Category Archives: Record Review

Death, …For the Whole World to See (Drag City)

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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.

Teenage Panzerkorps, Games for Slaves (Siltbreeze)

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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.

Sir Victor Uwaifo, Guitar Boy Superstar 1970 – 76 (Soundway)

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(Cover image taken from LEO Weekly.)

I haven’t written reviews in a while, but I’m getting back into that game, starting today. In this week’s edition of LEO Weekly, Louisville’s only alt-weekly, you can find my byline on this review of the Sir Victor Uwaifo Guitar Boy Superstar compilation:

For many years, most African music remained unavailable to Americans. Aside from rare finds in immigrants’ shops, and sounds lucky to make it through to the world music circuit, the majority of the best African music remains unheard by Western ears. However, thanks to enterprising record labels such as Soundway (curators of the fantastic Ghana Soundz and Nigeria Special compilations), many gems are now available. Soundway’s latest compilation is of 1970s works by Nigeria’s Sir Victor Uwaifo, the first African recording artist to be awarded a gold disc, yet criminally unknown here. Uwaifo’s “ekassa” songs are generally brief and melodically sweet, with virtuosic guitar leads sometimes missing from Afrobeat. Yet Uwaifo’s music, while mellower than his confrontational countryman Fela, retains a timeless urgency.

Buy it from Forced Exposure here: http://www.forcedexposure.com/artists/uwaifo.sir.victor.html. (Looks like the vinyl is sold out.)

I’ll put up a link to download it shortly, as the one on this old post expired.

UPDATE, 2:30 PM: Download it here for a limited time.

Ones/Hands, 1997-2005 (White Tapes) CD

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Ones

Yet another semi-archival post. This review of the Ones/Hands, 1997-2005 CD on White Tapes originally appeared on April 25, 2005:

So my friend Russ Waterhouse has been running the high-quality, low-quantity White Tapes label off and on for years through various mysterious Brooklyn-located apartments, and 2005 has seen a re-birth of this ongoing concern. One of this year’s new ones is the collaboration CD by Ones and Hands, two American noisy units obscure by even most obscurists’ standards. Having only seen Ones in action, I feel confident in describing their modus operandi as officially awesomely weird: two dudes, crouching low over tables full of tiny objects, make atonal rattly creaky drony soft and oddly compelling noises. I’m assuming they’re responsible for most of those-type sounds on the disc, whereas I assume Hands provides the sweetly melodic guitar and drones that drift in and out, like the sounds of the street outside an open window. The combination of disparate elements makes this CD a fun time for fans of inscrutability, audio-style. Highly recommended.

More entries on White Tapes stuff forthcoming.

CORRECTION MAY 12: Ok, thanks to the benevolent stranger in the comments box, I learned that Hands is actually Hands To, aka Jeph Jerman. I think maybe Russ told me this but I forgot it. Whoops. And Nick from Ones plays the sweet guitar, so that’s good to know.

Download 1997-2005 here.

Angus MacLise, The Cloud Doctrine (Sub Rosa, 2CD)

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Angus MacLise

I published this post, a review of the Angus MacLise 2cd set The Cloud Doctrine on Sub Rosa, back in 2003. Instead of burying it in the archives, I thought I’d re-post it at the top with a link to download the out-of-print release at the bottom. So please enjoy.

This is a two-disc set released by Sub Rosa that has a buncha until-now unreleased Angus MacLise madness for ya dome. In the past couple of years, possibly beginning with that Peel Slowly and See Velvet Underground box set thing (that I still don’t have, dammit), there’s been a steady flow of Angus MacLise material appearing on the marketplace, in legal-or-otherwise forms. For the past decade or so I’ve been pretty obsessed by all manner of stuff that emanated from the Lower East Side of New York during the early-mid 1960s (the Velvet Underground being my earliest and most immediate exposure to what soon became a much more rich and complex world of eccentric characters from those Fluxus freaks to La Monte Young to whatever), and it’s become increasingly clear, with each archival MacLise release (hey that rhymes sorta!), that the most viscerally exciting, most connected-with-the-spirit-world stuff that sprung from those gutters was done by the guy with the least care for ‘leaving a legacy’ or some such bullshit. Fortunately we are now getting to hear this music, to hear the poetry read by its author; we just as easily could’ve been deprived of it, had a tape’s decay been even more extensive, or a ledger not been saved, or whatever.

