Pain Teens -- PAIN TEENS [Charnel Music]

FINALLY. The reissue. And it's about fuggin' TIME. After years of waffling, dickering, and vacillating (is it coming out on Trance? Charnel? someone else? who knows?), Charnel has brought out the CD version of the band's first album on the tenth anniversary of the album's original release. And a fine reissue it is... although there are a few surprises. O my yes.

First: The track sequence has been mildly altered. "The Pour Doubt Blood" has gone bye-bye (most likely because there's an almost identical version, "The Poured Out Blood," on STIMULATION FESTIVAL already) and in its place are four bonus tracks. One, "Tapes," is from one of the earliest cassette releases (MANMADE DISASTERS); the origin of the other three, though, is pretty damn mysterious. I have nearly everything PT ever put out (cassette or otherwise) and i've never heard the other three tracks. Are they old? New? Live? From the one cassette i don't have? I do not know....

The second big surprise is the SOUND. For the benefit of those who have never heard the original LP release, two words should reveal all: tar pit. The material for this album originally came from four-track cassettes, and between the lo-fi tendencies inherent to four-tracks and the patented PT rumbling-through-the-mud-in-search-of-decaying-Sleestaks low-end throb, the LP was pretty thick-sounding. Brilliant, but... mudlike. No longer so! For the reissue, everything was digitally remastered to more exacting standards and the results are like night and day. On tracks like "Inside Me," "The Shoemaker," and "A Continuing Nightmare," entire guitars and other instruments magically rise from the sonic mung, suddenly audible for the first time. The change is dramatic enough to almost make this a new album in its own right.

The album itself remains, in many ways, the ultimate PT album -- it just bursts with creepy dirges about serial killers, grotesque sexual fetishes, mutilation, and other eerie stuff. Two tracks -- "The Shoemaker" and "A Continuing Nightmare" -- are nothing more than taped monologues from a serial killer (the former) and a tabloid program recounting a woman's ordeal at the hands of a crazed kidnapper (the latter), both backed by a swamp voodoo rhythm section, crazed guitar bleats, and all kinds of mutant noises clattering away in the background. Others like "Brown Jenkin," "Symptoms," and "World of Destruction" are tremendously loop-driven (harbingers of what would later become the core of the Walking Timebombs sound). Everything else on the album falls somewhere between the two extremes; none of it even remotely resembles a standard "rock" album, although several of the tracks actually sound like (tremendously devolved) rock songs. Well, sort of.

As for the bonus tracks -- i personally would have taken "Happy Razors" over "Tapes," but it is very indicative of their obsession with short loops and quirky sounds at the time. "Innsmouth" is another sludgy dronefest enlivened by weird bell-like guitars and wailing, while "The Freezingwind" sounds like the same basic idea sped up several times and run through a series of pitchshifters, resulting in a high-pitched wailing drone like wind through the glaciers. Unspeakably cool. The last listed track, "Somnambuist," is something on the order of ambient middle-eastern slo-mo with lots of tarpit bass grunt happening in the background, and wouldn't have sounded too out of place on the Walking Timebombs/Tribes of Neurot collaboration, actually. And then there's the puzzling unlisted mystery track at the end... i have my ideas about that, but any way you slice it, it's damn weird....

This remains the Pain Teens' most experimental, least commercial album; it's also one of their most solid, particularly now with the addition of the bonus tracks. It should be of extreme interest both to Pain Teens fans who are unaware of their dark experimental origins and to those who can't get enough of the Walking Timebombs, whose recent releases are awfully reminiscent of this album's overall feel. Now if someone would compile the best of the rest of the cassette tracks and release them on CD all would be right with the world (and yes, that's a hint).

Pain Teens: BORN IN BLOOD/CASE HISTORIES [Trance Syndicate]

Ooooo... not for the squeamish, this one. A compilation of two albums originally released on the Pain Teens' own label Anomie, this is 77-odd minutes of a scary aural nightmare. If disturbed, extreme emotional responses are what you seek, then this is the place to be; I somehow rather doubt that anything here is ever going to appear on a K-Tel compilation.

