August 2, 2016 at 9:23 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment
Essential Tremors: The Visitor 12″ EP
It’s not easy to find information about this band, because Googling their name brings up information about nervous system disorders. As it turns out, they’re a Nashville-based post-punk/synth/darkwave band and the EP was produced/engineered by Dan Tomzack, formerly of Detroit groups Terrible Twos and Johnny Ill Band. Booming drum machines, goth-y bass guitar, distorted vocal, noisy effects. Pretty surprised to hear this on Third Man, but it fits, especially after they released a Wolf Eyes album last year. This is sort of somewhere between that and some of their more typical garage rock releases. “MTA” is probably the bleakest and coldest of the tracks, and “Death Perception” is maybe the danciest. They’re all good, really.
July 31, 2016 at 8:05 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
LXV: Clear LP
So according to Discogs, this guy used to be Current Amnesia (a name I always heard but never saw or listened to, even though he’s done splits with people I used to know), and he was also in Car Commercials, who I saw in a New Brunswick basement once and didn’t think were very good. This is something else entirely. Bizarre shredded voices, granulated textures, ghostly murmurings, nervous transformations. It’s supposed to be about the aftermath of a psychotic experience, but it feels like such an experience itself. On “Pripyat (Paper Crown)” it sounds like scrambled voices are raining down sporadically from the sky. And then “Apophenia” ends up sounding like what might’ve been an intimate jazz piece or folk song caught in a digital washing machine. Very intense and chaotic, there’s so much going on, and it doesn’t make sense in the conventional way, but it’s truly fascinating.
July 24, 2016 at 9:27 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Khrysalis: File Dump Error tape
Somehow this is the very first Khrysalis release, which is honestly quite astonishing considering how long she’s been making tracks under this name (she used to be called Nyarlathotep). Ultra-glitchy drum’n’bass/breakcore beats with frayed, industrial-ish synths which sound like they could be played on guitars at times, maybe. The beats get furious and ultra-choppy, and the songs make you actually feel things. Some of these are instrumental versions of songs she screams over during her shows. Even without vocals, the songs express so much. There’s so many subtle details both in the breaks and the background sounds/melodies. Also, “Celebrate the Night” is so awesome. Just want to put that out there. Considering how long some of these songs have been in the making (I don’t want to say something like “sitting around on her hard drive”), this almost seems like a greatest hits collection of sorts. So much went into these tracks, and they’re all incredible. I’m ultra-biased but this is probably going to end up being my favorite tape of the year. Free download at
Bandcamp, but you really should
buy it (it’s only 4 bucks).
July 24, 2016 at 8:42 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Pod Blotz: Other tape
Pod Blotz is by no means a new name, but I’ve only been getting into her recently. She played Trip Metal Fest and it was easily one of the highlights, with incredibly inventive costumes and props and lighting and music. This tape came out last year, and it’s pretty short (only 5 songs), but it’s a decent range of what she does. Some rippling noise, some operatic crooning, spacey synths, and a killer darkwave song (“How Many Times Can I Die?”). Seeing her live is the best way to get a grasp of what she does, but this short tape is a good audio intro. Listen at
Bandcamp.
July 24, 2016 at 8:20 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Ratkiller: Odor Orienting tape
Somehow I forgot that I already
reviewed a tape featuring Ratkiller last year. This is a strange sort of homemade sound/genre collage, ranging from messy jazz to quasi-drum’n’bass to elevator music to vaguely reggae-ish things. There’s some strange reflective philosophizing spoken word moments, some not-quite-holding-together electronic rhythms, and a typically awesome, abstract-as-hell Seth Graham remix. There’s Seinfeld bass and robo handclaps and turntable scratching and construction/hammering sounds. It ends with a long, fairly crazy sorta-house mix. It basically sounds like the type of stuck-together-with-bubblegum music that you could only really imagine hearing on tape or
Bandcamp.