Disc One begins with a series of three solo electronic suites from 1965 all with the title ‘Tunnel Music,’ and what that sounds like is cracked electronics weirdness. #1 ends with sweet swooping dive bomber sounds, #2 sounds like a march of army ants across a bouncing rubber floor while an inept adept named Aleph repeatedly drops a gong, what my yoga instructor calls extended technique. Then the Rubber Band Man comes to sweep up, helped out by the friendly robot Bleep Bleep. And still, during ‘Tunnel Music #3’ that danged gong keeps dropping, it’s so slippery! Aleph must’ve anointed it with the holy walnut oil of the gods or something. ‘The First Subtle Cabinet’ does a whole ‘nother thing entirely, with Angus playing the cimbalum, joined by super-friends Tony Conrad and Piero Heliczer on additional instruments. What results is a rather long (read: 26 minutes, dang!) excerpt mini-stoned-soul-freakout, mango chutney flavor. A bit of scraping and touching and wheedling and it’s all very nice. The beginning of this gigantic improvisatory treat is great stuff for floating away over the ocean on a grey puffy cloud outlined with tinges of orange light as the sun sets in the West. As things progress and unfold, more percussion is utilized, but never in a heavy-handed, stomp-your-brains-out way. What begins in the clouds becomes rooted in the earth, but never leaden or lumpen. Then, moving ahead over a decade, we get a reading of ‘Description of a Mandala’ from a performance in 1976. Most, if not all, of the archival MacLise releases haven’t had actual poetry readings from the man, so this is a nice treat (Disc Two also has a nearly-twenty minute reading from his ‘Universal Solar Calendar’ which of course provided the basis for the titles of ‘works’ by the Theatre of Eternal Music). ‘Thunder Cut’ ends the disc, a swell 32 minute load of nonsense (in a good way) as Angus, Tony Conrad and Beverly Grant Conrad give us the spiritual business with lots of scraping, scribbling, swooping, stomping and shingy-shing-shing-ing.

Disc Two is a bit more varied, with ten total tracks, and again only two super-long pieces, one of them the afore-mentioned reading. The four minute ‘Chumlum’ soundtrack begins the disc with cimbalum and drum scrapeage, kinda like a condensed version of the longer cuts on Disc One. Next, the four ‘Trance’ pieces are recordings of Tony Conrad, John Cale and Angus MacLise playing together in 1965, so they’re probably the closest we’ll ever get to an approximation of the unreleased Theatre of Eternal Music tapes. They begin with some furied bow-scraping/drumming, then move into a gorgeous repetitive figure, kind of like hearing a shorter version of Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of The Titanic played at the bottom of the ocean interrupted with pinging sonar. The ‘Two Speed Trance’ and ‘Four Speed Trance’ sections are a little more sparse in some ways, but no less enchanting. At a point during the former, MacLise’s rapid-fire drumming is so swift that it takes on an electronic quality then Conrad and Cale come in on guitar and violin, and the whole thing goes off in a sorta rockin’ direction (not a bad thing). The latter does it double-speed, kinda crazy like. ‘Shortwave Piece’ and ‘Electronic Mix for “Expanded Cinema”‘ are probably my favorite things on the entire set, maybe, well at least I think that right now as they play and envelop my room with punctured crystalline shards and midrange squeals and deep sine waves from the blackest coldest parts of space (and all that other good stuff that early electronic music can sound like). ‘Organ & Drum,’ ‘Universal Solar Calendar,’ and ‘Tambura Drone + Sine Wave Generator’ finish the disc with a little bit more flavor of the earlier swami-of-the-L.E.S. vibe that I’ve come to love.

Overall, the two discs are of exceptional quality considering the source material. The murkiness at times actually adds to the feeling that you’re hearing primordial music, something not nearly as ephemeral as most of what passes for ‘Western’ culture (esp. of the ‘pop’ variety). It may take the ‘average’ listener a lot of patience to get through all of this, but for the MacLise fanatic it’s a sure thing.