Sonic experimentation is the name of the game here, at least as far as the music goes. "The Way Love Used To Be" and "Desu Evol Yaw" share the same vaguely Arabic-sounding riff, which could have been played on a toy piano before guitarist/ noisemaker Scott Ayres tweaked it considerably, but it's played backwards on the first song and forwards (with additional instrumentation) on the second. "Shotguns" features lots of looped sound bites and strange percussion, and "Secret is Sickness" is similar but more restrained. And I'd absolutely swear that the main riff in "Lady of Flame" is actually the processed sound of a windshield wiper. Other tracks, especially the ones from CASE HISTORIES, are often even weirder, verging into the territory of the indescribable.

When they're not tinkering with gadgets, they swing in a fashion (in a psycho-swamp blues sort of way) on songs like the apocalyptic "Lady of Flame" and "My Desire." Others, like "Preppy Killer," hit deeper and harder, sort of like slow death-metal with considerably more intelligence.

And some -- particularly "She Shook Me," apparently about the sexuality of serial murder -- are just plain creepy. One of the most disturbing things about the Pain Teens is the unique brand of cognitive dissonance of their subject matter and the context in which it's delivered; it's weird (and kind of scary) to hear a woman singing lines like "dark hair flowing down in your eyes/ as you twist beneath my thighs" and "there is nothing you can compare/ to the pleasures of the flesh .../ i'll drag you by the hair / break your back...." In fact, cruelty abounds on the album, particularly on the dark and abrasive "Bannoy," where Bliss recounts the story of a boy locked in a box over a grinding industrial rhythm, with lyrics like "... you want something to eat?/ why don't you eat some dog food?/ you don't deserve real food/ you're just like an animal/ you're sister's not like you/ you're a filthy stinking pig." That's probably a lot closer to the mind of a sociopath than most of us would care to get, and to hear it delivered here will give most people a genuine case of the willies.

In sum: one of the weirdest, creepiest cases of industrial Southern gothic you'll ever find. And the video for "The Basement" is pretty gruesome in its own right....

Pain Teens -- BEAST OF DREAMS [Trance Syndicate]

At LAST -- the Pain Teens RETURN! Call out the calvary! Start up the ticker-tape parade and make sure it heads through the heart of Dealy Plaza! The Pain Teens are BACK! (Even if it is only briefly, seeing as how they've apparently broken up....)

A lot of people are going to see this as a big departure for them, but it really isn't -- although this is largely devoid of the wall-of-noise approach they used to favor, and leans heavily toward the cocktail-jazz vocals and stylings of such earlier tunes as "Living Hell" and various covers from their self-released tapes, the drums are still positively oceanic in their outright heaviness, and there's plenty of weird stuff going on. It's still definitely the Pain Teens, all right, but Bliss has never sounded better as a singer (which might explain why her vocals are mixed upfront for the first time) and the production, always a problem for them, is crystal clear (thanks to more tracks and better equipment). On top of that, this is probably their strongest collection of songs since BORN IN BLOOD, which all adds up to the definitive Pain Teens album.

The first three tracks -- "Swimming," "Manouche," and "Coral Kiss" -- all bring their flirtation with Arabic guitar stylings to the forefront in a big way, and all for the better. "Manouche" in particular is stunning, with Bliss' vocals riding over waves of pure sound and a truly thunderous set of drums, and the eerie "Coral Kiss" ends with one of the most amazing displays of studio craftiness i've ever heard: as a loop of Bliss chanting "Does it?" cycles over and over at the end, with each channel out of sync, the loops slowly but surely edge back into perfect time until they go out in unison. The power-mad "Accusing Eyes" is a momentary throwback to the earlier days when they were recognizably a punk band (although a swampy- sounding one), but "Swamp" quickly returns to the gurgling wall-of-sound that dominates this album. The slow, brooding "Embers and Ashes" would be positively dreamy if it weren't for the gloomy lyrics (about lost love or death or both? hard to tell, just they want it, i'm sure), while "Voluptus" is a churning rollercoaster of sound with some of Scott's best guitar playing yet. More dreaminess (hardly a word one normally associates with this band, to be sure) abounds in the tinkly cover of "Moonray," "The Sweet Sickness," and "Invitation"; on these three they sound like they've traveled back in time to the late sixties and into the realm of the piano- soundtrack, which is kind of interesting. In the midst of all this radical reinterpretation of what they're about, only "Frigid Idol" and "Skids" relate to their earlier sound. Final result: an album that crushes from start to finish. Their best yet. There aren't enough superlatives in the dictionary to adequately describe its brilliance. Obtain it or be WEAK....

