Garsh

This reviewing thing sometimes takes an eternity. I enjoy listening to albums multiple times before I even start taking notes. If possible, I listen to an album in different contexts and during different mental states. I like knowing every curve and contour in a record. This allots me little time each week to listen to each release. I feel if I do not grant this type of attention to a release, I run the risk of promoting something that will not stand the test of time.

In addition, I hate reading reviews where it seems like the critic listened to the album once or twice. I find it lazy and dangerous. Although Byron Coley only listens to albums once, he is the exception that proves the rule. As one of the first writers to document the sprawling underground, Coley wrote the history of underground music. He could do whatever the fuck he wants. Plus, the man retains a natural power of reduction. One look at the inside of the Yod store provides a glimpse at the avant-garde record store version of the library of Babel wherein Coley acts as Melvil Dewey. He classifies an album flawlessly, stating why and how it fits into the grand scheme of music. Pretty much no one else I've read succeeds in effectively using Coley's method without plugging sub par art.

Promoting sub-par art encourages others to take a similar musical path, as some artists lack the inclination to naturally progress to a sound and they, instead, embrace ill-advised trends. Pretty soon, fly-by-night tape labels fill message boards and the current wave of experimental music gains a reputation as scatter shot and lacking guidance. Oh wait, that already happened. Well, maybe the critic could act as a tourniquet, scabbing this prolific bleeding by saying, "Hey buddy, ten releases in one month is enough. Give your fans a chance to breathe. Take next month to edit together the best parts of your jam sessions."

Music is an commerce as well as an art form. People spend their hard-earned dough on the latest release and the least we can do as critics is separate the wheat from the turds. Most persons who purchase underground albums lack the spending power of Thurston Moore and Byron Coley. When critics suggest something, we should make damn sure our audience will appreciate the art work at hand.

In other news, still trying to wrap my mind around the marvelous sounds on this Son of Earth record. The boys constructed a tight, budding head swarmer deserving of every ounce of my attention. May take a few more weeks, it makes this weeks list. Without further ado, here's some picks:

XnobbqX Sunshine of Your Love (Siltbreeze, 2007): Siltbreeze continues its hot streak with a reissue of these Australian neanderthals 2006 cassette release. Whereas XO4 exploit a guitar's alternate possibilities by scraping and manipulating it a la Cage's Prepared Piano, Matt Earle creates primal death dirges with the same exploratory mindset. At first, the band sounds primitive like high school punks with no prior experience on their instruments. They soon develop a groove akin to a flopping fish out of water. Matt Earle utilizes the guitar as a percussion instrument, pounding its strings as Nick Dan smacks a riff out of his skins. A definite Harry Pussy gene threads through the jams, as Earle draws amputated Beefheart skronk from his axe. The recording feels bleak and claustrophobic like an early Harry Pussy single and Earle sounds like Bill Orcutt as an Australian caveman.

Black Vatican "Zed Omega" (Night People, 2007): Once in a while, a band drops a slab of plastic heaven into my tape deck and the sound generating from the speakers levitates my mood. Black Vatican struck a chord deep inside my psyche a few chimes into their amazing cassette. The Iowa based two-piece features Owen Gardner and Andy Roche uncredited instrumentally and cranking out a big budget concepts on cut-rate equipment. Zed Omega mixes multiple schools of post-punk with a wistful experimental sense to birth a bohemuth of a sound. The boys obviously studied their Pere Ubu, as Dave Thomas' fluxus voice illustrations and angular, dub-inspired guitar leak into their mojo. But their love seems embedded in the band's blood, as it only becomes apparent with multiple close listens. For the most part, the band scrapes out their own path in the well-treaded wilderness.

The tape's first side exhibits the band in the raw, pasting together primal chunks of garage-pop via experimentation. "Dream Jogger" and "Hey Do It" showcase ragged rave-up guitar lines and dub breakdowns with faux-British accents. Soulful Thomas-inspired vocals power "Now You've Been Told," an expansion of the New Picnic Time sound with pop accents. The song centers around a chorus of "Maybe you're the last living thing" with angelic "oh's" and a tribal drum breakdown before bottoming out with the beautiful voice guiding us through the void then reconvening. A luminous guitar line ends the side, underlining the band's ability to manipulate emotion through instrumentation then shattering into a Dadaist vocal exercise.


Side B rolls with a little more poppy psych-punch, as the experimentation melts into noticeably ambient textures and the boys bear their hearts to the girlies on the other ends of the headphones. Even the shark-toothed "Song of Mice Elf" inserts drum-and-bass samples into an icy post-industrial guitar scrapings. "Touch Teacher" spikes the yelping protest dub with bubbly computer scapes a la mid-period Cabaret Voltaire. "I Don't Want to Fight (I Just Want to Lie in the Grass and Be Cool)" sways like mid-tempo Stax soul with falsetto vocals mellowing the mood. The gentle "Magic Is..." sums up the tape with a lulling guitar picking and spoken-sung verses with a roving beat. The elements comprising the tune are simple: a drum machine, guitar line, vocals and space. The way the band arranges the elements evokes a magical feeling.


Various Artists Getting Rid of the Glue (Pendu Sound Recordings,2006): Skipping over this slab took little effort. Tossing it off as just another New Weird Noise relic, I never sought it out. Bands like Spin-17 and Dirty Churches somehow never gained my attention. While Daniel Carter and Excepter produce some great glints of inspiration, the said artists never provided enough consistency for me to start following them. Man, I kicked my own ass after hearing this compilation. Though it lags a bit on the second side, the first side marks one of the most seamless compilation track sequences ever committed to wax. The Prog-and-Krautrock-accented experiments swim through vast stylistic oceans but always seem to connect to the next track.

