten pounds to the sound] Two discs -- one from Austin, one from Houston -- documenting the four nights of this festival. I don't listen to this type of thing very often anymore -- electro-acoustic music, you know? Improvised droning, clanging, improvised, sporadic, squeaking and occasionally non-existent bits of sound. "Is that a saxophone or did someone record a radiator?"-type music. So I dove into this with some trepidation; this kind of dry, seemingly studied improvisatory music, is it "experimental" anymore? Is it just a genre unto itself and you're supposed to kind of pretend that something unexpected might happen this time? I'm sure the artists had a good time collaborating in various combinations and the audience enjoyed it, but I feel like I'm listening to a recording of someone else's party, or looking at a first year art student's Jackson Pollock imitation. I can honestly say the musicians come across as sensitive to each other -- which is very fucking rare -- and they avoid many of the pitfalls of the uptight "improvised music" types, but in the end it comes across as navel-gazing. Like, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING AND WHY? [Gafne Rostow] The theme of this compilation is the creeping fascism of government intrusion on everyday life; the format is metal, baby, with crunchy guitars and pained grunting in place of singing. The label has been undergoing some growing pains and apparently the compilation has been revised since I got an early copy, so rather than going into lurid detail about the bands and songs, I'll just say that it's full of diabolical underground heaviness. There's a wide variety to the tracks on here, including some really raw and necro black metal and grinding doom. Some of the tracks could stand a serious improvement in recording quality, but most of them are listenable enough, and many of the tracks are insanely heavy. If you're looking for a raw, blasting look at the current American metal underground, this is it, boyee. Check with the label to see who's on the current, final version of the disc and the track listing and all that good jazz. It's worth hearing just for the out-of-control black metal tracks alone. This beyond-demented band first shambled into existence (probaby while drunk) in 1982 when the eternally-obscure Rumours of Marriage dissolved and two of its members, Evan Cantor and Ed Fowler, decided to throw away all their attempts at mainstream music and started to turn everything inside out, like the Butthole Surfers wrestling with Captain Beefheart while ripped on bad blotter acid. And then legendary psychotic musician Little Fydor joined the fun and everything REALLY got strange. Over the next four years they pooped out around thirty cassettes, becoming dark stars on the underground cassette circuit, before calling it quits in 1986. Now -- for reasons probably best left to the imagination -- Little Fydor has begun reissuing some of this whacked-out stuff on cd-r, starting with this double-disc helping of extremely disturbed antimusic. This double-disc collection is essentially a "best-of" collection that will either blow your mind or drive you completely insane, with very little ground in-between. This stuff is very much in the ballpark of Captain Beefheart, early Butthole Surfers, Nihilist Spasm Band, and other bands capable of playing so well that they transcend music entirely to sound like they don't even remotely know what the hell they're doing, even when they do. Over the course of two discs, they serve up demented originals like "Abudl, the Bulbul Amir," "I Like the Way Your Boobs Bounce,"and "Burning Smurfs" while stopping periodically to completely disembowel classics like "Magic Carpet Ride," "Barbara Ann," "Down on the Corner," "Love Potion No. 9,", and "Green River." They even cover the uncoverable (Captain Beefheart's "The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Back"). The results are somewhere between utterly brilliant and completely (intentionally, I'm sure) annoying. There are moments where Fydor sounds so much like Gibby from the Butthole Surfers that I have to wonder who was zooming who at the time. Needless to say, their covers of standard tunes sound every bit as "faithful" as the Butthole Surfers butchering "American Woman." Truly demented shit. If you spent the eighties listening to the first two Butthole Surfers albums over and over and cried when they started to "move toward the mainstream" (i.e., started to suck), then you need to hear this real, real bad. You may only listen to it once and your girlfriend and pets may leave you if you play it all the way through, but still.... The subtitle of this jazzy outing led by Ellen Weller is DYBBUKS, DREMLS AND DOINAS. For those not hep to Jewish mythology, a dybbuk is "a wandering soul that becomes attached to a living person to accomplish some task that it was unable to complete in life," a doina is a premonition, and a dreml is a dreamlet (or little dream). Many of the album's seventeen pieces are centered around these and similar Jewish themes, and Weller (in the liner notes) offers a definition of inspiration as "moments during group improvisation when you feel like a conduit, merely enabling the music to happen, as if it is flowing through you, not coming from you -- perhaps that is when the dybbuk lives again." It's an interesting concept, one that's brought to considerable life by a lively (and large) group consisting of Weller (flute, soprano sax, B-flat clarinet, piccolo, fife, windrum, and miscellaneous jangling instruments), Lisle Ellis (electro-acoustic bass), Marcos Fernandes (percussion, field recordings, talking drum, electronics), Vinny Golia (sopranino and tenor saxes, B-flat and contrabass clarinets), Nathan Hubbard (percussion, electronics, congas, berimbau, tuning pipe, whistles), George Lewis (trombone), Bertram Turetzky (contrabass), Scott Walton (contrabass), Bob Weller (piano and drums), Charlie Weller (drums), and Robert Zelickman (B-flat clarinet). No mention is given in the notes as to who played what and when, but I would assume different pieces are played by different configurations -- either that, or they're all really good about playing only as needed. Some of the pieces are clearly more "experimental" in nature, especially the "Elemental" series (presented here in six different takes) and the "Dialogic" numbers (two of them), but others like "Unfinished Business" and "Celebration, Transfiguration, and Release into the Ether" are more accessible (and more highly rhythmic) forays into what the less experimentally-inclined would recognize as jazz. The field recordings provided by Fernandes show up as background textures, to interesting effect, in tracks like "Peering in from the Other Side" and "Grandma Rose's Dreml (Little Dream)," where the found sound acts as a dreamlike introduction over which the group eventually comes together in a more traditional manner. Reed instruments tend to dominate the proceedings (hardly surprising, given Weller's chosen instrumentation), but there's plenty of room for everybody as the individual pieces flow and expand. The art and design are a throwback to jazz albums of the late fifties and early sixties, which is probably not accidental; there's a sensibility here that works to marry the feel of that jazz era with more modern approaches to sound and texture. The juxtaposition works more often than not, making for pleasant (if sometimes unexpected) listening. Drummer Rich West and a band of "L.A. nomads" (Chris Heenan on bass clarinet and alto saxophone, Bruce Friedman on trumpet, Jeremy Drake on electric guitar, and Scot Ray on E-flat tuba) convene here for eight lively tracks of rhythm-heavy improvisation. The first track, "Bugge," is lengthy enough at over eleven minutes to allow for several movements of rhythmic variation and intensity of sound, as the rest of the players are propelled by West's steady groove. "Tribology" turns out to be one of the most interesting tracks, with the tuba and trumpet rising in escalating patterns over a loping tribal groove as the guitar fills in the empty spaces in the background. The guitar takes a more prominent (and unusual-sounding) role in "Twang," thanks to the intervention of what sounds like miles of echo as the guitar is pitted against the wind instruments, reminiscent of something you might hear in a bent Morricone science-fiction spaghetti western. The drums play a more central role on tracks like "Tread" and "Tychai 1 and 2," but there's still plenty of interesting interplay between all the instruments, and (especially on the latter) plenty of open spaces between them as well. They all get a vigorous workout on "Curly," where a hard percussion groove is the bedrock for repeated phrases, full stops, and the occasional burst of crazed wailing. The eight tracks (most of them fairly long) here are ripe with inventive musical phrasing and tight interaction between all the parties involved. Not bad at all for a bunch of guys from L.A. Lars Pedersen is a reasonably prolific guy -- this is When's tenth album in fifteen years, and (I think) his third in as many years, no small feat in light of how complex and inventive these albums have been. Pedersen is a genius, no question about it, but whereas his earlier work was dark and cryptic and frequently made for "difficult" listening, his more recent material has taken on a catchier and (dare I say it?) poppier sheen, with extremely pleasing results. The sound palette at work here includes Marakesh field recordings, religious chants, Arabic trance music, pop guitars, techno beats and a free-floating tendency toward pure weirdness. "Modern Research Into Mummies" sounds like an updated world-beat techno answer to Funkadelic's "Wars of Armageddon," where the funk just keeps building in layers into a boiling stew of ethnic pulsations from all around the globe. The pretty (but relatively short) "Ice is Fire and Fire is Water" singing like the Beatles on ABBEY ROAD over hypnotic patterns; on "In Allmansland," he turns up the bombast and moves into more prog-like territory without losing the Beatlesque vocal textures. The tribal rhythms of "Bushman" are destroyed by funk, techno, and what could be either keyboards or horns as it all grows into a groove-laden cauldron of pop-funk hell. The strange and even ominous sound of his earlier work resurfaces in "Some Apocalypses," but on the final track, "Clay is Light and Light is Matter," the droning vocal chant and ambient washes mutate into a galloping rhythm overlaid with festive guitars and xylophones, and the album goes out dancing. Another fine (and inventive) piece of work from one of Norway's best exports. They're from Providence, RI (home of Arab on Radar), they wear white lab coats and mice heads on stage, and sport names like Anonymouse, Euronymouse, and Mouseferatu, and are a power trio substituting an oscillator for guitar. Not surprisingly, they sound real fucked up. I can easily imagine three zoned-out metalheads frying on a hellish mixture of crystal meth, PCP blunts, and old Mayhem records saying to themselves "Why yes, dressing up like doomed mice and playing black metal noise DOES sound like an excellent idea!" Needless to say, they bring the (oscillator) rock in a supremely irritating manner, just the way a good noise band does. Frankly, the oscillator-fu is a swank move. The band in general sounds like a throbbing, bass-heavy train wreck in progress and they don't bother with words (at least not that I can tell, but who knows what's actually happening under all that howling excess?), all the better to bury you under their acid-soaked pound and throb. Truly the product of brain-damaged minds and real heavy besides. Bonus points for titles like "Anton Larvae," "Microjackass," and genuinely funny black metal mouseketeer artwork. Your neighbors will hate it, which is all the more reason to have it, you know. Once upon a time there was a band called the Dead Raven Choir. They issued forth piles of obscure cds, cd-rs, and albums while you weren't paying attention. Then they broke up (mostly so Smolken could go to Poland and chase real tall Polish hotties, but probably for other reasons too). Now Smolken and his pals ply their trade in this new band, which sports a different (but not that different) sound as a diabolical string quartet, plus a nifty new logo that, in the best tradition of death and black metal bands, is completely unreadable. (I really think they broke up and reformed under this name just for the logo. But I think a lot of things that may or may not have anything to do with the truth. And what is truth anyway? The TRUTH is a LIE! The LIE is TRUTH! NOW is the only thing that's