In which investigative journalist Greg Palast lays out in great detail why George Bush Jr. and his cronies are miserable human beings. Some highlights: Documented links between members of the Bush administration and the money men behind Al-Quaeda; How the former U.S.-installed mayor of Baghdad, Barbie Bodine, blocked an investigation into links between the Saudi Royal Family and the WTC attacks while U.S. ambassatrix to Saudi Arabia; why George W. Bush is a "draft dodging chickenshit coward"; the real winners of the "War on Terror": Bechtel, Haliburton, Lockheed-Martin, and the Carlyle Group; Bush Sr., former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Barrick Gold, and what a mining corporation can do with a "used" president, Barrick's involvement in human rights abuses in Tanzania, and why Tundu Lissu needs your help; Osama Bin Ladin, (former) friend of America; nuclear hijinx or how Pakistan got the bomb; the oil-contamination of American democracy; and ChoicePoint, data-mining, and their role 2000 U.S. election.

Unlike Michael Moore, who is not above a little innuendo, Palast is a fiend for documentation, he talks about his sources, and encourages his listeners to seek out the information for themselves. If Palast's reports had gained widespread media attention in the U.S. (he is currently based in the U.K and works for the BBC), the results of last week's election might have been a bit different. [N/A]

Panasonic -- OSASTO ep [Blast First!]

I think this is techno. Maybe. It's hard to say. It's certainly beat-heavy and tremendously repetitive, and these are good things. It's so repetitive, in fact, that some people may find it hideously annoying. I certainly recall being less than impressed when i first listened to the four tracks here. But the more i listen, the more i hear interesting things going on. It helps that they are greatly enamored of fuzzy-sounding... guitars? synths? electrogadgets? ... fuzzy-sounding SOMETHING, anyway. "Uranokemia" has an absolutely percolating beat that might be a severely tweaked snare or a really high bassline -- it's kind of hard to tell which -- surrounded by building layers of fuzz, static, and noise. Noise-techno! I knew its day would come! Ha! "Telako" has more noise and fuzz, but the beat is pounding instead, and the song as a whole is considerably more monochromatic. I suspect this track sounds best one of two ways -- either heard through headphones or live at a Concorde-level volume. I really like the cool beat in "Parturi," along with the regular bursts of static. There's plenty of other ugly noises happening in there, too -- all firmly anchored to the inflexible noise beat. Most mondo. "Murto," the last track, is loud, fast, repetitive to the point of being monotonous, and full of ugly electrosonics slithering all around just behind the wall-o-beat like a nest of pissed vipers. The next time your neighbor's playing his annoying rap/disco CDs too loud and making your bathroom quake, just slap this on, crank it up, and DRIVE OUT THE DEMONS....

A friend of mine recently told me of a show they did in Europe (in Finland or Sweden, i forget, my memory is like Swiss cheese) a month or so ago where they made such a godawful racket -- in their own charmingly irritating, repetitive way -- that half the audience apparently left. Heh. DEAD ANGEL approves. Sure wish i'd been able to see them in London with the Brood, though, when they performed Alvin Lucier's "Music From a Long Thin Wire." I'll bet that was unspeakably cool.

So anyway, you've probably figured out by now that i'll be buying the full album when it comes out any day now. Heartily recommended for noiseheads who also like to shake their frazzled booties (yah, i know, all three of them that exist).

