February 12, 2021 at 8:04 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
USA/Mexico: Del Rio LP
This Austin supergroup featuring members of Butthole Surfers, Shit & Shine, and Expensive Shit (see a pattern?) continues getting heavier, sludgier, and more monstrous with every release.
Their third LP feels absolutely crushed and maxed out, yet still piledrives and steamrolls. Outside of the guitars soaring over the top, it’s hard to even pick out the individual instruments in this massive pile of radioactive chili glop, but there’s a lurching rhythm to it which pulls you in and physically tosses you around. It is absolutely necessary to blast this at head-wrecking volume, loud enough so that it clears out your mind. First track “Chorizo” is easily digestible enough at 4 minutes, but the other two go on for way longer, with “Del Rio” taking up the entire B-side and just getting heavier and more toxic. The vocals are just grotesque and demonic. Yet more music that makes me want live music to come back quickly so I can get consumed by a set from these guys at some Austin dive like Beerland, if I ever visit that city again.
February 11, 2021 at 7:17 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
His Name Is Alive: Ghost Tape EXP
HNIA is about to drop a third LP of early ambient recordings, plus a
4 CD box set (which I’ve ordered and hope shows up soon), but in the meantime, last year they released some other tapes related to this excavation mission. There’s a tape of AM radio recordings, a tape of dubby beat-driven remixes and then Model Home’s versions of that material, and now here’s something that seems in the middle of all of those.
Ghost Tape EXP has some beats near the beginning, as well as some crusted-over lo-fi drone and some slowly vibrating space rock zone-outs. It’s not quite clear if it’s a remix album, outtakes, revisions, new material in the same vein, or maybe all of those melted together. “Sun Reflection” scorches a bit and seems closer to the noisiness of
Return to Never, then “Witch Marks” is frostbitten glacier drone with icy echoes (at the beginning). It ends up with “My Heart Will Go Out”, which starts out still and placid before guitars roll across the landscape and a melody briefly surfaces before it all gets cast out back to the tundra. It’s not a huge departure from all the other recent releases but it’s still slightly
other and vaguely familiar.
February 10, 2021 at 7:53 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Blanche Blanche Blanche: Seashells
On New Year’s Day, Blanche Blanche Blanche released their
first LP in over six years, and somehow it’s been overlooked in favor of the other new Zach Phillips-related album that came out that day, Fievel Is Glauque’s debut, which is getting way more attention so far. I’ll get to reviewing that one soon, but BBB deserves mention for now.
Wink With Both Eyes was easily my favorite album of 2012, and I’ve been following them and their related projects ever since. This album was recorded on a Tascam 424 in short bursts between 2017 and 2019, almost entirely by Sarah Smith & Zach Phillips (Ryan Power plays guitar on one song), and it’s maybe their most lo-fi, fragmented release yet. Less hyper than the punk/prog bent of albums like
Breaking Mirrors, not as hooky as
Wink, this one features sentimental/searching lyrics frequently undercut and sideswiped by quick, angular bursts of splattered keyboard melodies and multi-tracked vocal interjections. A few phrases pop up throughout the album with increasing frequency (“Jeepers creepers, y’all”, “shoot your shot”), and if you aren’t paying attention close enough, quirks like this might distract from some of the more poignant and empowering messages and anecdotes in the lyrics. I don’t really want to give away everything that goes on here, partially because a lot of it rushes by quickly without repetition and it’s hard to process it all, but it’s just as inventive and cryptic as the rest of their releases. Hey, they’re just trying to change the world.
February 10, 2021 at 6:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Paradox: Counter Active
Guyanese keyboardist Jean-Phi Dary joined Jeff Mills and legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen for a series of improvised collaborative performances a few years ago. I kind of feel bad saying this but in all honesty, when I saw them in Detroit, I thought Dary and Mills were far more in tune with each other, and Allen was a little out of his element and seemed like he was struggling to keep up. Maybe other shows were different, I haven’t checked out any clips of their other performances online. Regardless, there’s definitely a spark between Mills and Dary, and it’s plainly evident with their first album together as The Paradox. Much looser, jazzier, and housier than most of the music Mills is commonly associated with, their debut album contains six tracks which feel like the best moments of a series of free but focused jam sessions. Mills programs beat patterns on the fly and augments them with real-time percussion, and Dary plays smoothly flowing but disciplined keyboard melodies. “Super Solid” (with guitarist Herve Samb) and “The X Factor” are the most overtly Afrobeat-sounding tracks here, but all of them incorporate shifting polyrhythms, and while “Twilight” is maybe the closest to Mills’ usual spacey techno, all of the tracks get deep. Effortlessly successful, hopefully there’s more to come from this project.
February 9, 2021 at 8:25 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Blush To The Snow: s/t
The artist once known, in much simpler times, as Ill Cosby (among countless other names) returns with a new alias far from the IDM, mashups, and shapeshifting club styles he’s produced in the past.
