Some new reviews of mine (of older releases) appeared today at Swingset. The first one is of the recent 2CD retrospective of the Shadow Ring, one of my favorite bands of all time:

There’s no getting around the inherent difficulty posed by the music of the Shadow Ring, one of the UK’s most obscure, yet most rewarding bands of the past decade. Ironically, what makes their music difficult is its complete simplicity. Home Counties chums Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris (with later member, Tim Goss) outlined their early musical approach most succinctly in their 1994 album Put the Music In Its Coffin, whose title spells out the distinctly amateur (yet not “amateurish”) nature of their scrapes, wheezes, and plain-spoken lyrics regarding mundane topics concerning “Wash What You Eat,” “Rats & Mice,” and “Prawnography.” Later, after Lambkin moved to the United States and the group’s activities became even more difficult to sustain, the Shadow Ring embarked on an exploration of long drones and slowed-down vocals, on such releases such as 2001’s Lindus and their final album, I’m Some Songs. Despite the change in direction, the simplicity of The Shadow Ring’s music retained its power.

Life Review (1993-2003) is a 2-cd set that documents all phases of the band, and is an excellent starting point for those unfamiliar, but willing to brave their deeply strange waters. As most of their initial releases are out-of-print (and will likely remain that way), it’s fantastic that such an unlikely collection exists, including not only classic Shadow Ring “numbers” such as “Tiny Creatures,” “Horse Meat Cakes” but also unheard charms such as “Stella Drive,” their shambolic live reinterpretation of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive.”

Buy it at Fusetron.

Another review appeared today in the LEO Weekly, this time of Divisionals, the new album by Mouthus on Ecstatic Peace!:

Brooklyn duo Mouthus are usually grouped alongside noise artists, despite being a guitar/drums duo. That’s because their music, while often abrasive, has its own internal logic that is difficult to understand without seeing them live. It’s hard to grasp that what sounds like 15 airplanes landing at once on top of an elevated platform as the J-train rumbles by is just generated by two people. However, on their new album Divisionals (on Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth’s Ecstatic Peace! label), the proceedings are dialed down a notch. Guitarist Brian Sullivan and drummer Nate Nelson, possibly employing some additional instruments, create a mysterious set of cyclic drones, which interlock and mesh within each other, much as the strands of DNA within our cells.

Buy it direct from Ecstatic Peace! here.

If you’ve been living under a rock or something for the past couple of months, and haven’t checked in with your favorite bougie media outlets such as NPR‘s Fresh Air (seriously, Terry Gross is the worst!) or the New York Times, you may be unaware of Death. Since I couldn’t place this review anywhere, better late than never:

In some sort of alternate universe, bands such as Death rule the classic rock airwaves, and lamers like Aerosmith are relegated to the dustbin of history. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but weirdly enough, back in 1974, Death might’ve been the next big thing. These three brothers from Detroit Rock City, who sold their 7” single “Politicians In My Eyes” from their garage, were supposedly feted by record industry mogul Clive Davis. The story goes that since they wouldn’t change their decidedly un-commercial name, Davis passed, and the trio became just another “what-if?” story. Until this year, when the venerable Chicago label Drag City reissued their entire recorded works, a scant seven songs (including afore-mentioned single) recorded at the same Detroit studio where Funkadelic laid down their classic jams. While nothing like George Clinton’s renegades of funk, Death shared a similar modus operandi, in that their assimilation of whatever music was at hand gave them the ability to create their own original style. …For the Whole World To See is a fascinating mix of proto-punk aggression, 70s metal virtuosity, and only-in-Detroit grit.

Order Death’s …For the Whole World to See from Drag City.

Here’s another review from this week’s LEO Weekly, of Der TPK’s excellent second album Games for Slaves on Siltbreeze:

If you can get past the deadpan, can’t-tell-if-they’re-joking German vocals and they-must-be-joking song titles, including tongue-in-cheek gems like “Shopping Blitz” and “Vorantwortungsfreude” (which apparently means something close to “joy of responsibility”), California’s Teenage Panzerkorps — aka Der TPK — might be your new favorite band. Games for Slaves, their second full-length album just released on the resurrected Siltbreeze, shows an uncanny ability to merge a simple yet memorable melodic sense within a neo-post-punk gestalt that is simultaneously retro and futuristic. Der TPK’s Teutonic leanings add an extra layer of cold, ironic detachment that “new wave” revivalist jokers like Interpol and their ilk could only hope to achieve. Which is the point as, after all, the word “gift” translates from German to English as “poison.”

Buy it directly from Siltbreeze here: http://www.siltbreeze.com/teenagepanzerkorps.htm.

Do yourself a favor and read the Siltblog, too.