PHO BAND/FAUX BAND 10" LATHE CUT (GREATDIVIDING) The greatdividing label of Queensland, Australia is back with a clear-vinyl 10-inch release that I'm guessing is a lathe cut -- it's got that Peter King feel. I'm never 100 percent sure who a greatdividing release is by, even as I'm looking at what I can only assume is the band name on the label. Other than the a range of greatdividing comp, it's either a record by house band Exiles From Clowntown or some combination of "Arob" and "Soottyb" (when Arob and Soottyb release records, are they split releases? Collaborations? For gods sake, are they split collaborations??), except this one is a split between the Pho Band and the Faux Band, although the Pho Band label also says "Arob/Soottyb," while the Faux Band label says "Soottyb/Arob." The greatdividing website says "Two 11 minute long tracks recorded at separate times in different places by the same two blokes," which actually explains it. Both sides of the record do have a very similar M.O., which is almost exactly 11 minutes of one guitar or instrument playing slowly morphing atonal skipping-record-style machine loops, which are improvised over by another with softly sketching guitar scribbles. I do wonder if all the greatdividing music released so far has been improvised, even when they are playing in Exiles from Clowntown, which has riffs and stuff, and sometimes even vocals. The Pho Band/Faux Band is more blatantly improvisational, mellower, and longer. The sometimes-maligned 10-inch format is actually welcome here, because it retains that quick-hit greatdividing style while going on plenty long enough to carve a quite nice and rarefied atmosphere, which I'm going to call 21st Century Industrial Electric Beach Dirge Raga.... good to know someone's doing it. You know, by the time greatdividing has built up 70 or 80 minutes worth of these obscure little 7-inches and 10-inches and lathe-cuts and whatnot, I'm going to want, get this, a CD of their whole discography, something in a nice and somewhat annotated foldout digipak, preferably with a high-quality slipcase. Hint, hint...

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An INTERVIEW with GREATDIVIDING.

Is greatdividing an improvised music label? A rock label? Do you call your music anything, like when people in the real world ask you what kind of music you play? 

"a simple band of simple mates/ making sounds on a budget rate/ we make no claims to be great/ just simple sounds for simple tastes."

greatdividing was started to release some of the music we'd been doing that would otherwise never see the light of day.

We've been playing and recording in kitchens and halls since the late '70s / early '80s. We started in the same small town, but have lived in different states/cities for a lot of the time since and have swapped stuff and collaborated when visiting and via the post. By the mid '00s we had a heap of tapes and were still recording regularly. Although we had talked about releasing stuff over the years, it just never happened. Eventually greatdividing came into being in 2003. Our criteria for releasing stuff is 'would we want to own this ourselves, if we knew nothing about it?'

When people in the real world ask we're usually pretty flippant about it. We have no reason to label what we do. That's up to others. We are interested to hear other peoples takes on our stuff though. We like reviews, positive or negative…especially if they make us laugh.
  
Arob and Soottyb are two separate artists on the Greatdividing label, right? Two different people, right? Why does the Faux Band side of the lathe-cut say "Arob/Soottyb" and the Pho Band side say "Soottyb/Arob"? Does it have something to do with who plays 'lead' and who plays 'rhythm'? Are Arob and Soottyb also two of the three Exiles from Clowntown? How do you pronounce Soottyb anyway? I want to say Sooty B, which sounds like the name of a rap MC that performs dressed as a inner-city chimney sweep.  

Yep we're both Exiles and most definitely two different people. Both our 'handles' are taken from our email addresses. Soottyb is an amalgamation of a few different nicknames from over the years which got distilled down to Soottyb. It's pronounced : soot-tib. Thats a good one about the rappin' chimney sweep tho, ha!

The credits on the 10" reflect who instigated which track. We keep our real names out of it because our egos aren't involved. We'd been doing this for a long time without anybody ever knowing about us and we'd still be doing it if we had never released anything.

"kicking a few ideas around at greatdividing h.q." Pic by Soottyb.

You said you grew up in a small Queensland town. Where at and what was it like? How did you get into music there? Play in any shitty cover bands, or any good ones? Eventually you ended up in Sydney, right? How did 3 Toed Sloth come about? How did Exiles from Clowntown come about? 

Ah yes, Clowntown…a beautiful spot that the government seemed intent on turning into just another suburban shit hole (and succeeded). For instance, when i was a little kid there were miles of sand dunes along the beaches just outside of town where once you weren't even allowed to stop your car and walk because it was so environmentally sensitive, but by the time i was in my early teens those same dunes were being bulldozed to make way for canal style estates and shopping malls.

Like a lot of small towns, there were a lot of small minds, but also a few of the finest characters you'd ever wanna meet. Needless to say the small minds ruled. None of us have lived there for a long time now. We were run out of town by vicious mobs of grey haired pillars of society and golden haired hitler youth wannabes. 

We played music there purely for our own amusement. The place was ruled over by zealous senior citizens who's motto was There'll be NO FUN in this town! There were no venues or bands. We initially all bonded together through a mutual liking for punk rock. We got into music in the usual ways, friends, older siblings, radio, t.v. etc.   

3 toed sloth' were born from the ashes of Rodent. Rodent was the elder punk in Clowntown. He was great. He told me he could teach a five year old child to play guitar in 15 minutes flat, but he couldn't teach me. One day Rodent took his own life. Later i got his guitar from his parents and taught myself to play (take that rodent!) then i moved to Sydney where I tried unsuccessfully to join a few bands, but i could only play my own songs... A few years later Sharon (a friend from Queensland) turned up in Sydney with a bass. We started going to practice rooms where we would drink beer, make a racket and laugh at ourselves. After a year or so of this we invited Tom along because we wanted to hear what our racket sounded like with drums (feedtime had recently split). We sounded much better. I sang because i wrote the lyrics and nobody else wanted to. After awhile we were asked to play with our friends La Sect Rouge. We played our first show supporting them late '89. We never played all that often, it wasn't a good time for small bands like us. I only remember bits 'n' pieces…at one show i broke all my guitar strings by the fifth song. We were all good at breaking stuff. A friend once said that seeing 3 toed sloth was "like watching a bull in a china shop". Not exactly sure what they meant, but it rings true anyway. By the end of 1990 we had loads of songs and decided to record some to document what we'd been doing up to that point. In '91 we self released an lp. Our attitude was that it should live or die on its own merits. No promotion. We kept at it for another two years and recorded once more, when a fan offered to record us at his college studio as part of his course. Those recordings finally got released seventeen years later as the '…against the odds' dbl 7" on Unwucht and the Negative Guest List Jukebox Single #2. We never stopped coming up with new songs and it was always fun, but nobody wanted to know about us and towards the end we couldn't get a show for love nor money. Sometime around late '93 we just kind of stopped. People seem way more interested now than they ever were when we were around…we played four shows in 2011 (including SS-Ten in SF) to celebrate the release of the 7"s and twenty years since the lp. We had a blast. No future plans. 