Sub-Rosa: http://www.subrosa.net/
Angus MacLise discography: http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/angusmaclise/angusmaclise.html
Angus MacLise chronology: http://melafoundation.org/am01.htm
A really good piece on Angus MacLise from Blastitude: http://www.blastitude.com/13/ETERNITY/angus_maclise.htm

Download The Cloud Doctrine here.

Insect Factory, Air Traffic Control Sleep (Insect Fields) CD

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Insect Factory

Insect Factory is the solo guitar drone project of one Jeffrey Barsky of Silver Spring, Maryland. Now, as you could probably guess, the words “solo guitar drone project” sometimes conjure up some startlingly bad mental images. However, on the new release Air Traffic Control Sleep, Insect Factory delivers the sort of drone that is, y’know, actually engaging! Like, not only did I not get bored listening to it, I actually liked it! There’s something in Insect Factory’s sound that reminds me of what I’ll call (for lack of a better term) post-Niblock electronic drone (apologies to Mr. Phill Niblock as he is certainly still alive and well and making great music), wherein rock guitars were used to make pretty heavy non-rock music. The first (and foremost) practitioner of this style who comes to mind is Rafael Toral, the Portuguese guitarist who began making heavy drone statements such as Wave Field in the mid-1990s (more on him in a post coming soon). Insect Factory continues pleasantly in Toral’s footsteps, using guitar to make music that sounds nothing like “guitar music.”

Funnily enough, the last track on the record, “Landing Back on the Shore [By Morning],” isn’t really drony at all, but since it’s the shortest, it’s what I’ve decided to upload. This song is unlike the other two on Air Traffic Control Sleep, but don’t let that deter you. You can buy Air Traffic Control Sleep direct from Insect Fields here (for cheap!).

Barsky is also a member of/contributor to D.C.’s excellent Kohoutek, who will be soon releasing a new CD entitled Expansive Headache on Music Fellowship shortly. In the meantime, here is their self-titled two-song CDr from 2005, unfortunately Barsky-less, but still worth your time (disclaimer: I booked a Kohoutek/Mouthus show in the fall of 2005). And if you happen to live in the Washington, D.C. area, you can catch another Barsky band Civilians on September 18th (with Eddy Current Suppression Ring), Insect Factory on September 20th (as part of the Sonic Circuits festival), and Kohoutek on September 28th (with Alasehir and Suishou No Fune), all at the Velvet Lounge.

In an unrelated note, I will be moving at the end of the month, so posts may become infrequent. I know all two of my readers will be upset, but that’s the way it goes.

More Reviews in the Latest Still Singles Column

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The following reviews appeared in the Volume 3, Number 7 edition of Doug Mosurak’s Still Single column at Dusted Magazine that ran today:

Dog Faced Hermans
Mental Blocks for All Ages LP
(Mississippi Records)

Dog Faced Hermans were one of the best bands I’ve ever had the pleasure to see live. This amazing Scottish-via-the-Netherlands four-piece just absolutely fucking destroyed on stage with an intensity and energy that even their sister band the Ex sometimes can’t manage. The key to understanding what sets them apart from other ostensibly good post-Crass UK punk bands is the direct connection that singer Marion Coutts’ vocals, lyrics and presence made with earlier 20th century developments in radical art and politics. Mental Blocks for All Ages, originally released on Project A-Bomb in 1991, is the moment when the Hermans really came into their own, showing an ability to absorb all kinds of fantastic non-punk sounds (Indian, Kurdish, Vietnamese, free jazz) while still retaining the steadfast adrenaline rush-sound fueled mainly by Andy’s guitar-playing-and-dismantling and Wilf’s ridiculously ferocious drumming. So while it’s easy lament the band’s passing (Marion continued her art in the UK), it is fantastic that those not privileged to see the Hermans can at least still enjoy their recordings. Key tracks include “Suppressa” (with a fantastic overdubbed horn break), the mellow “Astronaut,” “Ballad About Bhopal,” and “It’s Time” (based on a Charlie Haden tune). So when can we expect a vinyl box-set of their discography and one or two live shows? (no address provided)