I'm in luv with this already before even throwing it on the turntable (yes, it's a real live VINYL lp, thank you) due to the ass-whuppin' packaging -- insert and labels with line art worthy of an Organum record, blood-red transparent marble vinyl, a cover in lurid and oversaturated primary colors capable of causing traffic accidents... yes, SNSE does their thing right. As for Panicsville, their sound is indeed sometimes reminiscent of early Organum, especially in the drone department, but it's also more clearly aligned with skronk-rock (see "Forest Funeral" for evidence) in their choice of sounds. Lots of rhythm in their noise chatter, particularly on "Triangle, Umbrella and You," and a tendency toward bizarre creepiness as well. Some, like "Secretarial 7," are more subdued and focused more on the texture of sounds themselves, but remain just as unsettling. The second side of the album opens with the title track and a lot of grinding, crackling, high-pitched rhythmic screech, noise enslaved in the name of rhythm. Tracks like this one are where the relation to other SNSE acts like Mammal become a bit more obvious. This track and the one that follows it, "Radio Wizard," are the longest tracks, sprawling spaces where the screeching and crackling rhythms have time to veer off in different directions for longer periods, and where there's plenty of time and room to get out of hand on occasion. There's a technoish vibe to the keyboard sounds on "Radio Wizard," but one that's overcome on a regular basis by controlled ambient noise blasts and strategic bursts of glitch electronica. Best title: the final track, called "The Man WHo Hated Women and the Women Who Loved Him" (what that has to do with the sound of electronic barnyards, ambient avalanche noises, and glitch electronics is beyond me, though). A swell, swell adventure into the seamy noise forest of glitch electronica and other noisy sports. If nothing else, you should have it just to appreciate the eye-popping package.

At first I thought something was horribly wrong with the cd, as the first track played on and on in silence. Then I got smart and looked at the insert and discovered that was because "Convulsion Explosion" is actually a Quicktime film by Usama Alshaibi, not an audio track. Once that was cleared up, the rest of the plan quickly became obvious: Crafty attempts at destroying your mind and ears. This is loud stuff, originating from the fevered brain-soak of one Andy Ortmann, who piles on the disturbed electronics, violin, melodica, cymbal, clarinet, duck (on "Lent An Ear"), and Farfisa organ (on "Concentration Campaign"). But -- since man, even disturbed man, cannot live on brain-soak alone -- he has a few helping hands to stir the brew of sonic anarchy. Ben Capps contributes a droning hell-trumpet on "Strange Connection" (along with help from MV Carbon, who shows up to spew venom in the style of Lydia Lunch); on "Concentration Campaign," he's joined by Thymme Jones of Cheer-Accident on percussion, Kevin Drumm on guitar, and Weasel Walter (Hatewave, Flying Luttenbachers, more bands than you have fingers to count with) on bass; Jeremy Fisher shows up with additional efx-fu on "Define Pervert" and "Lend An Ear" (where John Coker shows up with even more electronics). The end result of all these guys fooling around with gadgets and stuff is a collection of perverted, frequently abrasive songs cleverly disguised as crunchy, textured layers of noise and efx. There's a serious drone quotient (although not in the blissed-out way that most people associate with drone) on songs like "Strange Connection" and "Werewolf Section" -- and then there's the jaunty march o' death they call "Concentration Campaign," an atonal rondo of repetitive movement overlaid with droning, dive-bombing power electronics that devolves into waves of slo-mo crashing. Not everything is crazed and out of control: "The Thing In The Cave" is a pretty happening slice of droning, shuddering, chittering low-end rumble-fu and what sounds like cavemen splashing around in the water. Then there's the drill-bit whine of "Define Pervert," where the whine is gradually augmented by more whining sounds, and they come and go, but it's not so loud, see? And it whines and it wanes and it whines and then it gets MUCH LOUDER as a whole bunch of stuff, including some crazed fool shouting about Ra knows what, starts happening at once. Then they start breaking shit. "Lent An Ear" isn't quite so violent, although it is most circular in its construction, like many of the other tracks. The final track, "The Valley of Eternal Chaos," is pretty much as the title suggests -- piles and piles of electronics, rhythms are set in motion, rhythms are destroyed, everything sounds like it's being buried in an avalanche of concrete and steel, Cadillacs being mulched, the earth opens up and the Hellnazis From The Earth's Core rise up and put out the sun with blowguns, etc., etc. Obnoxious to the core, but with far more cunning and strategic intelligence than most noise releases. Bonus points for the totally unnecessary and heave-inducing artwork.