Exiles from Clowntown is a bridge of friendship that links our futures and pasts. Although we'd all known each other for a long time, we only started playing together in this combination when the other two shared a big cheap house in Melbourne in the mid '90s. They had a room soundproofed with old mattresses where they practiced with a band they had with someone else. There were always instruments lying around so we would just muck around playing stuff off the top of our heads once in awhile. When it clicked it was effortless fun and we'd play for hours, if it didn't click we'd just hang out drinking and listen to records. After they moved out of there we all ended up in different cities and only got to play very occasionally. Somehow that made us focus on it more and its become our main musical focus. We enjoy it and although we do it for fun, we are serious about making music we want to hear.

Exiles in Clowntown live at 'greatdividing and friends' night. Pic by Kris Morriss. "Framed picture of the queen is part of the decor, not a prop."

"3 toed sloth and feedtime play their first shows in 17 and 22 years respectively greatdividing night easter 2011." Pics by Brendan Boucher. 

How often do greatdividing bands play shows? Do you ever tour in Australia? Any plans to travel to the USA and lose thousands of dollars playing to 10 or 15 weirdos at a time? Any other greatdividing plans being hatched you'd like to unveil here? An Exiles from Clowntown full-length perchance?

Everyone involved is scattered around the country, so its hard to arrange anything, let alone shows. We mainly play when people are kind enough to invite us…we try to oblige. We put on a 'greatdividing and friends' night last year in a small club on top of a large cliff over looking the pacific ocean. It was pretty great. 

We'd like to play more often, but its difficult with the distance thing and us all having busy lives etc.  As far as us coming to play in the U.S…that sounds only slightly less far fetched than saying we're going to tour Mars, but never say never i guess…we're open to offers! 

Current plans:  There's a new comp of new and old stuff 'Another range of greatdividing' in the works, with Unwucht doing the vinyl late 2012 or early 2013. 

There's been a long standing plan to do an Exiles from Clowntown LP.  Brendon from Negative guest list was a big supporter and had asked about NGL doing it, but that's not gonna happen since his unfortunate untimely passing. Since then Soft Abuse from Minneapolis have been in touch and offered to do it, so thanks to them it may actually happen in the not too distant future… 

Some good people here have offered to help organise Exiles…shows in Melbourne and Hobart later this year and we're looking forward to that.

"the small question mark in the middle of this poster was the only hint of a particularly well guarded secret that our friends feedtime (with tom on drums) *might play for the first time in twenty two years (as a public warm up for their one off at SS-Ten in 2011) *might  because we made them an open invitation and despite them all being in attendance, it was only confirmed they would play 45 minutes before they took to the stage...after saying 'fuck off, no way" when asked half an hour before that…"

Speaking of playing shows, what's the story behind this youtube clip? Some sort of outdoor festival, smart drink tent not visible? Was it a good night/day? If it isn't obvious by now in the interview, what's the lineup here?

   

It was a free festival of experimental and noise music. Held inside a large tin shed on an old government ship building island in Sydney Harbour early 2012. It was a good day, borrowed gear, no soundcheck, broken bass string in first song (no replacement), drum kit that kept falling apart…it all went pretty smoothly. Not saying we were best or anything like that, but we were definitely the loudest and most rocking.  Lineup: Soottyb - guitar + rav-box + shout , Arob - bass + mumble, Mr Mopriss - drums + inspiration *we like mix it up and swap instruments every so often. 

Who are these other bands on the range of greatdividing comp . . . Shoptoprockers? Rock Boycott? The heavily named Deep Brain Thrombosis? Rock Boycott & The Yellow Steed?? What's their deal, are they all still playing? Is either Arob or Soottyb or both in all of these bands too? 

Shoptoprockers: One of many projects that flourished in the cheap rental accommodation above shops on busy inner city roads in the 80's/90's. With no next door neighbours to annoy, we played to irritated flatmates and pissed off passing pedestrians. 

Rock Boycott: A jack of all instruments and master of drum (machine). Rumoured to be the bastard love child of Big John Zupp and Jackie Mac (minor '70s Brisbane t.v. celebs). Abandoned in the Beau Desert as a child and raised by dingoes. One day he crawled from beneath the rock ledge they called home, stood on two feet and walked. During this forward trajectory he turned laughing to himself and mumbled "rock boycott"...has made little sense since.

Deep brain thrombosis: Originally inspired to make music by T.V. advert jingles and later obsessed by the Radio Story from the second album by Alternative TV. Dbt is still trying to perfect the art of the downer jingle…its a real dilemma! 

the Yellow Steed: An early incarnation of Exiles from Clowntown during their space junk rock phase. Although they didn't know it at the time, they would prove to be the perfect backing band for Rock Boycott during his rock hard cock phase. 

Dbt and Rock Boycott are on going. Shoptoppers and Yellow Steed have been subsumed by Exiles… 

Arob and/or Soottyb are involved.

There has been a lot of exciting underground punk/rock musical activity coming from Australia just in the last couple years. Arob, in a previous communique you listed a bunch of killer Australian bands that inspired you growing up. So, in closing, the multi-part question from hell: who are the best Australian bands currently active, who are the best Australian bands of all-time, and who are the best non-Australian bands of all-time?

That's a great multi-part question from hell, but we don't really know much about best-evers…here's some Youtube stuff we like.

'77   

O string buster san 



A Warning



Homely



Nyuck x 3 




AEOC



Village idiot 



Shirt Dance



G.G.



Diamonds



Tender



Jesus christ in reverse



Choose



Some old guy




A GREATDIVIDING SAMPLER:

RELEVANT LINKS:

http://www.greatdividing.com 

http://www.vice.com/read/

rettsounds-unwucht

SUMMERTIME RECORD HAUL

PEAKING LIGHTS Lucifer LP (MEXICAN SUMMER)
BLUES CONTROL Valley Tangents LP (DRAG CITY)
JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE Axis: Bold As Love LP (REPRISE)
BURNING SPEAR Marcus Garvey LP (ISLAND) 
NEW RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE s/t LP (COLUMBIA) 