Egypt Is The Magick #
The Valentine Process LP
(Mad Monk)

Charlie Manson once said “No sense makes sense,” and that’s all fine and dandy, but every once in a while a little clarity goes a long way. But if you’re looking for clarity, or at least want to hear it; you won’t get it from Egypt Is The Magick #, a long-running mystery project with perhaps some No Neck Blues Band ties. Nope, on The Valentine Process you get lots of murk, maybe even a little esoteric mysticism, and a lot of nonsense. Now, nonsense ain’t necessarily bad, sometimes it’s even good, but in the way it manifests on The Valentine Process, it’s mostly just kinda boring and pointless. I hate to bag on a band for doing things their own way, and Egypt Is The Magick # is certainly unique, but ultimately the music just doesn’t gel in an interesting way for me. There’s a lot of moaning, some scraping and bowing, and on the second side an extended electro-ish sequence reminiscent of what the far-more-interesting Excepter does, but yeah, I just can’t get into this. Sorry, mystic weirdos. On the other hand, this record does look good, so at least they got that part right. (www.woodenwand.net/madmonk)

Emil Beaulieau
Moonlight on Vermont LP
(Ecstatic Peace!)

Ah, the myriad guises of one RRRon Lessard. Among the pranks and put-ons, fun times and harsh noise, one thing has remained constant: RRRon’s propensity to just do whatever he damn well pleases, and to do it damn well. The Beaulieau nom-de-plume (swiped from a former conservative mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire) has been with us for a while and much like the permanence of the magic marker scrawl when I saw it written in a bathroom in a gas station in rural Oregon in 2003, who knows how much longer it will last? Will RRRon get bored and move on to something else, hanging up the sweater vest and turntables for some other means of expression? I don’t know, but I’m glad that for the moment we’ve got Moonlight on Vermont to listen to. While it’s taken some years for it to, uh, come to light, Moonlight delivers some harsh ’00s realities that any longtime listener will enjoy. The noise novices out there might enjoy it, too, especially the slightly-more-rock overtures of the second side. As for me, this disc goes quite nicely with the incessant pounding, drilling and sawing of the workmen converting the first floor of my building into what will soon be some new bouge’s apartment. What noise will exist when the housing and new construction boom ends? Ask Ben Bernanke. In an edition of 300, each with a unique cover handmade by the artist. (http://www.ecstaticpeace.com)

GHQ
Crystal Healing LP
(Threelobed)

This long-running unit comprised of heavy-hitters Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, Hototogisu, Un, Zaimph), Pete Nolan (Magick Markers, Bark Haze, Flux Spectre) and Steve Gunn serves up some tasty extended drone action on Crystal Healing, from the Bardo-affiliated Three-Lobed Recordings label. Those familiar with their work in other bands and configurations won’t really find much out of the ordinary here, as the emphasis is on lots of meditative fuzz. However, occasionally the fuzz is accompanied and complemented by acoustic guitar – and on the second side by a plaintive male groan – both injecting a subtle yet affecting melodicism that helps make Crystal Healing sound more interesting than your average drone fest, making it clear that it’s played by above-average droners. Perhaps the only complaint is that there isn’t enough; the drawback of the LP format is that it just isn’t long enough for me to get really immersed in the music. Like a nice warm bath on a late fall day, the GHQ performances I’ve seen had a tendency to make a long amount of time seem like it really had just been standing still, regardless of (or perhaps in spite of) the added pleasures of imbibitions and inhalations. Maybe a five-hour long DVD with some Marian Zazeela-style light installation visuals should be in order. Or maybe not, as we wouldn’t want La Monte Young to sue anybody. Either way, Crystal Healing provides a nice, if only temporary, fix. Nice gatefold sleeve, edition of 855. (http://www.threelobed.com/tlr)

…and there’s a couple more, but I don’t feel like posting the rest, so I guess you’ll just have to read the rest of the column. Which you should anyway, as it contains some good writin’ by Mr. Mosurak and special guest Matt Stern. Will I contribute more often to Dusted? Well, I have no idea, so for now, let’s just enjoy the moment.