Parade -- FRUSTRATION [Plan Eleven]

Now here's a band that believes in variety -- over the course of ten tracks, they manage to nod in the direction of just about every genre you can think of (aggro guitar rock, industrial, techno, world beat, jazz, ambient, space rock, blah blah blah). Fortunately, they have the good sense not to try doing all these things at once (usually). Mostly, though -- and primarly because of singer Juie Faris' dramatic gothic stylings -- they come across as an unusually eclectic goth band, especially on moody tracks like "Fatalist," which sounds very much like a Projekt band jazzed up on world beat rhythms. One of the better tracks is the electro-space rock of "Spacecake," which could pass for a heavy shoegazer anthem were it not for the presence of intensely fuzzed-out synth pulsing. They make a stab at devolved noise techno on "Plan 11," although i'm not terribly convinced it completely works. There's even a groaning, shuddering electronic noisefest ("Exploding Head"), just to make sure they covered all the bases.

The best track is probably "Nemo (Descent into Slumberland Mix)": a four-note piano riff, repeated ad nausem, is gradually joined by drums, wavery synths, more piano, guitars, and so on, gradually building in intensity in most dreamy fashion. The "Instant Cake Mix" version of "Spacecake," in which the song is transformed into immensely thump-heavy techno (badump! badump! shake! shake! shake!), in pretty hep as well.

My understanding is that this disc -- essentially an EP's worth of material rounded out by remixes and nonessential frippery -- is merely intended to whet thine appetite for a forthcoming disc to arrive, uh, later. Judging from this start, interesting enough in its own right, that should be worth checking out.

The devolved cats from Paradise Camp 23 are caught here assembling in the studio to concoct audio madness, all displayed on one long track (46:11) called "Like A Duck In A Noose." It makes an excellent companion piece to the live album mentioned earlier, and it would be interesting to know how much of it was recorded live and on the fly. There's plenty of things happening in the mix -- conversations mutating into gibberish, grinding sonic crunge, spaced-out efx, what frequently sound like transmissions from the outer rings of Saturn, and a constantly shifting landscape of near-demonic effects and samples. Given its length, the best way to experience the album is to submit to it -- throw it on, light a bowl, then lean back and let the carnival of sound wash over you like the shrieks and barks from the midway at a county fair in hell. When the trance sets in, don't hold the band responsible if your bowl catches fire and you fail to notice the house burning down.

Here's the deal: the band recorded, in two-track stereo, four separate live performances between July and October of 2002, then went into the studio and constructed this final piece from portions taken from those four performances. The idea isn't particularly new -- bands as diverse as the late (and lamented) Abunai! and Phill Niblock have done similar things in the past -- but then, they weren't on Mandragora, where everything seems to take on a dark and sinister cast. (This is good,by the way.) Anyway, the band took their shot at the concept, and the result is one long (thirty-plus minutes) track defined as a drifting, droning curtain of sound Guitars, recorders, electronic devices, efx, jaw harp, Casio, sitar, everything but the kitchen sink or any other kind of percussion -- it all floats in and out of a vast, whirling cloud of sound, like a tornado slowed down to a dark and plodding drone. Parts of it sound fairly dire -- one hopes there weren't any club-hoppers on acid freaking out during these shows. The sonic gravity gets pretty powerful at times, especially when they lay it on thick, piling up big sheets of sound until it sounds like jet airplanes and helicopters hoving over the ground. They know how to ebb and flow, though, so it doesn't get too endlessly oppressive. Their swirling space-rock sound should go down like a cheerleader at the submarine races with anyone into heavy psych-rock, too. Fine, demented sounds for your next lengthy trance ritual.