REAL!) So here they are, then, with a wee li'l pint-sized cd-r on Digital Industries featuring six new tunes that build on the bones of DRC. If you're familiar with the DRC's sound, then you'll know what to expect; for the rest of you, what you're gonna get is mutant country death folk, with plenty of clattering and battering amid the droning cadences of the devil's stringed instruments. Two of the tracks here ("She Dances Because She Loves Me" and "French Vampire Carol") are based on tracks by Taint Meat, which certainly doesn't hurt. The music harkens back to a simpler and more primitive time in which they almost certainly would have been burned at the stake for their attitude, which just makes it all the more sweetly grim, don't you think? The Dead Raven Choir may well be dead, but that doesn't mean Smolken has given up his vile utterances -- no, he's just found a new venue in which to hold forth. Wolfmangler is essentially DRC with a new name and mandate (this time as a beastly black death drone string quartet), not to mention a totally indecipherable logo; Wolfskull is Clayton Noone of CJA, Futurians, and a bunch of other bands with ridiculous / cryptic names, plus pals. Smolken and pals contribute three tracks using such instruments as bass, umber hulk, trombone, electric bass, violin, "water nymph," and "floating eye" (uhhhh... okay). The results sound like a deeper, dronier, more resonant version of DRC, sort of like Khanate attempting folk music but without the psychotic singer (here the singer, which could be any or all of them, prefers to mutter rather than shriek). Remember the scary mountain folk of DELIVERANCE? This is the kind of music they started playing after making the li'l pig squeal and discovering, while burying him afterwards, Mayhem and Burzum tunes on his Ipod. Wolfskull is more or less in the same ballpark, only noisier and bumpier, with plain old guitar and bass to provide the shriek and clatter. (They have a drummer, too, but he's off hitting things in the background.) Limited to 98 copies or something equally ridiculous, so if you want it you'd better get your feet moving. I'm not sure if the band is really from Greece or if that's just part of the band's name, but it doesn't matter -- what they are for sure is a highly energized cross-fertilization of emo, noisecore punk, and technical metal, blazing through seven tracks on one side of a heavy-grade 10" album. There's an almost jazzlike sensibility to the guitars on "I, Linedancer" and hyperkinetic drums everywhere. They play at such a frantic pace, without stopping, that it's nearly impossible to tell where one song stops and another one begins. There's a great pulsing bassline in between "Moving Beyond Maintenance" and "Honky Tonkin'" that lulls you into brief submission before they explode again (and exploding, more than anything else, is what the band is really all about). The singer howls and moans his way through the entire side like he really means it, or maybe someone just set him on fire; either way, he's every bit as driven as the band behind him as they barrel through seven songs in less than fifteen minutes with manic intensity and shred-worthy playing. Imagine Shellac or Jawbox playing at twice the speed with way more distortion and attitude -- that's just a taste of what's going on here. The kids aren't all right and they want to make sure you're completely, totally aware of it. Bonus points for the incredibly swank album art and design, and for a slab of vinyl so heavy it's practically bricklike. This solo disc from Jack Wright is part of the "ears only" cd-r series, a series whose ephemeral nature as low-cost, limited-production cd-r releases is designed to reflect the fact that the market for such improvised and spontaneous experimental music is, realistically speaking, quite small. A smart move, considering how much of the more interesting underground music is now coming out on cd-r. Labels such as Public Eyesore have already demonstrated that there is real potential in the concept of cd-r labels, especially as a venue for music too "uncommercial" for traditional labels -- this method of dissemination makes it possible to release music in limited qualities for far less money than would be required for a regular cd pressing. The implied impermanence of the cd-r medium is also artistically appropriate for improvised music that is designed, almost by default, to exist in the here and now. The disc itself contains six tracks of improvised experiments in sound, several of which are quite lengthy (one clocks in at over twelve minutes, another over sixteen), all of which demonstrate the potential for making unexpected and unorthodox sounds with traditional instruments. Wright works with soprano and alto saxophones, but very little of this sounds like a saxophone is "supposed" to sound, as he experiments with truncated phrasing, percussive elements of sound, and the unusual manipulation of reeds to produce new and interesting sounds. There's an aspect of minimalism at work in many of the pieces as well, with gaps of silence between phrases, quiet and subdued passages, and at times the sparing use of notes. Wright has a tendency toward emulating birdlike sounds, and this fascination is explored in some detail across the entire cd. More than anything else, however, the ideas expressed here are more about the possibility of making saxophones sound like almost anything but saxophones. The extensive liner notes explicating his ideas about performance and the nature of music for the sake of music versus the business end of making performances available to the public are interesting as well. The "band" with the cryptic name is actually the work of Seattle noise guru Jeff Mueller, a founding member of the Seattle Noise Festival who has also collaborated with the SoniCabal, the Sil2K Ensemble, and Entropic Advance, along with individual musicians Wesley Davis, Casey Jones, and Ffej Mandel, among others (many others). This latest release is actually a compilation of the best XW tracks of 2004, focusing more on the timbres of live instruments and less on effects programming. Instruments used include synthesizer, voice, analog processing gadgets, percussion, cello, field recordings, instruments of his own invention, and various found objects. The result is a series of ambient noise soundscapes built on