Fear Falls Burning, I’m One of Those Monsters Numb with Grace (Equation) LP

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The following review appeared in the latest edition of Doug Mosurak’s Still Single column at Dusted Magazine:

Before I even sliced open the shrink-wrap with my thumbnail, the name of this one-man-electrical-line6-jam-band and its nausea-inducing title had me wincing. Like then I saw that the dude is Belgian and all, and no offense to our friends in Brussels, but it ain’t exactly a hotbed of exciting new sounds – even when the inevitable comparison to France is made (boy do Belgians hate being compared to the French!). And who knew the Belgians were so emo? Seriously the band name and titles had me expecting some whack job eyeliner five-piece from Passaic (a place more boring than Brussels, as far as I can tell) playing gear they bought at Guitar Center with mom’s credit card. What I got instead is, well, line6 and guitar rock not far afield from what everyone and their older not-into-emo brother’s been doing since they read about Sunn0))) in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Aside from the kinda-nice album cover (a close-up photo of a guitar’s bridge), there’s really nothing here to distinguish this from about a million similar dudes. Gatefold sleeve, on really pukey-looking colored vinyl.

Buy it from Equation Records, if you like.

The next installment will include some more reviews by me, on records by Dog Faced Hermans, D. Charles Speer and more. That column should run in a couple weeks from now. Check out the rest of this week’s columns for great records, with reviews by Doug, Mike Crumsho and Matt Stern

Galbraith/Neilson/Youngs, Belsayer Time LP (Time-Lag)

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Belsayer Time

This review also appeared in Swingset #8, yadda yadda, etc. etc.

“Idumea,” the first in this collection of haunting songs by Alastair Galbraith, Alex Neilson and Richard Youngs, begins with a steady drone and [Youngs’] Robert Wyatt-esque vocals singing an echo-y melody reminiscent of “House of the Rising Sun.” The trio’s new album, Belsayer Time, is their first together, and will not seem alien to fans of their individual and [other] group works. These three musicians are known best as the cream of the crop of their respective New Zealand and Scotland scenes: Alastair Galbraith has long been a member of A Handful of Dust with the Dead C.‘s guitarist/crank Bruce Russell. Neilson and Youngs were the musicians chosen to accompany Jandek at his first-ever live performance in Glasgow, and both have a long history of making excellent music. (Youngs’ first solo album,Advent, is a favorite in this house).

Together, the three mesh excellently on this album, simultaneously sounding fresh, yet familiar. The first side of Belsayer Time is perfect for a fall evening spent in the company of warm narcotics, while the second [side] begins with a free jam appropriate for all seasons and gets more abstract as the side progresses. Highly recommended for losers who want to drop a lot of money (like me).

Ltd. edition of 900, available from Time-Lag.

Wzt Hearts, Heat Chief (Hoss/Hit Dat) LP/CD

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This review appears in Swingset #8 which is laying around at your local music retailer right now, probably.

Wzt Hearts (pronounced “wet hearts”) are an electro-acoustic four piece from Baltimore who traffic in textures and sounds somewhere between the best parts of the Mego laptop scene of the late 1990s and today’s post-post-hardcore noise purveyors such as Black Dice or Wolf Eyes. They differ from the latter two by insisting on mainly electronic noise with little intrusion from acoustic instruments — with the exception of a furiously pounded drum kit and some so-processed-you-can’t-recognize-they’re-human vocals.

Heat Chief, Wzt Hearts’ fantastic debut, begins with a frenzied sixteen-minute assault that lays the groundwork for the rest of the album: electronics that shift from harsh and beautiful over an anchor of free drumming. In the second piece, the frenzy melts into serene squites processed to sound both huge and strangely intimate, only to end abruptly at the end of the side. The second side of the album (beginning with track three if you’re listening on CD) takes an entirely different tack from the first: it builds on abstractions given room to breathe into a slow burn, then finishes as the third piece, a roaring crescendo of electronics and drums, transitions into a short and sweet, nearly four-minute movement of voice and electronics.

Update: Wzt Hearts have finished their second album, entitled Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones, and will be releasing it on Carpark and Hoss (on CD and LP, respectively) this September.