Tag Archives: Black Dice

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.

That’s the Bag I’m In

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I’ve been on a major Fred Neil kick lately. Should make sense to anyone who knows me that I’d be into Mr. Neil, but I’ve only recently (i.e. within the past year) really made a point of looking for his music. First I found a vinyl copy of The Other Side of This Life in Milwaukee last year, which pleased me greatly. This disc was recorded live in Woodstock, New York, and features nice acoustic run-throughs of most of Neil’s best known songs (“The Dolphins,” “Everybody’s Talkin’,” “That’s the Bag I’m In,” etc.). Vince Martin, one of Neil’s long-time collaborators and a great songwriter/performer in his own right (saw him last Fall with Black Dice, oddly enough), guests, as does the late Gram Parsons.

The other day, after listening to this and most of the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack (which features Harry Nilsson’s more famous take on “Everybody’s Talkin'”), I decided I needed more Neil in my life. So I was at Mondo Kim’s, and they basically had two choices: Bleecker & MacDougal and a two-disc set called The Many Sides of Fred Neil (which includes the entirety of The Other Side of This Life on one of the discs). Remembering that my friend Josh said something once about not being so into the former, I opted for the two-disc set even though I already had some of the tunes.

So, it turns out the purchase was an excellent choice. Disc One has the entirety of the self-titled album on Capitol, which is pretty difficult to find for a good price, as well as Sessions. The self-titled starts with “The Dolphins,” which is one of my all-time favorite songs by anybody, much less a favorite by Neil. It’s kind of an amazing feat in that it manages to speak about the weariness of the world on both a macro and micro level. That is, the voice of the song goes from the extra-personal to the personal and back, shifting many times. And there’s something about this voice that seems both experienced/wary and yet longing for innocence. And hey, who doesn’t like dolphins? Eeeep!

I don’t want to get “too heavy” in all this, or over-analyze or whatever, but damn Fred Neil’s good to listen to. Anytime works, but when the chips are down and you’re feeling low, Fred’s baritone seems to just really hit you in this sweet spot. At least, that’s what it does for me.