large chunks of drone and repetition, given a wide ambient sound with layers of processed noise. Some of the tracks like "Final Vision" are drifting transmissions from outer space; "Plea" introduces a looped mechanical beat for the drones and noises to hover above. A similar effect is at work on "Cold & Prickly," one of the few songs with distinguishable vocals; toward the end, however, the spaces between verses are filled with glitch noise and unusual tinkling sounds, while the beat remains simple and static through the entire piece. The beat on "Idea" comes from the loop of a truncated, "damaged" sample; as it continues, layers of barely perceptible ambient sound begin to arrange themselves on top and in the background. The ambient background of "Spirit" is somewhat noisier than the other pieces, a growing monument to destroyed sound, while "Mine" is defined largely by immense hovering drones, like spaceships hovering in midair waiting to land one after another, a sound that is punctuated by intermittent glitch buzzes and sparse percussion. The sound palette on "Word" is more orchestral in nature, and the piece is defined by shifting dynamics, with elements that grow louder, then quieter, as other elements in the background shift to the foreground. The final (unlisted, untitled) track is a creeping dronefest similar to the first track (in fact, it could be a remixed version) that gradually grows beats and teeth, and only cements the disc's commitment to charting the frozen sounds at the heart of interstellar space. Swell ambient stuff that's both dreamy and disquieting. This is a remix disc from 2003 that was included with FORMES that includes a music video (the first track, I think), several other well-known Seattle experimental artists, and live Xasis Wye tracks. Unfortunately, it either didn't come with an insert or I lost it, so it's difficult to assess who's doing what. There's some interesting stuff on here, though -- pounding beat-heavy noise tracks, pieces built on devolved loops of broken sound, more shifting ambient noise drones, pieces featuring rudely distorted vocals and ambient washes of screeching noise over looped percussion, and other equally peculiar experiments in the presentation of destroyed sound and beats. It's not as consistent as FORMES, possibly because it's not all just Xasis Wye, but the variety of the tracks makes in interesting in its own right. Lots of discussion a while back about how this record was a hoax, a fraud -- it had to be because it was too good to be true, especially for 1980. Especially for New Jersey in 1980. Not really synthpunk but miles away from new wave, raw and crudely synthesized analog synth throb sorta like Monoton or any number of german new wave obscurities but American -- AMERICAN, GOD DAMN IT. Filled out with (argh) "dubwise" (gack) use of effects, but still in essence a cold, skeletal music consisting of sweaty handfuls of notes and simplistic, adenoidal android vocal lines reciting a litany of social criticism and cold war paranoia. Me, I prefer the lispy male vocal tunes for their agitated neurotic qualities, but Thumbelina Guglielmo's tunes are snappy and hummable. And "Delta Five" might just be the best "doomed in space" number ever. File between Devo and Chrisma (that's how the alphabet works, right?), and throw your Residents cds away. [Gafne Rostow] This disc makes an excellent companion to the Masami Kawaguchi disc reviewed elsewhere in this issue; in a weird sort of way, Yako is the yin to Kawaguchi's yang (or is that the other way around?), with five songs of solo guitar and (unusual) voice. Like Kawaguchi, her vocal stylings are unique and may well be a bit too alien for Western ears, and like Kawaguchi, she has a minimalist and idiosyncrastic approach to guitar. She favors more processing on her guitar, however, and frames her songs in a more melodic context that's less about rhythmic propulsion and more about harmonic possibilities. She also has a somewhat disconcerting habit of stopping unexpectedly, pausing, and resuming that can seem unnecessarily abrupt until it becomes more familiar to the ear. The reverb on her guitar is so heavy that her single-note lines tend to sound like church bells, which lends a near-religious feel to most of the five long tracks here. Despite the start and stop nature of her songs, the feel is generally restrained, even soothing, and once the listener grows accustomed to her odd vocal style, might well come to view this as an album of avant-garde lullabies. This is the sound of Japanese neo-folk captured in an enormous echo chamber. Strange, exotic, otherworldly stuff. The disc is exactly what the title suggests: Fourteen tracks of music composed and recorded using only guitar and computer. The packaging is quite minimalist and Yeager doesn't appear to have bothered with actual titles, which is kind of interesting. The tracks themselves are a series of minimalist compositions featuring plucked guitar and broken, stuttering, looped computer sounds to provide counterpoint in both melody and rhythm. The result is frequently a disorienting collision between melodic, man-made sound and cold digital robotics. The only real difference in the individual tracks is the choice of notes and rhythmic patterns, and the different points at which the computer noises burst to the fore; in that sense, it might make more sense to think of this disc as one long idea broken up into fourteen individual movements. No matter how you think of it, the sound is unusual, a mating of past and present approaches to sound that reach for the outer limits of experimental music. This is not so much "music" in the accepted sense as a catalog of possibilities in the juxtaposition of wildly different instruments. Intriguing (and a bit peculiar), to say the least. Yinkolli returns with a short cassette of more lo-fi noise-related soundscapes, like a low-rent Tinsel. The tape opens with a brief burst of squalling noise, then moves on to a less-noisy but definitely not quiet soundscape of strange and exotic sounds, some probably sampled, others created with keyboards and gadgets. The third piece consists mainly of the repetitive warbling of some stringed instrument (???) over scratchy noises with strange processed vocals that come and go. The fourth piece is a swirling, burbling sound collage that includes a toy