HEAVY ROTATION - week of March 23 2009

KURT VILE: The Hunchback EP 12" (RICHIE)
KURT VILE: God Is Saying This To You LP (MEXICAN SUMMER)
DEATH: For All The World To See LP (DRAG CITY)
AMANAZ: Africa LP (SHADOKS)
GROUP BOMBINO: Guitars From Agadez Vol. 2 LP (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES)
IRMA THOMAS: Sings LP (CHANGE)
RTFO BANDWAGON: Dums Will Survive LP (DULL KNIFE)
GARY WAR: New Raytheonport LP (SHDWPLY/DISARO)
KURT VILE: Constant Hitmaker CD (GULCHER)
CAETHUA: Village of the Damned CD (BLUESANCT)

KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS: The Hunchback EP 12" (RICHIE) Mr. Vile's 'official debut' full-length Constant Hitmaker was Blastitude's favorite album of 2008, but on this brand new follow-up he kinda sidesteps away from the one-man constant hitmaking... now he's got a backing band and they casually throw down a few loud machine-trance workouts, getting into a cool grinding city rock, a little more brooding and grim. On the first album there was a fair amount of sun breaking out of the haze, but now it's definitely night-time. Also, this EP doesn't use any of the zoned-out solo fingerpicking styles that are on the first album, and while on first spin that was slightly disconcerting, on second, third, and now fourth, I don't mind at all. Mainly because the Violators are a serious band - drummer is basically perfect, and so is the way the other two (on guitar, bass, baritone guitar, more) blend with KV's six-string brilliance. I don't even mind that four out of the six cuts are instrumentals, or that the record is over way too fast... makes it that much easier to play it again and again...

Vileness:
MYSPACE.COM/KURTVILEOFPHILLY
DESTINED: KURT VILE
L.A. RECORD
KURT VILE PUSHES BUTTONS
KURT VILE LIVE ON WFMU
BUY
BUY



OFEGE: Try And Love LP (ACADEMY) Reissue of a 1973 rock album by some Nigerian high-schoolers. It isn't quite the raw/chill stunner that my all-time gold standard Amanaz Africa is, but it is a really good album, very solid sun-dappled mid-tempo rock balladry, with some piercing psychedelic lead guitar that, together with an elastic percussive style, keeps the tunes at a deceptively high simmer. Also, it's really a beautiful sleeve by Academy, complete with a nice insert that has a recent interview with the album's producer. BTW, am I reading this interview right -- did Berkley Jones, the guitarist of BLO, "play all the guitar tracks in the absence of the band members"??



SUN CITY GIRLS: Fruit of the Womb/Polite Deception 2LP (ECLIPSE) Hey, the Cloaven Cassettes reissue project is back, still on Eclipse Records, here with #5, the first volume in four or five years. The idea is a projected ten double-vinyl releases, each one reissuing/reimagining two of the 20-plus cassettes that Sun City Girls cluster-bombed the scene with between the years of 1987 and 1990. Fruit of the Womb was "recorded 1984–85 between the first and second Sun City Girls LPs," and it documents a particularly raw, scorching, glowing, go-for-broke session or two, with some songs that are known ("Damcar," "Blue Mamba," "Trippin' on Krupa," "Rappin' Head," "Jokers on a Waltz") and songs that will always be unknown (such as Side B, the 25-minute diehards-only "When the Jewels Roll out of Your Eyes"). As for Polite Deception, it originally came out on the heels of Womb and, according to suncitygirls.com, "side one is a continuation of the previous tape listed." And, the flip features "Gulf Con '79," an impressive early long-form "industrial Mesopotamian Environmental piece." Edition of 950, gatefold sleeve, rad live photos, etc.

TODAY'S HEAVIES
"History of the Man" Amanaz
"Trouble Maker" Chrissy Zebby Tembo & Ngozi Family
"Bang Your Head" Gravediggaz
"Strong Island" JVC Force
"You Gots To Chill" EPMD (2009 anthem)
"Psalm 95" Prince Far I
"Ride On Marcus Version" The Revolutionaries
"Atom Smasher" Cirith Ungol
"Black Machine" Cirith Ungol
"Thrashers" Death Angel
"Mouth Breather" Jesus Lizard
"Hot Burrito #1" Flying Burrito Brothers

and of course the wedding stylings of Abdullah Chmairan

THE GRAND HOTEL: Extra Tiger CD-R (FELT RECORDS)
The moral of the story is: never give up on the to-listen stacks, no matter how old and dusty and in-the-way they're getting. I pulled this disc from pretty near the bottom... it was released a whopping four years ago, after all. No idea when it showed up here at HQ, but I never did listen to it, not even once, until today. I had kept it around simply because the art was promising... an enigmatic-enough B&W drawing pasted on a cool cardboard fold-over holder with an envelope for the disc mounted within... but the real reason I finally put it on the stereo today was a case of mistaken identity. You see, I thought that maybe the Grand Hotel was this older (early 2000s) Bay Area band featuring the late Cayce Lindner, who went on to record one great 2006 album as the leader of a band called Flying Canyon. Turns it out I was wrong... Lindner's older band turned out to be The Golden Hotel, and this was The Grand Hotel, a band (duo as it turns out) from Brooklyn that I really knew nothing about. That quickly changed as the readout gave me one 35-minute track, I pushed play, and got immediately sucked in by a desolate misterioso atmosphere that morphed into vaguely bluesy zoner psych and then serious pounding no-mind post-industrial wave-out... by now I'm more than hooked, and then the drums drop out and that's when they bring back the song, now as a free-floating garage/cloud bliss-out. An early mastery of now-prevalent 'new age noise' styles, and a whole lot more than that too. Glad I dug it out, here's their myspace and other stuff. Anyone with an extra copy of that edition-of-15o LP from 2007, get in touch.

And listened to next, another 'oldie'....

IAN NAGOSKI: Effortless Battle CD (RECORDED)
From waaaaay back in 2003, heavy electronics, really holds up well. Interesting stuff as it is rooted in classic loft-style LaMonte Young drone and minimalism, but still fits right in with its early-2000s noise/electronics solo-artist peers, resulting in some pretty crazy low-end and grinding atmospheres that still have a sort of open-eyed wonder. I could be wrong about this, but it seems that Nagoski more or less retired this music when he became a father and opened up a record store in 2004. He has remained active, currently blogging for Arthur Magazine and in 2007 gathering some of his favorite 78RPM records for the stunning Black Mirror CD compilation on Dust-to-Digital. Actually, is the True Vine Record Shop still open? Weeeeeelll, I just found this July 2008 article from the Baltimore City Paper that explains everything... Nagoski is leaving the record store to his partners Jason Willett and Stewart Mostofsky, and says, "I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing only more so--dealing with records (research, listening, writing, creating, teaching)--and--hey!--making my own music again for the first time in four years." Right on... here's an interview with him from around the time of Effortless Battle (and the opening of the True Vine).

BLASTWITUDE

So, dear readers, I would like to announce with great non-ironic excitement that I, Larry Dolman, have joined the Twitter nation, nay, the very TWITTERVERSE itself. (Not ironic.) See twitter.com/blastitude. Like it says on the profile page: NEW ARRIVALS TO BLASTITUDE HQ (& A FEW OLD FAVORITES TOO). Basically, I'll use it to list whatever makes it on the record player in between now and #28. Sign up now and read a little more about how good this new R. Millis CD is!



R. MILLIS: 120 CD (ETUDE)