This is a list of the albums I bought at the record store this past weekend, in the order I played 'em that night after getting home. It was great to get the new Blues Control album on vinyl, but a couple weeks ago I received a (completely authorized) preview download of it, which I've since listened to 13 times, according to iTunes. By contrast, I did not have preview mp3s for Lucifer, Peaking Lights' hotly-anticipated-by-me follow-up to their lovely album from early 2011 called 936. A week or two ago, I even refused to click on a blog link offering a (completely unauthorized) free preview download of Lucifer, because I knew I was going to buy it when it was in the stores. I hope Emily White, David Lowery, AND Kenneth Goldsmith are all taking notes! I was going to buy it, instead of indefinitely "previewing" mp3s of it, just to own a print of Robert Beatty's cover art, but of course I had high hopes for the tunes themselves, hoping this would be a 936-and-beyond kind of record, especially after listening to the advance track "Lo Hi," a bold fusion of their most obvious reggae skanking yet with extended R&B-dream-prog-balladry and what is hands down the sweetest vocal appearance of an artist's infant child on wax since "Isn't She Lovely." And you know, now that I've listened to the record a good 4 or 5 times, and gotten familiar with a couple songs that I initially missed, I'd have to say that it is indeed a 936-and-beyond kind of record. And even if the tunes are in the background and you're simply viewing Lucifer as a collection of grooves this is still a good funky listen. All the summertime/barbecue/beach/lounge stuff people are tweeting about this record that gets retweeted by Peaking Lights is accurate. But turn it up, come closer to the songs, and you'll hear what lifts the material beyond mere barbecue grooves, that radiant glow of motherfatherhood that was even in full flower with 936, before their son was born. The foundation grooves might be retreating back to basic 70s disco/funk templates, but the way they are embellished with highly personal elements like actual melodic synth playing, Aaron Coyes's sundazed soul guitar licks, and Indra Dunis's simple and lovely melodies glowing through and illuminating it all, well, wow. Also love Beatty's design and the whole Lord of Light concept, including a hefty mandala poster inside. Also special shout-out to a relatively cheap full-length LP on Mexican Summer! ($14.99!)

So yeah, I already talked about the Blues Control LP last post, but special side note here about how cool it is that Peaking Lights and Blues Control are both romantically involved male-female musical duos, both influenced by a melting pot of music, who both just released great peak-performance-so-far type albums on the same summer day, which both have a kind of blue-on-white color scheme on the cover, and even a tilted-axis perspective to the art. For the record, I think it's completely 100 percent parallel development and coincidence, and besides some surface similarities in instrumentation and influence, the bands really don't sound like each other. Anyway, I played Blues Control next because my kids, age 9 and 7, who I have to compete with for early evening media fun time, and don't always want to listen to the records I do, really like Valley Tangents (I think mainly for certain particularly bouncy jazz-fusion passages that sound like really awesome video game music . . . needless to say "Iron Pigs" is a big hit). They're really liking Peaking Lights too, and definitely enjoy Ms. Dunis's sweet and dreamy singing. As for Blues Control, they've been present for many of those aforementioned 13 listens, and I don't think they've even once cared or even noticed that no one is singing at all.

Every time I go to Reckless I can't help grabbing a few of the classic, great, collection-hole-filling, oft-partied-on records in the $3-$10 range that are always stuffing the bins there. For example, why not grab a $2.99 hella-used copy of Axis: Bold As Love? Even though I did have it on vinyl, back in the day (80's reissue bought at the mall), at some misguided point I traded it in so I could "upgrade" to a CD copy, which I still have, from that run where they gave the classic first three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums NEW COVERS, if you can believe that. This $3 copy of Axis is much better, and not just because it has the correct cover. I mean, it is a total beater . . . every possible seam is split and the tunes come with lotsa crackle and some erratic skipping . . . but man, when the music is making it through uninterrupted, it is pure singing and stinging psychedelic honey of the absolute proper vintage. This copy even smells like the 70s . . . and I know because I was there.

Also grabbed a VG copy of Marcus Garvey by Burning Spear for a pittance. One of the great soul singers of all time (though in the service of Jamaican reggae, not American R&B), leading a set of deep roots historical/cultural protest songs from 1975. Not particularly dubby or otherwise notable production-wise, it's all about the intensity of Spear's singing and subject matter. Excellent record, which leaves us with the self-titled debut by the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Honestly, after all this heavy hippie music, this 1970 LP of mellow singer-songwriter country-music folk-rock might just be a little on the light side. I do like the New Riders, but I've always wanted to like them even more, because they play a version of what Gram Parsons called Cosmic American Music, which sounds like a beautiful idea, and they have a Grateful Dead connection, with Jer on pedal steel and Mickey Hart occasionally on the drum kit, and they have one dreamy cosmic nature ballad I really like called "Last Lonely Eagle," and it's on here, as is the 8-minute "Dirty Business," which is my second favorite song by them, with some extremely gnarly distorto fuzz pedal steel madness by Garcia. Overall though, I'd have to say Parsons's own Cosmic American Music band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, was a little more substantial than the New Riders. (Surprisingly, Sneaky Pete Kleinow is just as cosmic on the pedal steel as Garcia . . . also just found out that Sneaky Pete's steel guitar is that glorious sound in John Lennon's "Mind Games," which I always found to be a somewhat underrated psychedelic pop rager, with intense lyrics like "Some kinda druid dude/Lifting the veil.")