piano; the next track, the last one on the first side, is similar in nature. The flip side contains a few more collage-oriented pieces that are much in the same ballpark. The tape claims to be a C60, but it's really much shorter than that; the total running time is probably under thirty minutes, maybe even under twenty. The short duration of the tape keeps things from getting stale, and the short duration of the songs prevents things from dragging on too long -- more soundscape artists should take heed of this wisdom. This disc from experimental artist Robert Ziino is his second, following TWILIGHT CLONES, and one of the interesting things about it is that each of the twelve tracks is exactly three minutes long. Why this is so is less clear, but it certainly keeps things from getting out of hand.... The tracks themselves are keyboard-heavy experiments in repetition, looped rhythms, and unusual sounds with no vocals. If you've ever heard the solo sides by Nick Mason, Rick Wright, and David Gilmour on the Pink Floyd album UMMAGUMMA, then all you have to do is imagine those peculiar sounds (minus the fluid guitar) in a more modern context and processed through keyboards to get an idea of what this disc sounds like. The tracks have less to do with standard ideas about music than with discovering new and different sounds, then looping and juxtaposing them. Think of soundtrack music for science-fiction films, or late-night gadget sessions at the local recording studio. This is robot lounge music, cocktail jazz for machines at rest on the weekend. Strange and oddly compelling stuff, even if it doesn't have a beat you can dance too, as the Dorian Gray of pop music might say. I can?t quite explain it, but there?s something that seems ever so slightly punk about this album. Maybe it?s something in his voice -- which at times has a bit of an angry edge to it -- or that at times it seems too rockin? to call anything else. Whatever it is, it?s decidedly a good thing. I was quite set to dislike this CD simply because it?s one of the last that I?m reviewing from this pile and I?ve been growing tired of saying nice things. But it simply won?t allow me to crush it. I like the blend of acoustics and electrics, I like that his voice sounds both nice and gritty, pleasant and angry. What truly and finally won me over was the second time I listened to the song ?Story of Your Smile,? which has the loveliest ending riff, fading out and leading into the next song just perfectly. All of these songs have their shining moments though, blending together into a whole that lures you in whether you wish it to or not. [Amanda] Royce Icon?s Fucked up Stupid is a diverse piece of noise art you should pick up from Greywork Industries out of Ohio. It has everything from noise to sound landscapes, satanic drones, experimental, ambient, eerie, wacky, stoner, trip core, occult, techno, jungle beats, etc. This album sounds very clear and the production is great. This album would make a virtuous compadre to any fucked up perverted stoner that likes to trip the fuck out. ?Haha? is a pure mechanical noise track built with laughter. ?Mrs. Vorheese? is a pure techno track with a high-pitched sample layer over a very bassy computer drum rhythm. It sounds like electronic drilling at the dentist?s office with a record scratching layer added just for her pleasure. The drums stop dead and the track outros with scratchy, squeaky noises. ?Bridget?s Fangs? should be the intro to some fucked up horror flick, violent video game, or Pimp My Ride Bass Charles. This landscape sounds like noises in a dungeon on Gilligan?s Island as it builds. Bridget sounds like some interesting character that Royce Icon either got bit by at some point in his life or perhaps went on a 3-day tour with. ?Killchild? starts out horror movie-like, crescendos, and ends horror movie-like. This track features a video game piano riff that bubbles and tweaks in the background and it leads into a high pitched alarm clock sounding synth riff. Throughout the track I hear sounds that resemble knives or spoons clicking on metal blocks adding minimal tribal percussion. ?Bent? is an eerie-sounding drug dream landscape that creeps, marches, and its atmospheric vibal is very tribal. Very crotch notch-like indeed. Reminiscent of crotchals "Crotch Storm," the late great forces to be reckoned with. This nice sound landscape track sounds like it?s set in the Amazon jungle or Australian outback mate and makes me shout, ?Good day there Crack Mate!? to my aboriginal tribal elder. Using noises, instrumentation, gadgets, and percussion toolios, Royce Icon steals your soul and sells it to Satan. ?Babyrape? sounds like a good ol? snare crackin techno video game track with staccato rhythm. The snare becomes affected and pops with faint reverb dental drilling noises in the background. This track takes tribal twists with its? blipping sounds to and fro. It?s a techno song to drill your cavities out to. Fucked up synth noises arising straight from the anus. All of a sudden this track takes a turn for the drastic and sounds just like Jimbo ?the baby raper? pulling up in his truck ready for some action and attraction. This track is definitely something fierce. At this point, the snare drum clicks start smoking crank dusted crack, the all too common buzz of machine gun fire kicks in, blood spreads throughout the ghettofied wasteland, and high-pitched shrieking penetrates in and out throughout the mental institution vagina. ?Saint Tait" is a track to trip on shrooms at the circus too. And what can I say about ?Condom Hole? except it sounds like Satan?s condom just ripped while funking an expensive hollaback call girl from Los Angeles. This is one horrific track that shrieks and whistles something harsh. It really penetrates with semicircular sweetness and makes me wonder what in the hell this albums offspring will look like? ?Benji? clocks in at 4:20 precisely, and you know what you should be doing to this track down at the satanic rave. I, Frankenstoner, invented ?Let?s party like its 19-420!? and Fucked up Stupid invented ?Benji.? ?Dalmation? sounds nothing like any species of canine could produce; rather it sounds like the soundtrack to an old horror flick with a mad scientist executing experiments in experimental noise. In ?I?m Not Sorry,? Royce Icon predicts his own future, and obviously