Pearson comes from a musical school of thought i'm increasingly inclined to think of as "experimental exotica": he's too skittery and "out there" for traditional listeners, but not quite academic enough for classical experimentalism or defiantly antimelodic enough for free jazz. I hear a lot of bands lately onto this wave o' sound minus all the baggage (particularly on Public Eyesore), and they all seem to be more interested in the sounds they're making and the mutant methods of making them than they are about wiggly li'l details like structure, togetherness, and the like. What you end up with is largely free-form, chaotic explorations in wild sound that Ornette Coleman would get behind. Pearson isn't quite that free-form, but he does share the same fascination for employing odd sounds and mystically-tuned instruments for the building blocks of his sound. The subsequent songs are largely like kinetic sound sculptures set in motion, going heavy on the vibraphone (???) sounds -- lots of tweeting high end, that's for sure. The songs (28 of them, so you know they're short ones) often sound like an army of toy pianos and children's toys run amok, as on the first couple of songs; on "You've Got Love in Your Habit," he starts out with a beat that threatens to go disco, then starts doing horrible flanged-delay things to distract you from the beat. Even banjos are not safe from his maniacal hands (see "Grass Games"). A lot of these songs sound almost like home sound-system demonstrations, all exploration of tone and sound and dynamics around the most minimal structures. Mostly they sound like those old fifties exotica albums -- you know, the records that came with stereos "for demonstration purposes" and the ones with the half-naked chicks on the cover with titles like ON THE ZULU LAKES OF PARADISE: A SAMPLER OF WEST INDIAN TIMPANI INSTRUMENTALS -- only run through lots of modern efx and subjected to postmodernist manhandling. Regardless of the origin, these are swell sounds and i like them. Pearson is on to something here. This is soundtrack music for the horrible, ongoing demise of western civilization (which started about the time it became legal, apparently, to like the seventies again), the music that plays in the scenes where people lounge around in retro tiki bars waiting for something to happen. Or something like that.

Speaking of timpani, that just might be what's playing so insistently on "Poundthoughts," or maybe bongos, sounding like the truly boss instrumental theme to a forgotten fifties jungle serial. Moments like this make you realize that however Pearson got into the funny-noise-making business, it probably wasn't from reading about it in textbooks. There's a really nice drone happening in "The Night Boat" -- the off-kilter percussion behind it is so unobtrusive that you might be forgiven for missing it -- and the Floating Toy Pianos of Doom make a reapparance on "After the Quench," but mainly the songs are fixated most of the time more on the exotica tones and tinky sounds than they are on evolving structures. The grotesque electric organ on "Again We End Time" is totally a boss move, though. Still, there's plenty of action happening here -- well worth checking out....

This is an interesting concept: spontaneous music created on the spot for the sake of itself, whether or not it can be recreated again (in a live setting, for instance). Live improv sketches, then, most of them (28 in all) under two minutes or not much longer -- Pearson doing hypnotic, repetitive keyboard figures, vamping on a progression and soloing over it, recording it all regardless of technical merit or "quality" (outside of possibly ensuring a certain level of sound quality). The pieces are short, but just long enough to explore an idea in a number of ways, and they're over before they can grow tiresome. The effect of all of them together is a steady progression of sounds and styles in (usually) short bursts, like a sound sampler more than a normal album. It makes nice background ambient music if you're so inclined, or it can be studied closely to reveal a wide spectrum of tones available from a series of keyboards. Either way it's a futuristic-sounding album, to be sure. I suspect Sun Ra would have approved of this approach. Visit Pearson's site for more on these things.

I don't know much about Monorail Trespassing (or anything at all about this band), but my, this is a noisy slice of noise beefcake. The website describes PD as "harsh electronic overload," which is a pretty apt description. Using a battery of efx and electronics, Jon Borges creates chaotic, tumbling landscapes of exploded sound, like the sound of nailguns going off in a barrel tumbling down a crowded expressway. It's loud and dense and really obnoxious, especially on the first side ("economy departure")... and let me tell you, when it abruptly ends, everything else seems very quiet by comparison. The other side, "median," is just as harsh, only it employs more grinding tape hum and high-pitched flanger-of-death noises that will really disturb your inner ear. (Of course, since the cassette isn't labeled, I may have the descriptions wrong, but you get the idea.) The tape is short -- each side is maybe ten minutes total, shades of Bacillus. I like the idea of controlled doses of noise. They don't wear out their welcome....