NEW ARRIVALS

BLUES CONTROL Valley Tangents LP (DRAG CITY) Way back around 2005 the band Blues Control, in the guise of another band called Watersports (same two members, Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse), were coming out of the noise underground talking about how they played "new age" music. This was a good three or four years before so many of the other equipment demonstrators in today's underground started doing just that, en masse. In the meantime a Watersports side project called Blues Control had started taking up more of Russ & Lea's time, and seemed to assimilate a lot of Watersports' new age concepts along the way. Now it's been a few years and Blues Control are so far ahead of the new new age crowd that their new album Valley Tangents really has very little to do with the term. People have called this a fusion album, and honestly, I think you could even call it straight-up fusion jazz. Either way, Blues Control play MUSIC, that is, series of instrumental phrases that sing from the heart, and have the ability to react to their immediate surroundings with freedom of movement and conversational play. This kind of music is impossible to mechanize, and Blues Control are so far into that zone with this new album that it's really quite a joy. Just listen to the opening track "Love's A Rondo." My iTunes says I've listened to it 9 times this week, and that doesn't count the 2 or 3 times I've watched the video, and how do I count the number of times bits and pieces of the song have been weaving through my head when the album isn't on? The way the short drum intro groove gives way to the gently cascading guitar & keyboard main love theme, which then gives way to a bold and long jazz piano solo by Ms. Cho, which gives way to variations on the main theme that alternate, rondo-style indeed, with deep-digging guitar lead sections from Mr. Waterhouse. Just a jaw-dropping deep heavy gorgeous tune, and honestly one of the great new love songs from the last.... 30 years? It certainly is in my house, and please note that Blues Control remain a 100 percent instrumental band, yet still have more to say than so many bands that actually write lyrics and sing them. And then "Iron Pigs" comes along, and it's kind of ridiculous.... Casio gunshots? Cheeseball synth horn fanfares? Giving way to a stomping and grunting stadium march? It freaked me out the first couple times I heard it, but now I love it. They've often had a track like that... on the preceding album Local Flavor it was the opener "Good Morning." But I digress, and from there I won't give away too much more about Valley Tangents, except that on it, Blues Control continue to venture into more extended, lush, jazzy, and brazenly romantic territories than they ever have before. Long may they rondo! Street date for the LP, CD, and CS (!) is this Tuesday, June 19th, and as of this writing you can stream the whole album at Ad Hoc. Last but not least, Blues Control will be touring the US, beginning this summer. Here's the facebook event page.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Eat The Dream: Gnawa Music From Essaouira LP (SUBLIME FREQUENCIES) It was excellent news that my favorite intercontinental music record label, Sublime Frequencies, was going to release an LP documenting one of my favorite intercontinental musics, the bass-driven trance-frenzy of Gnawa. The Gnawa are a North African people, often described with some awe and mystery, who migrated from deep West Africa to the Morocco region centuries ago. Thus, Gnawa music represents a synthesis of both African and Arabic shamanistic trance styles, and bass freaks unite, because gnawa is really all about one single acoustic bass instrument and that is the guimbri (spelled multiple different ways such as guembri or gimbri and also known as a sintir). This is a rough-hewn three-string rectangular lute that hammers down deep, driving, spiritual chanting lines built from simple pentatonic scales, usually accompanied by percussion and vocal exhortation, and whatever else goes on during deep all-night spiritual trance sessions. This article on Perfect Sound Forever gives some excellent background, and if they're still working, these files are an excellent introduction to the music via one of its masters, Mahmoud Guinia. And for all my anticipation, this Eat the Dream LP is really just about as excellent as I hoped, beginning with a gorgeous, deep, and dark guimbri solo by Maleem Abdellah Chania. He's the son of another Gnawa master, the late Maâllem Boubker Ghania, who leads the ensemble that plays on the rest of the album. There are also some spacious field-recording interludes as well, all recorded during a1994 trip to Morocco by Tucker Martine, who has already done a few fine releases for Sublime Frequencies. 

ED SCHRADER'S MUSIC BEAT Jazz Mind LP (LOAD RECORDS) Floor tom & bass guitar is the unlikely instrumental combo that makes up this Baltimore-based performing duo, and what's more they use it to build an invisible cavern of reverberating low end in which all kinds of sublimated 1960s-1980s glam pop ballad hooks lurk and cast shadows. They're put there by the singer, Ed Schrader, who also beats the drum. They aren't doing anything overtly minimal with the music, and in fact can almost sound like a regular rock band, except that they can't help but leave more hanging space in the sound than usual. This creates the contours of the aforementioned cavern, and Schrader is comfortable in it. Both the A and B side begin with a rager of a tune (which may point to an unashamed past headbanging to the mainstream industrial twin towers of Reznor and Jourgensen), but most of the record is made up of downtempo ballads, one of them a capella, and Schrader really has a feel for the form.

EGG, EGGS The Cleansing Power Of Fruit LP (FEEDING TUBE) First off, the press one-sheet that came with this album refers to Matt Krefting in the opening sentence, and his name is even bolded, which makes it look like he's in the band, which a couple people have already reported, Stigliano for one. I assumed he was in the band too, but after re-reading the sentence, which does not refer to him actually being in the band, and not finding his name on the extensive personnel listing inside the LP, I've determined that he probably is not actually a member. In fact, the only names I recognize are that of Matt "MV" Valentine and Conrad Capistran, the Sound of Pot himself, and they're mere "special guests." (EDIT: Oh wait, I totally recognize one more name, John Moloney on drums, electronics, and guitar. Sorry, it's a long personnel listing.) The band, like Krefting, is from Western Massachusets, but the frontman/vocalist here is in fact one Dave Russell, and you know, I've heard plenty of "ultra-goofy" and "weird person" lead vocalists over the past decade or so of punk and noise and no wave nowness, and this guy is honestly one of the most compelling ones I've come across. A lot of 'em just sort of get stuck doing their best to shriek/shout/chant/yell/goof right along with the music, but Russell not only rides with the music, he goes against it, in spite of it, instead of it, etcetera, in a disarmingly conversational manner. You feel like you're being communicated with, instead of shrieked at from a kept distance. Shards of strange thought steadily cross your path, like how Russell just told me that "you can dance with an albino bigot!" Then the extremely shambly basement garage noise-rock combo ("a goddamn all-star Valley ensemble") takes over and shuffles him away, but before you know it he's back with more mumbling, chirping, shucking, jiving, and singing. And you know what? It's working for me.

NEW ARRIVALS

On top of the pile we've got a brand new 7-inch EP by Tropical Trash, a Louisville, Kentucky band with members that have or do put in time with Blastitude favorite Sapat, and like that band, they play a strange cool take on underground rock. The EP is called Fear of Suffering, and it's got five tunes in all, one on the A and four quicker ones on the B. Press blurb mentions MX-80 Sound and that is indeed a good starting point. Weird, proggy, noise/experimental undertones, and, most importantly, heavy without resorting to mere distorto-bludgeon. I look forward to more material, and I'm excited that I'm not quite sure what to expect from it. I'm not even sure what to expect the next time I play this 7-inch. Editon of 200 on white from the Sophomore Lounge label.

Speaking of noise/experimental underground rock music, next on the pile is Sinews, the brand new LP by the White Suns on Load Records. White Suns are a three-piece from Brooklyn, two guitarists and a drummer, and they play what is basically screamy noise rock in a 90s aggro/emo style, with two of the band-members simultaneously working their own noise/electronics set-ups. That in and of itself might not sound 100 percent fresh, but let me tell you, not only does the band know how to play very well together, they also know how to compose and arrange. I seriously can't think of a single quote-unquote noise-rock band in the last decade who has used this much gradational dynamic range, space, and stasis in their compositions, without ever relinquishing a core clenched-teeth aggression, not even for a second. No matter how mad at the world your noise-rock band is, you can't be pummeling and bludgeoning and screaming all of the time. Sometimes life requires us to sit still, grit our teeth, and wait, and these moments are amply reflected here, as when, to name just one example, a torrential and viciously tight 90s aggro/emo tuned-snare outburst will drop into extended sub-bass noise-music solo-rumble minimalism. Also, the vocals are meted out carefully as to not shout the listener out of the room. It all reminds me that, yes, there were a few bands in that 90s aggro/emo style that were actually quite listenable, and White Suns are honestly up there with some of the very best, occupying a space that I will dare to shorthand as "Dazzling Killmen meets Gastr Del Sol." When the Load Records one-sheet begins, "The second full-length from Brooklyn's White Suns is a passage into the deeper recesses of contemporary psychic struggle," it is not one-sheet hyperbole at all.