he is not sorry about it. ?Illiterate Waste? sounds just like the orgasms that Satan had with those expensive prostitutes when the condom broke, just after he tripped on shrooms, got bent, went to the circus, raped some babies, and killed some clown?s childs, and luckily Patrick Bateman filmed everything! When you float like a feather, and put it all together, this album really does make sense! [Frankenstoner] Now this is nice. Pretty acoustic guitar, soft voice, sad but soothing words. This is the kind of music you listen to on an overcast autumn day while drinking tea and smiling because you?re made glad that you?ve experienced sorrow. Geary, so the story goes, came to America from Ireland with a mere $100 and his ability as a musician. After struggle and setback he?s finally released this lovely recording, and in its soft tones and rainy-day remembrances you can hear what it must have felt like to wander the streets of New York City, newly arrived and wondering if you?ve made the right decision coming to that sprawling metropolis. You can hear what other wonderings such a gamble would have conjured, doubts and regrets, yet still a sense of always moving forward. We aren?t mired in tragedy, just gently reminded of the fact that it always walks by our side, a familiar companion to us all. It reminds us too that we must remember to enjoy the loveliness to be found in such sadness. [Amanda] Strange, odd, distorted, bent? All can encapsulate what this disc sounds like. Words mumbled/whispered over top slow, slow sounds moving along in the background, indistinct and slightly disturbing. I haven?t ever really heard anything like this, but I wish I had. The songs all possess a dream-like quality, something not quite real, not quite there, but almost. The majority of them run over the 6-minute mark, yet never seem excessive. They take all the time they need to wend their way through the unusual territory they cover. The vocals and lyrics are incredible—remaining whispered throughout they set the mood for the creeping sonic accompaniment and force the mood of this recording to remain in an obscured, weird, distorted state. I couldn?t even being to try to file this away under any one genre heading, but suffice to call it a sort of dark acid not-rock ambient-ish melding. Whatever you call it, it works quite well. [Amanda] This experimental noise compilation cd from Greywork Industries in Ohio consists of three bands and twenty tracks. The first artist on the comp is called Sideation. Sideation fucking rules! Black Satanic Noise! Immense! Buy this shit! Sideation has that same dark satanic moodiness of Khanate. This is some crazy satanic noise on PMS here. The other two artists called Gimp and Fucked up Stupid are great experimental noise acts also. Sideation is incredibly insane, moody, dark, and blows my green boner away! Sideation?s extreme moodiness stuns me. I compare Sideation to having a satanic orgasm! I just had a satanic orgasm! Like Whoa! In some weird way it literally sounds like only something a girl could pull off, who is pms?ing and tripping on Satanic Crack Rocks all at the same damn time. Call me sexist, but it would be very tough for any man to sound this moody. And that's the main point of interest I want you to pay attention to, the fact that Sideation is so crazy, insane, and totally unique. This black noise is some of the best and most vicious I've heard. It melted my face off! I cummed without even having to stroke my own gigantic erect boner on wacker. I had a wet nightmare. Pick up this comp cd, it?s worth 5 bucks. Sideation is worth 10 bucks alone. This is the craziest shit I've heard since Iron Bitchface meets Khanate. Sideation, Iron Bitchface, Khanate, Exist, Merzbow, and Chico's Prizon would make fabulous split albums. What can I say except this Sideation chick is satanic, brutal, and insane. This compilation is jammed full of noise art that dabbles in satanic, black noise, ambient, sound landscapes, experimental, trip core, occult, eerie with all of the artists having roots in black metal and grindcore. The production and quality of the music is really quite stunning. My favorite track off Sideation?s portion of the compilation is ?Don?t.? This track is unbelievably moody and it?s beyond fucking incredible. I see really big things in Sideation's future. Miss Cleo does too. ?Woman? is another extremely badass track, where Sideation shows you her raw power! The sonic assault and tone of the piercing voice is absolutely fucking fabulous and so damn evil sounding! The vocals match up to the evil of the high-pitched vocalic assault in Plague Bringer. This chick truely sounds evil as fuck! Sideation will melt your face off with black satanic demonic noise! Sideation is possessed by the devil! I would now like to sum up Sideation with the help of Jay Haley?s wise words, twisted. Sideation herself. Is the fucking best. Sideation herself. Is stronger than god!!! Add a ton of reverb to GOD! [Frankenstoner]
All reviews are by RKF unless noted at the end. Other reviewers are: Amanda, Frankenstoner, Gafne Rostow, and Neddal Ayad (n/a).
Crunch Pod Media15 Degrees Below Zero -- MORPHINE DAWN [Crunch Pod Media]
25 Suaves
Bulb Records
25 Suaves -- I WANT IT LOUD [Bastard Sun / Bulb]
Anaphylaxis
Parasomnic Records
Anaphylaxis -- NOISE FOR LOVERS [Parasomnic Records]
Public EyesoreAngels -- s/t [Public Eyesore]
AnticageAnticage -- WHILE ep [Skeleton of Snail]
Instincto RecordsAunt's Analog -- ACTION RECORDIST [Instincto Records]
BasilicaBasilica -- SINS OF THE FLESH [self-released]
Bogus Blimp
Jester RecordsBogus Blimp -- RDTR [Jester Records]
CircumventionDavid Borgo -- REVERENCE FOR UNCERTAINTY [Circumvention]
Alternative TentaclesBuzzov.en -- WELCOME TO VIOLENCE [Alternative Tentacles]
Then there was the disclaimer in he liner notes, "These words and lyrics are merely the thoughts and ramblings during periods of homelessness, drug induced confusion, and frustration and as usual are subject to change without notice." This was some heavy shit. And it really took me a while to get into it. SORE eventually became an almost permanent fixture in my car tape deck and over the years that followed I went after every Buzzov.en single, album, e.p., and bootleg that I could get my hands on. I managed to track down most of the official releases, except for their debut, TO A FROWN.
