Dance

Spring training started in late February. So, this blog needs to get back in shape. Time for me to get back to Derek Jeter mode instead of an Andruw Jones slump.

Time to explore the mysterious Taboo—not the disgusting porn company but a shadowy crew out of the trdw/d-Asbestos on Ice collective. The other bands in this Maine-based crew exhibit this amazing ability to convert the raw sound of jam sessions into something tangible without the aimless meandering of today’s hippie road warriors.

I enjoy how the collective thinks. These guys act like hyperactive gifted children, somehow synthesizing all these seemingly polarized ideas into grainy but intoxicating homemade gin. Trdw/d albums showcase traits unique to each project and enough overlapping aesthetics to create a niche for the label. The majority of the records find the artists tooling around with drums, guitar and glue, seeing exactly how far they can fracture a rhythm or slow down the pace until the breakdown forces them to completely shed their rhythmic skin and collapse into a pile of muscles and blood.

It’s difficult to wrap a blanket around the trdw/d sound and describe it as one body. Multiple faces of a single act appear within one release. These guys jump from high to low culture without sacrificing any intrigue. The change of pace on a record on a dime, sawing the bottom from a tune and tossing industrial clatter, a decimated pop culture sample or another sonic device onto wax to fill in the gap in the grooves. The strangers from Belfast recently sent me a tape wherein Impractical Cockpit torches “White Light/White Heat,” soaking the chugging riff found at the tail end of the song in grime and giving the lyrics the circular quality and rough feel of a scratched LP. This take on the Velvet’s tune shows why the trdw/d dudes excel at their craft. Instead of worshiping and mimicking sacred cows, they dissect the creatures, take a look inside, decide which parts they enjoy and weld them into an unrecognizable creature.

One of these monsters sloughed onto my speakers from a primordial pit last year using an LP as its vehicle. Taboo, a hairy, wide-eyed group of nomads, cooks up a slow and slurry batch of homemade Oxycontin on Their Satanic Majesty’s Third and Final Request. Trudging through junk rock rubble like classic period Bunny Brains, Taboo splurge out rumbling, frayed, dirty psychedelic guitar crud backed by caveman rhythms. When they truly hone in on their target, the band sounds like a disjointed DNA, as withering guitar shrieks and free jazz drumming circle around echoing gruff vocals.

Like the inverse of the droll, pedestrian experimentation birthed from the anus Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, fluidity seems like an afterthought on the Their Satanic Majesty’s Third and Final Request. The album welcomes the listener into the weirdness with a doorbell ring, a knock and a dog bark. Instrumental passages brainstorm how to best recreate the sounds of monkeys floating in space while illustrating the interstellar scenery. Degenerate sound experiments fill the gaps between logical thoughts. At one point, the records seems to end and a lock groove kicks in. A half-minute later, the record’s grooves appear to be filtered through a dust-chocked needle. Oddly, these potentially pretentious moments fail to induce a headache. Instead, they provide a refreshing counterpart to the standard experimentation.

It's alive

Notes:

More on trdw/d coming in future posts. Grab some of their releases here.

Been trying to write about the two awesome new Country Teasers-related projects but the words just fail to manifest themselves in a new way. Check those records out and, until next time, I’ll keep plugging away.

Finally, my hatred for the Red Sox paid off. Check March 1 post on the super cool Yankee blog, No Maas

Also, no excuse for the lack of updates but this took me a while.