Remember that Vwyrd Wurd label from a few blog-posts back, pronounced "weird word," and their debut edition-of-100 12-inch by a spooky tenuous weird non-singing noise-folk duo called Nocht The Only Ghouls? Well, now the label's brand new second release has just arrived on my desk, and it's honestly even more of a head-scratcher because it's something completely different, an album of dream-ambient synth-wash techno-pop soundtrack drama by an artist called . . . Daywand. The record is called Temporary Sanctuary. I've already listened to it three times trying to suss it out, and much of it sounds just plain wrong, like two late-night made-for-cable cop-show soundtracks are playing at the same time, or like a much shakier version of Ford & Lopatin, and yet I think this music is as compelling as any of the cop-show chillwave soundclouds I've streamed on Altered Zones, or Adhoc.fm, or whatever style/fashion blogs the kids are kickstarting these days. I'm not sure if I can explain why I like it better, but I'll try. One, it's on vinyl instead of mp3 or soundcloud or youtube. Two, it's from a hype-free scene (like Nocht the Only Ghouls and the Vwyrd Wurd label, Daywand is from the wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania). Three, I was already rooting for the label because I like their first release. Four, this is some really good Thai stick I'm smoking right now. (Just kidding about the last one. I don't even know what Thai stick is!) Mostly, it's because Daywand, like White Suns, but in a much different way, are "a passage into the deeper recesses." Keep an eye on these Vwyrd Wurd cats, okay?

And now for some new arrivals that aren't so new... I'm worried these are not just 2 months old, but like 2 years old. But hey, they're new to me and maybe new to you too. On top are two releases from The Spring Press label, first up one by Carlos Giffoni called Lift, in fact the first Giffoni solo thing I've listened to in something like 7 years. Haven't heard his No Fun Acid project at all, for example, although I did keep up with a couple '00s releases by his long-running (these days mostly not running) band Monotract, and those were great (seriously, peep 'em), but that's essentially rock music. Solo he plays harsh noise electronics that hammer their way into hardcore techno, and that's what we're getting with Lift, which sounds pretty "no fun acidy" to me, in a good way. The last song on the album is called "Society Is Born Again Just To Party," and it is indeed a slammin' acid wiggle that I, for one, can definitely party too. Someone pass the Thai stick! (Just kidding!)

One thing about that Giffoni record, and it would seem Spring Press in general, is that -- although the records look really nice -- you kind of have to hunt to find the album details, you know, like "Who is this by?" and "What is this called?" In fact, on this next Spring Press release, you have to hunt to find any text at all. The cover is a beautiful painting (The Lute Player by Caravaggio!), with no title or band name. There's no text on the back cover, either, and hey, guess what! NO TEXT ON THE LABELS EITHER. There's not even any text on the spine of the record sleeve. Call me old-fashioned but I guess I think a record should at least tell you who it's by, somewhere. I'm sure this record is by somebody, and probably even has a densely poetic title that is several words long. Either way, by the time I'm tilting the run-out groove into the bleak room light looking for any scrawled information, believe me, I'm a little fed up... ... and when I don't find any there either, it's a relief to finally trudge off to the internet to find out the title at thespringpress.com, and there it is: Ambianxe by Marco Fusinato. He's from Australia, and his album is solo electric guitar noise, performed live in Japan. Most of side 2 is completely silent, but when his guitar is audible, it is refreshingly heavy and active. It's been awhile since I've heard relatively unprocessed solo electric guitar mangle, so this is hitting the spot.

Hey, here's another excellent record on Sophomore Lounge. This one's also a little older, from a little deeper in the pile, and it's an edition-of-200 split release between Geffika and Skimask. Geffika live in Chicago, and are a woman-and-man guitar-and-drums doom-sludge-type duo, and they do it with a lot of heart, like a Melvins without any of the "we're going to annoy you" tomfoolery and a smaller recording budget. Very heavy yet still fragile because of the yearning gutsy twin vocals. I'm going to have try to check out a Geffika show somewhere since they live in the same city that I do. Too bad they haven't updated their blog in almost a year! Skimask are from Boston and play low-end wind-tunnel electro-punk, also pretty good stuff though not as immediate as the Geffika. No relation to the solo artist Ski-Mask from Buffalo I reviewed somewhere on this page back in 2004 (it seemed possible, had to look it up).

I've gotta pick up a copy of Spielgusher by Spielgusher. I was slightly dismayed that it's on CD only, but $9.99 at the iTunes store is starting to look appealing enough, especially with Meltzer drumming up excitement out on the interview circuit. There was of course the great one he did a couple months ago with Tony Rettman for Vice, and I just listened to this new long phone interview with him on the Icon Fetch site. It was cool to hear him speak out loud a riff I've seen him do in print a couple times: "Rock'n'roll, when it's on, can go from A to Z instantaneously. It's just pure magic. Jazz, which is a very autobiographical music, slowly goes from A to B to C and maybe in the course of a single album cut, you get to M. But it's a real M! Rock'n'roll, by somewhere in the 80s, it seemed to me that most bands couldn't even do A. And part of it was the beginning of videos, that you surrendered the urgency of sound for an audio-visual promotion, making advertisments for yourself as the product. That to me is when it really lost its way." Amen, right?

And hey, Mike Watt just posted the original pieces Meltzer gave to him way back in '85 for the proposed collaboration with the Minutemen. A nice little 'internet chapbook', most of which made it onto the Spielgusher album. 

And here's a couple youtube clips, possibly from the fabled Rhymes With Seltzer VHS release:   

As a follow-up to the recent retweet linking to the films of Harry Smith on Ubuweb.... 

I've been reading this book Aquarius Revisited by Peter O. Whitmer (Citadel Underground paperback, 1991, purchased at Myopic Bookstore), impressionistic and mildly gonzo journalism profiling Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey, Leary, Mailer, Robbins, and Thompson, "seven who created the Sixties counterculture." I usually grab any Citadel Underground title I come across, and this one's a good read. Plenty of anecdotes and off-the-cuff quotables from the very-quotable subjects. You can currently get a copy online for one cent, it's totally worth it. (The Citadel Underground of Gulcher on the other hand is a little more collectibly priced. It starts at $4.55!)  To tide you over, here's an interaction Whitmer has with the one-and-only Mr. Smith while the latter is crashing at Allen Ginsberg's apartment sometime during the 1990s (pp. 145-6):

Harry, now in his late sixties, never mentioned that he was the first person to record Charlie Parker or that he recorded and edited the classic Anthology of American Folk Music. He was excited about his current project, which involved a new way of "listening to the world." One microphone is stuck out onto the street side of the apartment and another is stuck out onto the more peaceful courtyard side in a sort of urban stereo. 