Which brings me to this collection. Alternative Tentacles in collaboration with Buzzov.en main man K-Lloyd (aka Kirk Lloyd, aka Kirk Fisher) have reissued Buzzov.en's now long out of print debut full length, the above-mentioned TO A FROWN along with their also long out of print WOUND and UNWILLING TO EXPLAIN e.p.'s (all originally released on Allied Recordings) and put them together on one neat piece of plastic with new artwork from Arik "Moonhawk" Roper (You know him from those Sleep album covers...) The liner notes consist of commentary and reminiscences of the band by such luminaries and contemporaries as Jello Biafra, Mike Williams and Jimmy Bower of eyehategod (former Buzzov.en tourmates, and, probably literally, partners in crime), Hank Williams III, Jeff Clayton from Antiseen, former Allied Records boss John Yates, Sour Vein and sometime Buzzov.en guitarist T-Roy, and Kirk Fisher himself, amongst others. The commentaries shed light on the band and its troubled history -- the booze, the pills, the junk, the self-abuse, the fights (this was a band who got themselves kicked out of their own record release party), and the music.
The music... perhaps the best description comes from Jello Biafra, "I hadn't seen a band this physical since Black Flag, I hadn't seen anyone put so much of their bodies into their playing since DAMAGED-era 'Flag with Chuck Dukowski, still the most amazing, scary, and intense band I've ever seen..." And it really comes across on this disc, Buzzove.en really did pick up where DAMAGED-era Black Flag left off. Unlike Black Flag, however, Buzzov.en were able to capture the intensity of their live show in the studio. (Not that 'Flag were slouches in the studio, it's just that the studio albums after DAMAGED are nowhere near as intense as the live show -- compare any of the post-DAMAGED albums to WHO'S GOT THE 10-1/2? and you'll see what I mean.) You can practically feel Fisher in your face when he screams lines like, "Are you ever fuckin' clean?" ("Behaved") or "You fucking piece of shit, I never needed you..." ("I Don't Like You.") It's relentless stuff, and definitely not for the faint-hearted. [N/A]
Cathedral & RumCathedral & Rum -- s/t [self-released]
Load Records
Coughs -- FRIGHT MAKES RIGHT [Load Records]
Ernesto Diaz-Infante
Chris Forsyth
Lars Scherzberg
Public EyesoreErnesto Diaz-Infante / Chris Forsythe / Lars Scherzberg -- A BARREN PLACE OF OVERWHELMING SIMPLICITY [Public Eyesore]
pfMENTUMBrad Dutz -- NINE GARDENERS NAMED NED [pfMENTUM]
Load Records
Excepter -- THRONE [Load Records]
Fake
Static Sky RecordsFake -- LOS ANGELES SYNTHETIC [Static Sky Records]
Fektion Fekler
Static Sky Records
Fektion Fekler -- INTO THE SUN [Static Sky Records]
Fiver's StereoFiver's Stereo -- s/t [self-released]
Dielectric Records
Gerritt -- ...SAILS THE SEAS OF DISPLACEMENT 12" [Dielectric Records]
Greatness in Tragedy
Brando Records
Greatness in Tragedy -- s/t [Brando Records]
Green AndyGreen Andy -- THE MAYBE PILE [self-released]
Emily Hay
pfMENTUMEmily Hay -- LIKE MINDS [pfMENTUM]
Damon Holzborn
Accretions
Damon Holzborn -- ADAMS & BANCROFT [Accretions]
Infidel? / Castro!
Crucial BlastInfidel? / Castro! -- BIOENTROPIC DAMAGE FRACTAL [Crucial Blast]
Interstellar
Plan Eleven
Interstellar -- TOSLEEPTODREAMTOWAKE [Plan Eleven]
pfMENTUMJeff Kaiser / Andrew Pask -- THE CHOIR BOYS [pfMENTUM]
pfMENTUMThe Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet + The Kaiser / Diaz-Infante Sextet -- THE ALCHEMICAL MASS / SUITE SOLUTIO [pfMENTUM]
Masami Kawaguchi
Public EyesoreMasami Kawaguchi -- LIVE IN DECEMBER [Public Eyesore]
Public EyesoreKnot + Over -- s/t [Public Eyesore]
Jesse Krakow
Public EyesoreJesse Krakow -- OCEANS IN THE SUN [Public Eyesore]
Kwisp
Pinephone Recordings
530 Divisadero St. # 197
San Francisco, CA 94117
Kwisp -- TERIYAKI VEST ODYSSEY [Pinephone Recordings]
Wantage USA
Last of the Juanitas -- IN THE DIRT [Wäntage USA]
Rob LevitRob Levit -- ANATOMY OF ECSTASY [Symbol System Music]
Little FydorLittle Fydor -- DANCE OF THE SALTED SLUG [The Elephant 6 Recording Co.]