Blush To The Snow has the appearance of a black metal release, and though it’s just as wintry, in actuality it’s richly textured ambient and drone. Most of the tracks segue into one another, creating a sound blanket that slowly shifts into different places. The centerpiece is the title track, 12 minutes of whirling, chiming tones which seem like they’re breathing. Other tracks drift in the wind or rushing water, while “Freeze Frame” basically does what it says, allowing you to observe the minute details of a suspended winter scene.
February 7, 2021 at 1:50 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
386 DX: Biggest Smash Hits
was a “cyberpunk-rock band” helmed by Moscow-based contemporary artist
Alexei Shulgin, who performed MIDI covers of classic rock tunes, sung by a Russian-accented robot. Definitely a novelty act comparable to Anton Maiden or the Moog Cookbook, but like those artists, elaborate and absurd enough to transcend its novelty status to the realm of the sublime. A longtime
WFMU favorite, the project has achieved minor internet cult status, particularly for the “California Dreaming” cover. I honestly forgot about 386 DX until Staalplaat released
Biggest Smash Hits this month, and it’s been a happy rediscovery to say the least. The details are what make this fascinating: the robot’s attempt to approximate Johnny Rotten’s snarl and James Hetfield’s manly growl, the 8-bit John Bonham drum solos which just sound like a bunch of pixels being rubbed together, the way the vocals extend during the choruses but still struggle to fit all the syllables on beat during “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. The renditions are super precise in some aspects, but still limited to dinky MIDI technology and still imperfect in a human way. And the vocals make this seem funny even when it shouldn’t (i.e. the cover of Nirvana’s “Rape Me”). “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” is performed without the gonzo backing vocals, perhaps adding a slight sense of desperation to the song, but not enough to derail its silliness. This comp includes one song from the project’s
Legends of Russian Rock album, and it’s easily the wildest thing here, sort of a Chuck Berry-on-speed rave-up with rapidfire whooping vocals in Russian. Not sure if this project is still active, I’m assuming his janky old computer died a long time ago and it would probably be hard to salvage a system old enough to reproduce something like this, but at least the internet is keeping the legend alive, and now it’s made it to vinyl.
February 6, 2021 at 2:11 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
IMOGEN & Ben Pest: Volts 12″ EP
The opening title track to
this EP is just a monster. Driving train industrial techno which simmers over with acid and adds some crushing breakbeats right in the nick of time. Gets it cracking, doesn’t overdo it. Super well done. Besides that, “Gramalkin” is more gnashing industrial techno with corrosive, boiling synth distortion. “Shibooty” is less abrasive and more Chicago-influenced (obviously), but has some Reese-ish bass cruising underneath and a definite rave flavor. “Misjudgement Day” is the electro jam, and could do damage on the darkest dancefloor in the Hague.
February 5, 2021 at 6:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Sexual Harrassment: I Need a Freak LP
Later namechecked by LCD Soundsystem on “Losing My Edge”, the group Sexual Harrassment released this LP and a few singles in the ’80s before disappearing. Just like nobody would get away with such a problematic band name today, the music is the sort of pervy electro-funk that could only have come out of the ’80s underground. Not that there hasn’t been countless knockoffs of this sort of sleaze since the electroclash era, but this is a genuine original. It fits nicely with the Maxx Mann reissue Dark Entries put out last year as well as proto-techno classics like “Sharevari”, and some of the more minimal Prince-related projects, with Vanity 6 coming to mind. Some of it is just plain hilarious, like the should-be gym classic “Exercise Your Ass Off”, which sounds like a goof that came together in a single afternoon, in the best way. This reissue includes the band’s two post-album singles, including the self-explanatory “We Want Prince”, which cleverly crams tons of song titles into its verses, and the sly, salacious “These Are The Things That I Like”.
February 4, 2021 at 6:48 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Wolf Eyes/Blank Hellscape: split 12″
Wolf Eyes’ side of this split 12″ (“Winter Sunday”) mostly consists of crackling, broken electronics, sometimes swinging like a rusty hinge, sometimes developing a lurching beat, which ends up getting ground into sludge. Nate Young’s voice eventually appears, then appears to melt inside the sluggish looping rhythms. Inzane Johnny lets out a startling cry on a horn, although it doesn’t pierce through the gloop too much, and seems to join the same sort of decomposing cycle as the rest of the sounds. Fun stuff, but in all honestly, Wolf Eyes are totally blown out of the water by the Blank Hellscape side, “Concrete Walls”. The trio are from Austin and they have a few releases to their name, including a 2019 LP on Diseased Tapes, but I was unaware of them until this release. Heavy death industrial that you can actually dance to, with gut-shaking beats framing the piercing feedback and lacerating screams. Halfway through, the harsh noise fades away, and the kick drum heartbeat slows down, then gets blasted out with thick, evil sunrays and one of the group members delivers a barely audible anti-capitalist monologue. Eventually the feedback starts shredding in measured bursts in between kick drum thuds, and it all fades out just as it seems like it could get taken to another level. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a noise show in some cruddy basement, but this record is making me realize how much I miss it.
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The Answer Is In The Beat 