"Then what I do," Harry said, knocking his cigarette ashes into the ashtray like a Gene Krupa rim-shot, "is take all the sounds and speed them up so I can edit them. I have found surges in sound, punctuated by a single bird call or a single dog bark, that are pure beauty. These surges -- these waves of energy -- are really fascinating. So far I have recorded during two full moons and a summer solstice -- about one hundred twenty hours in all."

I asked Harry what was the best way to listen to it, meaning should you use earphones, or maybe it should be heard in a huge indoor auditorium, or . . . 

"I'd say with heroin," he replied. "That's probably the best. After all, it is one hundred twenty hours." 

A typically stunning still from Heaven & Earth Magic.

DEREK MONYPENY Limerence CS (UNDERWATER EXPERIENCE)
CIRCLE FEATURING VERDE Tower LP (FULL CONTACT)
RHYTON s/t LP (THRILL JOCKEY)
FEMMINIELLI / ARAIGNEE split 7" (FIXTURE)
ARAN RUTH Silver Wings 7" (THE BEEHIVE RECORDING COMPANY)

Full disclosure: Derek Monypeny has written for Blastitude, has had a beer with Blastitude, and will likely have a beer with Blastitude again. He's also carving out new heavy psychedelic space with the solo electric guitar and electric oud, and I like to listen to it, so I'm going to go ahead and tell you about it even though he and I know each other in real life. An Arizona native, Derek lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years, where he played guitar in a few different band contexts, most notably Oaxacan, a group that also served as Sir Richard Bishop's Freak of Araby Ensemble for a 2009 US tour. Not too long ago Derek moved way up the coast to Portland, where he has been doing solo performances on the aforementioned stringed instruments. This tape release documents some of these from the summer of 2011, in which Derek, using tastefully deployed effects and small and patient gestures, digs deep into those thin places where all kinds of inner space visions can flourish. You could talk about the complex social organization and communication among undiscovered species of highly intelligent insects deep under the sands of Mars . . . or any pulsing pattern of pure electricity hurtling somewhere through deep space . . .  or shortwave radio broadcasts of the latest tunes by mutant Touareg troubadours roaming the dark side of the moon . . . etcetera. I also can't help but think of a few lines that have always stayed with me from an essay on solo improvisation, written by Jeff Fuccillo way back in September of 1995, in the third issue of his Woolly Bugger zine: "...every sound made by the solo acoustic improviser plays into empty silent space and thus 'adds to the empty space of silence' that is the only (non)accompaniment given to the solo acoustic improviser's playing." This awareness of and interplay with silence is, paradoxically, the only way for music to truly be heavy (bands can use it too, not just soloists), and it's all over this tape. 100 copies on professionally duplicated chrome tape, buy it from Underwater Experience or Zum (though I think he/they/someone should put this on vinyl as it makes a nice followup to his 2011 debut solo oud LP Don't Bring Me Down, Bruce). P.S. For some upcoming DM show dates, including a couple with Bill Orcutt, click this Facebook link.

My favorite album by Circle, out of the four or five I've actually heard, has always been Tower, which I don't think the band even intends as a real album. On the very back of this new LP reissue it even says, right at the top, "slightly disappointing jams from 2006"! That's really odd, because this is literally the only Circle album I've heard that I haven't found slightly disappointing. Still, I can maybe understand where they're coming from, as Tower isn't even technically by Circle, it's by Circle Featuring Verde, and seems to have been recorded quickly, in a couple days or maybe even a few hours, the band using a single live setup, no apparent overdubs, possibly all improvised/jammed, so maybe they consider it rather throwaway or at least one-off. Me, on the other hand? I'm hearing multiple electric pianos (a favorite instrument of mine) playing mellifluous zoned out deep groove cloud paddle, pushed by genius swinging percussion, a hybrid of jazz, rock, electronic folk, and psychedelic trance, all combining to make one of the most beautiful meditation + motion albums I've heard in any genre from the last 12 years at least. It was originally CD only, released by CD-only label Last Visible Dog, way back in 2007, when CDs still mattered a little bit, but it always seemed like a great candidate for vinyl, partly because at 44 minutes it can actually reasonably fit on a single LP, but mainly because there's something about a bunch of gentle electric piano brain massage that just whispers "analog," of course. (Oddly enough, I see the CD is going for more than the LP on Discogs... that may change with this reissue, though CDs might stay valid if online file sharing keeps getting decimated, and rumored ISP threats are made good on....)

Just refreshingly experienced that increasingly rare cultural chain reaction where you read something about a band, become interested in their music, and then go out and buy their new record. Namely, I read an interview with Dave Shuford last week, then went out and bought the self-titled debut LP by his band Rhyton. He's been in several bands from at least the late 1990s to the present, most notably the No-Neck Blues Band and D. Charles Speer & the Helix, and when the interview revealed him to be in a new instrumental space-jamming electric-guitar power trio, maybe even something like Guru Guru, I had to check it out. The blurb by Reckless compared them to Earthless, which in particular inspired me to listen, because I like the idea of Earthless (they too are a heavy instrumental space-jamming electric-guitar power trio), but I've never quite liked their execution of the idea, whereas Shuford is a musician I've enjoyed and trusted for years. Sure enough, I feel like the interplay of Rhyton is more musical and more spacious, with a crucially lighter touch. Shuford is just a little more sly and coy than the more wall-of-sound guitarist in Earthless, and I prefer that for this kind of music, because it creates space inside the heaviness, room to move around, sit down, be patient, ask questions. Let the drums and bass roll the heavy foundation while the guitar glides gently above like one of those stork-riders in a Moebius painting. As long as we're comparing, I also find the drummer Spencer Herbst to be more musical than Earthless drummer Mario Rubalcaba, even though I doubt anyone would say he is as "good" as Rubalcaba. I know Rubalcada is a modern drum titan, and I completely see why, but I think his style falls into that fairly common trap where its awesomeness is more of a physical feat than a musical one. It's easy to marvel at what he's doing and the heaviness of his tone, but it doesn't particularly swing or shade the band... although that could be the fault of the guitarist and bassist's one-chord space dirge. Either way, I don't want to use any more of this review to talk about Earthless, because Rhyton made an excellent debut LP, with the 12-minute cut "Pontian Graves" a real standout. I also think you can tell they're fairly new at playing together, and that they've got a better album in 'em still. (Maybe with better cover art too! No, it's okay, it's a nice cover, it's been growing on me... I should probably stop leaving it out overnight! Thanks, I'll be here all year! And so will whatever that is growing on the cover of the Rhyton LP! HEYOOOO!)