Dirty Churches begin things with a mystic swirl of bedroom psych. From the Spin-17 track on, the LP takes a turn for the unexpected. Spin 17 flirt with the wordless vocal pyrotechnics of Yoko Ono with multi-tracked little voices forming into a scraping noise meltdown. KP soundtrack Hawkwind's spaceship lift-off with electronic flittering and warped, condensed kaleidoscopic sound on "Birds Fucking Outside my Window," ending with some amazingly claustrophobic bangs and blips. With a soft-spot for Klaus Schulze, Big A Little A (dig the Crass reference) float interstellar sound orbs into a naturally percussion universe, forcing them to coexist as the melody turns tribal. All these grooves lead into Fessenden's "Pt. II/III," a swirling, crescendoing ambient texture that eventually engulfs the room. The tune takes a slithering black electronic groove, adds light, tapping percussion and utilizes negative space in its unsettling minimal soundscape. Side two opens with a similar death star groove from Eager Meek but chops the flow with a jazzadelic sound bomb from Daniel Carter and co. Things get muddy from there as Maria Chavez goes intergalactic and minimal and Talibam! goes hog wild for meltdown sonics. Excepter lends a stellar tropical dance tune to end the disc, blending shattered new wave and the icy atmospheres of early British industrial bands aligned with post-punk. Awwweeessssooommeee

Tangerine Dream "Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares" from Phaedra: Tangerine Dream stole a lot of air time on Radio Kobak recently, due to the lush, transcendent moods they educe. On "Mysterious Strands..." the band presents a crescendo of ebbing and flowing synths, all with the corroded quality I dig in recorded music. The tune conjures a painter pack of moods, often melding sad chords into triumphant synth. I can see why these guys found their niche in soundtrack music, as the composition brings to mind the end of a movie wherein something tragic happened and everyone looks broken but resilient. As the song progresses, the synth quality diminishes and the song changes to a prayer of sorts. Quickly shuttering back to its crashing wave motif, the band adds small, robotic impressions of animals to the base of the song. An icy wind gust sweeps over the synth pattern to end the son, leaving exotic electronic textures and an unsettling feeling that nothing beautiful lasts forever.

Scott Foust "Jungle Fever" (Swill Radio, 2007): When Scott Foust sent me an early version of this composition, it reminded me of a checker board pattern in a garden with plants protruding through its empty squares. The juxtaposition of the natural and man-made propels the singular movement, as a simple synth pattern mingles with field recordings. While the old version meandered for forty plus minutes, the new version adds a logical beginning and end, strengthening Foust's vision. The tune commences with a glistening corroded synth line and subway chatter then melts into a narrow, repeating percussive synth tone and field recordings. The synth line at once evokes the sound of a printing press, a steam engine and a snippet of a be-bop drum beat. Though it travels through the tune like a train, a definitive musical quality threads through it, rendering it drum-like. As the singular synth pattern at the forefront progresses, it swallows thought and becomes the room's centerpiece and minuscule elements of the melody emerge. Bird chirps populate the natural sounds emerging from the void, though the low-end buzzing of a truck revs deep in the background. Every so often, a smooth ringing sound accentuates the tapping pulse. Eventually, that ringing comes to the forefront, bringing the listener back to the subway chatter and bookending the magnificent piece.

Though Foust produces magnificent, engrossing art, his Swill Radio struggles to keep up with its release schedule due to the unsupportive public. This piece and Idea Fire Company's masterwork Island of Taste may never see proper release. Help him out by skipping this week's limited edition Family Underground release for a real, lasting masterpiece at the Swill shop. Bone up on your IFCO or Shadow Ring, as both units produce music you'll revisit quite often. On a selfish note, I'd like to see Island of Taste receive proper vinyl release.



Der Dritte Schritt/Der Pilz split LP (Trummer Products): This LP collects two German industrial artifacts from the early-80s. The artists contained within sound like they studied their Los Angeles Free Music Society and Nurse with Wound, as schizophrenic sampling breeds with dissonant electronics to birth an enthralling trip into a diseased mind. Der Pilz's thousand-thoughts-a-minute side showcases a penchant for fuzzy keyboard blurs, giggling cartoon voices and bleak junkyard electronic voids. Der Dritte Schritt chase a more tuneful sound, rubbing out dark dance music with a super-distorted guitar, sampler and synth. Each tune on the side chases a different demon; from reved-up psych punk to minimal stalker synth to oddball noisy space funk. The album foreshadows the generations of basement experimenters to come, almost none of which would reach this apex.

Axolotl "Plane of Partials" c50 (Fuck-It Tapes, 2007): Karl Bauer must breathe great ideas. Sure, he produced some sub-par compositions but even those works provide some moments of glory. On his new communication with alternate life forms, he creates blink-and-it'll-fly-by-you solar system illustrations, journeying from ambient to harsh. When he creates warm drones with thick smudges of fluctuating synth patterns, he grips the listener's attention and drops them into a series of vignettes about our relationship with the universe. Bauer slides caresses a plateau out of his violin while psychedelic blips descend from the cosmos and circulate the string parts. The tune soon crumbles into a shackle rhythm in a dank industrial basement with howls soon dragging the melody into a sparse vocoder spiritual. A low-end buzzing sound grants Bauer an apt platform for a blissful space melody wherein blinking synth aliens speak with a perceptive passer-by. Striking chime rings, melted cricket chirps and slow church organ mark a rebirth ceremony and, like much of Bauer's music, work to help the listener brace the unknown. Word.


If anyone would like to send releases, please get in touch with me at kobak77[at]yahoo[dot]com I love hearing from folks and the music you send keeps this thing going.

Soon (hopefully): Full reviews of awesome new Little Claw and Son of Earth albums. Look out for another collection of recommendations coming right soon. Gotta make up for lost time. Love you- S.