Strange sounds and ideas abound... the disc opens up with eleven brief tracks in which each track is nothing more than a single hit on one particular instrument, and just about the time you start to think the cd is horribly fucked, an actual song appears on the twelfth track. Except it's not so much a "song" as a collection of strange noises whirling around each other in a wind tunnel, like whirling dervishes spinning noise plates in the Endless Tunnel of Reverb -- you'd best be sitting down to listen, if you don't want to end up so dizzy you fall on the floor shaking with the palsy. Then there's a whole bunch more mini-tracks, some actually hinting at a whole musical figure before being cut off, leading up into Track 28, where fragments of sound -- conversations, acoustic guitar, various pleeks and plonks -- germinate in a seed-bed of near-random collisions of rhythm and anti-rhythm, with cryptic (and sometimes distorted) fragments of conversation flown in from time to time. More mini-tracks fly by after this, but this time toward the end they start to resolve into an actual rhythm before seguing into Track 40, a revolving supserlide of gross noise accompanied by frantic percussion, then furious rhythmic pulsing. The pulse goes on, obliterating all in its path, rising and falling, threatening to die out by never quite doing it. In the mini-tracks that follow, some of the sounds are that of screeching horns, which will really get your attention... then Track 51 arrives, a power-drone and mutant, near-unrecognizable percussion. Shrieks of noise and high-pitched drones eventually make their presence known. The percussion becomes even louder and more grortesque-sounding as the drone grows in power... until it all shuts down, at which point the silence is jarring. The main body of Track 59 is the sound of music being played backwards, in which a relatively normal musical passage with slide guitar is rendered fairly alien, then overriden with shuddering basslines -- the sound is unnerving and interesting, but hard to endure for very long. Track 70 is an orgy of flanged, processed drones and shrieks over a percolating keyboard riff and muted percussion that sounds like dance music of the 22nd century, while track 80 is more like spaced-out jazz with heavy drones overlaid. On Track 91 the drones are gentle, but on Track 96 they're positively thunderous, with violent clanging and buzzing noises crashing through the curtains of sound every once in a while. Strange and intriguing psychedelic sounds for your wide and wondering ears, even if the mini-tracks do tend to interrupt the flow. (But maybe that was intentional...?)

Now this comes completely out of left field, all right. What we have here, it appears, is an album's worth of strange-sounding experiments that began as taped bits from 1979 - 1981, over which he's been periodically adding material to over the years. Coupled with the artwork (a cover and booklet of a child's artwork, presumably from Peele's own childhood), the result is a surreal listening experience that is less an actual album than a flowing soundtrack to some unimaginable morbid tale. Explosive sounds, hypnotic ticking, relentless beats (when there are beats to be found), cryptic sound samples, yelling, guitar sounds that are all over the map... an endless stream of unpredictable sounds and groove-laden beats flow like water over the course of this disc. There are moments that approach sounding like actual songs, but mostly it's all about unpredictable bursts of sound and rhythm. The wind-tunnel approach to chaotic sound, coupled with clear recording and a varied palette of sound textures, are beneficial in keeping the whole exercise from becoming tedious; there's very little to hold onto for long -- just about the time it starts to sink in, whatever bit that might be, it disappears to be replaced by something else -- and without good sounds, it wouldn't hang fire nearly as well as it does. Proof that the whimsical approach to sound collage can be filled with potential in the right hands.

Guitarist Jay Peele (Inferno, Pigeonhole, etc.) resurfaces with an enigmatic EP of rumbling dark-ambient material that may not even have anything to do with guitar at all. The title track, for instance, is all more about drone and vast, billowing clouds of sound, blown-up noise that might be guitar or bass or wind or noise or anything at all, turned up and fed through droning reverb. Mesmerizing sheets of sound occasionally accompanied by minimal percussion, strange and reverberating efx, brief snippets of sound from other instruments and sources... definitely experimental in nature. Strange sounds dominate "floaters at the funeral parade," all chattering earwig sounds chirping back and forth i layers, sounds that might be organic and heavily processed or machine-made and unprocessed; either way they're strange and hypnotic. Drone and percussion return on "ephemeral," probably the most structured and songlike thing here (although it settles into a hypnogroove pretty early on), and "the tone chair" is all about tones, wailing and chiming. Some swank experiments in tone science at work here. Check it out.