Man, the incoming 7-inch pile got out of control this past year. I apologize to everyone who sent one in that hasn't been, and probably never will be, reviewed. In fact, I have a terrible confession to make: just a couple weeks ago I looked at said out-of-control pile, tried to get excited about listening to one, and decided to just grab 10 or 15 of 'em and try to sell 'em to the local new and used record emporium instead. Well, they rejected every single single, as it were, even though all were in mint and unplayed condition, so now they're back by the stereo, cluttering up the house. I mean, no one has ever heard of any of these people, and I just don't think I have the energy to help their cause. I could put 'em out on the sidewalk on an old sheet with a "free" sign on top . . . or I could man up, and do what someone somewhere once trusted in me to do: listen, and maybe even write. Sigh. (Wipes single small tear from eye.) So far, I've made it through two or three, and one of them actually hit a real soft spot and it's gonna be a keeper. I wasn't expecting much from the bland cover art and helvetica typeface announcing something called Femminielli/Chauffer on one side and Araignee/Silvia on the other. Maybe glitch/improv/lowercase/experimental? Maybe shoegaze nostalgia? Is that supposed to be a guitar neck on the cover? Finally putting needle to record, I was taken aback by some sort of deeply wrought 80s-retro European progressive synth-pomp balladry. Eventually I realized that the rather-difficult-to-remember-let-alone-spell Femminielli and Araignee are the names of the artists, and this is a split single where each one plays a song. They sound pretty similar though... maybe they're a production team, like Ford and Lopatin! The Drive OST must have rewired my brain because these lush and melancholy tunes are sounding shockingly good to me right now. Certainly better than the generic megaphone-punk and obtuse glitch-improv sides that look to be cluttering up the rest of the pile.... I keep trippin' over 'em.... ouch....

 



















Hey, another bit of music press just got me to pursue that dwindling but hopefully undying transaction where you spend money on a physical copy of a record release. This time, it was a moment in issue #11 of Negative Guest List (i.e. the greatest rock magazine since Forced Exposure), part of a rave review of the debut 7-inch by Detroit psychedelic singer/songwriter Aran Ruth, in which Brendon NGL wrote: "...three tunes which ache with hurt and stoned wonder, and a witch-like power to make even a Handsome Dick fan weep...meet Aran Ruth, and suffer beneath the iron breast of focused, female beauty." Shit, I bought one on Discogs the very next day, and even if two of the three songs have me thinking "good songs, but are they as good as 'If It's Alive, It Will' by Angel Olson?," the other one, called "Flying On Some Silver Wings," the de facto EP title track, might be the closest any other psych-folker has gotten to Comus's "The Herald," which is still nowhere near, but glorious anyway. I hope Ms. Ruth releases a full-length because I would buy it, and I hope this song and this song are on it.

PSYCHEDELIC HORSESHIT Acid Tape CS (FAN DEATH)
PSYCHEDELIC HORSEHIT Laced LP (FAT CAT)
BED WETTIN' BAD BOYS Best Band In Sydney/Worst Band In Sydney 7" (R.I.P. SOCIETY)
NASS EL GHIWANE "the rare 2nd album" (MOROCCAN TAPE STASH)
PINK REASON Shit In The Garden LP (SILTBREEZE)
BORED YOUTH Touch & Go EP (LOST AND FOUND)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Red Waves: 1980-87 Eastern European Avant-Punk & Synthpop Rarities (2007 WFMU marathon premium, compiled by DJ Jason Elbogen)

Wow, this is like the "punk" edition of Blogstitude! Look at all of this "shitgaze" I listened to today! I must say, it had been quite some time since I'd last caught up with early 'gazers Psychedelic Horseshit. I raved about their 2007 (debut?) 7" Who Let The Dogs Out? here, but later that same year their debut full-length Magic Flowers Droned hit me wrong and I've barely listened to 'em since. Of course, I loved bandleader Matt Horseshit's legendary 2009 live-at-SXSW interview with the Washington Post, not only because it was really funny, but for truly important insights (here uncensored!) like "The Velvet Underground, that shit is clean. That is clean as shit! "White Light/White Heat" is a fuckin' album of beautiful, clean static. Clean fuckin' static. That's how it sounded in the room." This statement coincides very well with another one, by Bruce Russell of the Dead C, that I came across today in issue # 2 of Mountain Fold Music Journal (the first three of which are generously offered here as pdf files): "We aren’t lo-fi in the sense that we rely on crap recording to saturate our sound. Our sound is fully saturated in real life." Horseshit and Russell (now there's a law firm I need to put on retainer) are talking about the same thing, the primal distorto-rock weirdsound of the instrument and/or ensemble in a room before it hits the tape. Horseshit calls it "clean static," Russell calls it "fully saturated," and I call it "blastitude" (not really, though I sometimes do call it "primal distorto-rock weirdsound"). In the case of Psychedelic Horseshit and the Dead C and quite a few but not enough others, what ends up being called "lo-fi" is inherent to the music itself and to the people and instruments playing it, regardless of recording studio quality, thus becoming no less than another kind of soul music. Which brings us to these two recent works by Psychedelic Horseshit that I listened to "preview copies" of today after reading a compelling review of Acid Tape in the Negative Guest List fanzine. After one listen I can confirm that Mr. Horseshit is walking it like he talks it; the recording itself is indeed very clean, not lo-fi, and the music he/they are making is indeed way beyond shitgaze, inventing its own unnamed subgenre. I listened to Acid Tape first, and it actually does come on like extended trip music, continuous crossfaded tracks with titles like "Unseen Void" into "Modern Daze" into "Hard As It Gets (Chill Sax Mix)", the last of which actually features some killer live heavy roots reggae kit drumming, which VERY few modern artists comparing their music to "dub" can claim... A few more tracks with titles like "Tired Bluez" and "Gliderz" sprawl out in non-linear fashion and then the album wraps up with a 7-minute ballad that seems to reach for The Clean's "Anything Could Happen" and gets much closer than you'd think it might. It's a trip, and it might not even be a bad one! After Acid Tape, I had to check out Laced, their 2011 debut full-length with the relatively high-profile label Fat Cat, and wow, this record really is 35 minutes of top-notch free-flowing electro-acoustic mind-fug, and, despite weird interludes and constant unlikely/deconstructed combinations of guitars/keys/drumboxes/pedals that are more of a laptop/glitch approach than a rock band approach, it remains an album of thoughtfully composed songs. Or, everything I just wrote could be summed up by the seven-word description on their SXSW page: "drug-fueled sample jam band/ future dub band," (Um, the comma was theirs, not mine.) In fact, they play SXSW this Saturday, March 17th, 7:45 PM at the Sony Club @ Red 7! That's tomorrow night!