July 24, 2016 at 7:26 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Angel Dust: Surrounding tape
A very rough, grainy snowstorm blur. There’s moments of fleeting melodic hints, but a lot of it feels like it’s tipping toward one corner of the sound design spectrum. But it all flows continuously so it visits a few spaces. One side is 14 minutes and the other is 12, and there’s several song titles listed, but there’s no way to determine when one passage ends and another begins (even the
Bandcamp page just divides the stream into Side A and Side B). There is a part during Side A when there’s a sort of clearing, and it seems less hazy/blurry, but then more choppy and intense. With both sides, when it seems like it gets the most clattery, it ends pretty suddenly.
July 13, 2016 at 11:28 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
The Cult of Lip: Right Now 7″ EP
Flying saucer indie with gliding guitars and reverb-y vocals which is still punk enough to cram 5 tracks onto a 7″ (to be fair, “Afternoon” is just a brief synth glimmer in between two songs). Sounds dazed as hell, but still focused enough to tear through asteroids at breakneck speed. Every song tries out different warped guitar effects, with the B-side heading closer to MBV braintwisting. Super refreshing to hear something this wacked out and spacey but also incredibly energetic. You are going to listening to this right now over at
Bandcamp.
July 10, 2016 at 10:50 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Sote: 10in04 10″
14 years ago, Sote released “Electric Deaf”, one of the most brutal, alarming records Warp ever put out. He put out a few other records, including an album on Sub Rosa which was more in the modern classical realm. Lately he’s been releasing albums on labels like Opal Tapes and Morphine Records. This 10″ actually contains 2 early unreleased tracks from the ’90s. “Neuroenhancer” is a dark, distorted techno banger with pulverized melodies shining through the near-gabber blasts. “In Music I Trust” is evil drum’n’bass which isn’t quite broken enough to become breakcore, but it’s plenty distorted and chaotic. A voice keeps insisting “everything’s gonna be fine tonight”, but you’re not sure whether to believe him or not. Think of this as a timebomb that took 20 years to finally detonate.
July 10, 2016 at 10:31 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Guyer’s Connection: self-titled
This is a collection of tracks recorded in the early ’80s by a duo of Swiss teens with a drum machine, 2 synths, and a 4-track recorder. They released 1 album in 1983, but these are tracks recorded around that time which were discovered in 2005 and released on a limited LP, and later given an expanded reissue by Medical Records in 2011 (including bonus and reworked tracks) and now it’s on tape courtesy of Crash Symbols. The music is very simple and whimsical, but somehow it’s still sort of surprising that the duo were so young when these songs were recorded (they formed when they were 14 and 15 years old!). There’s plenty of silliness, so it definitely resembles German new wave people like Der Plan and Andreas Dorau (and probably a lot others I haven’t heard or can’t remember now), with a few songs having sort of polka-ish melodies and jokey-sounding vocals (especially on “Gorilla’s Dance” and “Tapir” and “Hop Hop Hop”… all animal-themed, and probably not a coincidence). There’s also a Casio-ish cover of “Mack the Knife”, and at least one German children’s song. There’s also some darker moments (like “Flow”) and some totally legit vintage minimal synth, such as “Laugh About..” and “He Sabine!” Recommended for fans of Crash Course in Science and Xex, and other minimal synth groups who have a funny bone but are also incredibly creative musicians. Take a gander at
Bandcamp.
July 10, 2016 at 9:47 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Evan Haywood: Ramshackles LP
Followers of Ann Arbor’s hip-hop scene know Evan Haywood best as Clavius Crates (of Tree City). He also has a pop group called Man Vs Indian Man, and now he has this solo LP of psychedelic singer/songwriter folk-pop under his own name. Very lushly orchestrated, with numerous layers of instruments, field recordings, guest vocals, and dub echoes (courtesy of Fred Thomas). Trippy and loose, but it doesn’t always have the communal hippie vibe of what used to be called “freak folk” a decade or so ago. Sometimes it does, but not always, it’s generally more focused than that. “Tangeria” is a short glimpse at some sort of jazzy outdoor party. “Attrition Blues” has a similar vibe, but it’s stretched out to a full song, with an extended ethereal outro. The second side has some funky drumming, as well as covers of Charles Manson (!) and Fred Neil. The Manson song is super positive and happy and you’d never guess who wrote it, and the Neil song sounds like more of a church hymn. The final song is more of an ethereal chant, with a subdued jazzy piano outro. Available at
Bandcamp.
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