Lockgroove
SRK
Lockgroove -- CALM RIGHT DOWN [SRK]
Lung LunchLung Lunch -- UTTRFTITUT [self-released]
CorleoneMahi Mahi -- HE NO WA [Corleone Records]
pfMENTUMMany Axes -- 2 MANY AXES [pfMENTUM]
Map of the Sky
CD BabyMap of the Sky -- s/t [CD Baby]
MarashinoMarashino -- DISEASED ROOM [self-released]
pfMENTUMTom McNalley Trio -- s/t [pfMENTUM]
Murder By StaticMurder by Static -- THE ART OF PERPLEXITY [Deadsix Productions]
Nadja
Nothingness Records
Nadja -- BODYCAGE [Nothingness Records]
David NewbouldDavid Newbould -- EP'S, DEMOS, LIVE & HEADACHES [self-released]
Nine Inch NailsNine Inch Nails -- WITH TEETH [Nothing / Interscope]
Noisecore FreakNoisecore Freak -- MY MOTHER THE ANARCHIST [Deadsix Productions]
Null ObjctNull Objct -- THE BLIND CLOCKMAKER [self-released]
Of InfinityOf Infinity -- THE ESSENCE OF INFINITY cd-ep [self-released]
One For JudeOne for Jude -- HELICE ep [La Farandole Egaree]
Accretions
Phonography
The Phonographer's Union -- LIVE ON SONARCHY RADIO [Accretions]
Poetry Band
Oh Boy RecordsJohn Prine -- FAIR & SQUARE [Oh Boy Records]
Marcelo RadulovichMarcelo Radulovich -- THE EVIL ONES cd-single [Titicacamanbox]
Random TouchRandom Touch -- THE YOU TOMORROW [Road Noise Productions]
Alex K. Redfearn & the Eyesores
Corleone
Alex K. Redfearn and the Eyesores -- EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL [Corleone Records]
Public EyesoreRenato Rinaldi -- THE TIME AND THE ROOM [Public Eyesore]
AccretionsRobert M -- s/t [Accretions]
Sideation
Greywork Industries
Sideation -- DRESS ME UP [Greywork Industries]
The Smack ShireSightings / Tom Smith -- GARDENS OF WAR [The Smack Shire]
Skullflower
Crucial Blast
Skullflower -- ORANGE CANYON MIND [Crucial Blast]
Sons of Armageddon
Magic Pony Records
Sons of Armageddon -- THE SOFTEST TOUCH [Magic Pony Records]
TOCTOC -- FOR FANS ONLY [self-released]
TL&SILA
The Smack ShireTo Live and Shave in LA -- GOD AND COUNTRY RALLY [The Smack Shire]
Towers of Soul
Towers of Soul -- DIVE INTO BLUE OCEANS OF BLACK SKIES [self-released]
Accretions
Circumvention
Trummerflora Collective -- RUBBLE [Accretions / Circumvention]
Load Records
Ultralyd -- CHROMOSOME GUN [Load Records]
Unsane
Relapse Records
Unsane -- BLOOD RUN [Relapse]
Upland
Jester RecordsUpland -- OBLITERATED [Jester Records]
Ben UsherBen Usher -- DEAD WEST [self-released]
Coincident Records
Spring Garden Music
Ten Pounds To The Sound
v/a -- NO IDEA FESTIVAL [Coincident / Spring Garden / ten pounds to the sound]
Stevie Hayes Recordsv/a -- UNCONSTITUTIONALISM IN THE USA [Stevie Hayes Records]
Walls of GeniusWalls of Genius -- CRAZED TO THE CORE [self-released]
CircumventionEllen Weller -- SPIRITS LITTLE DREAMS AND IMPROVISATIONS [Circumvention]
pfMENTUMRich West -- BEDOUIN HORNBOOK [pfMENTUM]
Jester RecordsWhen -- WHENEVER [Jester Records]
White Mice
Load Records
White Mice -- ASSPHIXXXEATATESHUN [Load Records]
Digital IndustriesWolfmangler -- THE GATES OF WOLVES [Digital Industries]
23 ProductionsWolfmangler / Wolfskull -- split cd [23 Productions]
Gringo RecordsWolves! (Of Greece) -- s/t 10" [Gringo Records]
Jack Wright
Spring Garden Music
Jack Wright -- UP FOR GRABS [Spring Garden Music]
Xaxis WyeXasis Wye -- FORMES [self-released]
Xaxis WyeXasis Wye -- GERMAN TICS [self-released]
The Smack ShireXex -- GROUP: XEX [The Smack Shire]
Public EyesoreAyami Yako -- s/t [Public Eyesore]
Pax RecordingsIan Yeager -- MUSIC FOR GUITAR + COMPUTER [Pax Recordings]
YinkolliYinkolli -- KALZAGIAN MEMMY [self-released]
Robert Ziino
Experimental Artists
Robert Ziino -- MUSIC FROM THE VALLEY OF FLOWERS [self-released]
ADDITIONAL REVIEWS (stuff that came in after the original deadline):
Mike Comfort – FREE [Arete Multimedia Inc]
F.U.S. -- SKIN DISEASE [Greywork Industries]
Mark Geary – 33 ½ GRAND STREET [sonaBLAST!]
Muck -- ROC [Pax Recordings]
v/a – COMP # 2: AN EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC COMPILATION [Greywork Industries]