Great 7" by Bed Wettin' Bad Boys. Both the band name and cover photo are humorously funny, but the four tunes that follow are perfect strangled/yearnin' basement grunge anthems, loud and gnarly, desperately melodic, pitched somewhere between sundazed and decrepit. And hey, I wonder how this genius-sounding 2010 experiment in the barter system went? From there into the righteous banjo/guimbri/percussion protest rock of Morocco's heaviest band, Nass El Ghiwane. Thanks to D. Monypeny for turning me onto these guys in this article for Blastitude. Wow, Pink Reason sure are pushing things with his/their second full-length Shit In The Garden. First song sounds like the kind of cavernous melancholy basement crunge you've come to expect from him/them, but it's overlaid with some sort of frantic too-loud shitty breakcore beat. Next level! The song underneath sounds awesome, and the fact that it's completely ruined by lo-fi digital breakcore somehow turns out to be awesome too. After that, no more breakcore, just more of that fine Pink Reason depression-gaze, not as flawlessly monolithic as it was on his first full-length Cleaning the Mirror, but surprisingly close, considering that it's been a few years, he's a stylistically unpredictable artist, the potential of a sophomore jinx, etc. The closing duet for stark banjo and microphonic feedback is especially well done.

JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO Double Fantasy LP (GEFFEN)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Ska Bonanza: The Studio One "Ska" Years (HEARTBEAT)
TOTAL CONTROL Henge Beat (IRON LUNG)
SLUG The Out Sound (PCP ENTERTAINMENT)
BULBS Light Ships CD (FREEDOM TO SPEND
THE SKATALITES Ska Authentic Vol. 1 (STUDIO ONE)

Today my son attended a free Radical Robots class at our local library branch (tax dollars at work!), and while he did that upstairs I was downstairs doing one of my favorite things, pulling random books out of the music section and flipping through 'em... even with the paltry selection at this branch, I could do this for hours. Sometimes I take 'em home, and there's been some great reads.... Grandmaster Flash's autobio... Nowhere to Run by Gerrie Hirshey... Barry Miles's Zappa bio... that Rock Scully memoir about his career "managing" the Grateful Dead... first edition of The Rough Guide to Reggae... Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang... most recently, Patti Smith's beautiful Just Kids memoir... but I'm just as likely to pull something like Ronnie Spector's autobio, spend 10 minutes skimming for scary Phil stories, and then put it right back. Today I did that with a John Lennon bio (can't remember title or author), and although I probably could've found one or two scary Phil stories in it too, I ended up reading the chapter about the making of the Double Fantasy album. How in June of 1980, John took little Sean on a vacation to Bermuda, where he was inspired to write what more or less became his entire half of the record, and how one evening while he was there, he was sitting in a cafe (or maybe it was "Bermuda's most famous disco") and overheard "Rock Lobster" by the B-52s, had an epiphany, sent Yoko a telegram that said "They're ready for you," and, when he got back from his working vacation, started looking for a new record deal, not for John Lennon, but for John Lennon and Yoko Ono. If any executive so much as hesitated at this proposition, the power couple would turn around and leave, which they even did to the legendary Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, even though John really wanted to be on his label. David Geffen did not hesitate, so they signed with him and made Double Fantasy, conceived as a conversation between a married couple, with "I'm Losing You" confirmed by Yoko's "Moving On," and "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" embellished by "Beautiful Boys," and so on. My parents bought this album when I was 10 years old and I really liked it a lot. John's songs were nice and Yoko's really blew my mind. It taught me so much to hear a woman come on so strong and smart, freaky and funny, intensely and non-conventionally, and then to hear John's "Woman" on side two, what a glorious appreciation. And here I am writing this on March 8th, which is International Women's Day, which, thanks to Yoko, my grandmas, my mom, my sister, my wife, my daughter, my cousins, my aunts, my close friends, and a couple billion other women, I celebrate every day, duh. It's like Ivor Cutler and Linda Hirst said, and Jim O'Rourke repeated . . .

The first time I listened to Australian "underground supergroup" and "2011 critic's favorite" Total Control, they were synth-poppier than I expected. Now I'm listening for the second time, and it seems like there's barely any goddamn synth on this album at all, which proves that they are what all the good bands are: dreamweavers and recalibrators. Maybe it does get synthier on side two, but I no longer need to keep score. I knew this second listen was gonna be a doozy, as I was already liking the album better and better just from thinking about it.

Slug was a band from Los Angeles in the classic 1990s semi-avant-garde noise-rock mold. The lineup included Damion Romero, who has gone on to play superb and distinctive noise music under his own name, and David Scott Stone, who has gone on to play in several notable bands (Wikipedia lists 14), from the Get Hustle to the Melvins to LCD Soundsystem. Slug's production on The Out Sound, their debut full-length from 1994, is a bit dated in that very 1990s noise rock kind of way, but the playing is formidable and there are lots of interesting ideas.

Love that Bulbs album... now there's a dreamweaver/recalibrator for ya... check out the Blastitude feature from a couple years ago . . .

Both Andy Stott 12-inches from late 2011, We Stay Together and Passed Me By, have gotten a second pressing by Modern Love, hopefully the second of many. I grabbed both of 'em this time, and I haven't played anything else for the last 72 hours. Already $20 apiece is seeming like a real bargain. I'll spend $40 easy on a meal for the family at some run-down restaurant, and we only get to eat that once. These records are much more nourishing, and I can play them again, and again, and again. Bass is food. I'm devouring We Stay Together right now. So far, whichever one is playing is the one I like better, back and forth, forth and back. I don't know when I'm going to want to listen to anything else, because I am luxuriating in these deep, heavy grooves. Now I'm listening to Passed Me By and man, the second track on here, appropriately titled "New Ground"... I've listened to it 6 or 7 times since yesterday and it's still CRUSHING me. Absurdly, comically heavy and brilliantly EQ'd for vinyl. Yes, the music is dark ("dark enough to call 'evil'"), but I think if you get all the way into these rhythms, you find a surprisingly warm and embracing core radiating outwards. Certainly these records are funky as hell, and however slow and dragged-out the rhythms are, almost every track is fun to dance to. I mean, I love Demdike Stare, but they really do not make me feel like dancing... Stott surprisingly does. Also, just for kicks, I've been trying to work out if these two releases, taken together as four 12" singles, are to the beginning of the 2010s what Metal Box (three 12" singles) was to the beginning of the 1980s, as far as "dark" disco music would or should sound like in a post-(post-post-)punk world. By now, Stott's time, we are rid of the albatross completely, that is, the need for a frontman, a singer, a cover model, a cult of personality. In that respect, techno made a big advancement past rock. Anyway, these records are available from Forced Exposure. (Currently at "low stock level"!)