Pere Ubu -- DATAPANIK IN THE YEAR ZERO box set [DGC]

You can argue pretty persuasively that Cleveland's bizarrely cryptic progenitors of fucked-up artpunk, Pere Ubu, pretty much kick-started the whole notion of what has now horribly devolved into the "alternative nation." (It's not their fault. Pere Ubu are not to blame for what has followed in their tremendous wake.) Really, who back in 1975 was going to be crazy enough to write elliptical noise-rock songs about the bombing of Tokyo and other subjects too weird and intellectual to fully understand? Who was going to be strange enough to employ a hulking giant Jehovah's Witness calling himself Crocus Behemoth and pit him against a spastic drug- scarfing guitarist and somehow turn into something both cerebral and weirdly catchy? Pere Ubu, that's who. They remain one of the strangest experiences in rock and are still going strong (God only knows how), even though big-guy David Thomas (he goes by his real name these days... he's still a Jehovah's Witness, though) is the only original member left (i think; Pere Ubu's personnel history is so convoluted that it's hard to dope it all out).

Unfortunately, while the Ubus have made plenty of cool music, thanks to their own byzantine circumventions of conventional logic, constant band chaos (Ubu has existed in no less than 14 lineups -- blink and you'll miss the latest guy screaming "fuck you!" and leaving), the evils of puzzled and indifferent record labels, and their habit of periodically disintegrating and refusing to speak to one another for years, most of their recorded output sounds kind of... um... hideous. You can listen to their stuff and go, "You know, i'll bet this song is really cool, if it only didn't sound like it was being played on a Walkman with decaying batteries in a tin shack four blocks away." (You think i'm joking, but one visit to the "Bug Report" -- a listing of all the various problems of their different albums -- of Ubu's web site will confirm otherwise.) Fortunately for you and me, they finally got their shit together last year to clean up and reengineer all the material on this disc. The result? Songs that were once hidden in clouds of sonic mung are now magically restored to levels of listening quality that are nothing short of amazing. Even if you already own all of their back catalog, you should investigate this just for the opportunity to hear their most important material the way it was MEANT to be heard.

What the whole shebang contains: The original DATAPANIK IN THE YEAR ZERO ep, most or all of the albums THE MODERN DANCE, DUB HOUSING, NEW PICNIC TIME, ART OF WALKING, and SONG OF THE BAILING MAN... plus! one disc of over an hour of previously-unreleased live puke called 390 DEGREES OF SIMULATED STEREO, VOLUME 2... PLUS! yet another disc containing over an hour of Ubu-related rarities, including tracks by Foreign Bodies, David Thomas solo, Friction (the band Peter Laughner left to form up until he rather inconveniently died), Electric Eels, Rocket From the Tombs (doing an early version of "30 Seconds Over Tokyo"), Proto Ubu (waffling through an early version of "Heart of Darkness"), and MORE! NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY? (If you're DEAD ANGEL and were able to snag the set used, not as much as you'd think.)

So i suppose you'll be wanting details, eh? Very well... here they be:

HIGHLIGHTS (keep in mind there's approximately 100 songs on the set, and to attempt to comment on even a third of them would result in an issue of epic length):

DISC 1 (1975-1977): It's good to hear "Heart of Darkness" and "Final Solution" (NOT about Nazism, as many have erronously believed over the years; in fact, they dropped it from their live set for years due to such misunderstandings) cleaned up and stripped of all the bad juju of poor label pressings. And you know, for an arty band they sure were capable of rockin' (in a very weird and angular way, true); check out the furious drumming on the former and the gorilla-sized bassline of the latter. "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" is still plenty weird some twenty years later, and all of the first album (THE MODERN DANCE) still sounds tremendous, particularly the loopy yet catchy title track, the giddy shuffle-to-crazed roar of "Laughing," and "Chinese Radiation." And "Humor Me" is... uh... weird, even for them. "Is this a JOKE, mon?" Dunno, David, you tell ME....

DISC 2 (1978-1979): Here we have the tracks from DUB HOUSING, regarded by many as the most "important" album the Ubus ever made (i'd pick THE MODERN DANCE, myself), and NEW PICNIC TIME. The tracks from the former are essentially an extension of the first album's bizarro aesthetic, only even weirder ("Naavy," "Caligari's Mirror," and "Blow Daddy O" -- with it's eerie fuzzed-out synth pulse and cryptic, unpredictable drumming -- are standouts); the latter is composed of tracks bursting from a band on the verge of falling apart, and they fly in all different directions. Which is not to say they're bad -- "All the Dogs are Barking," "Goodbye," and the pre-Gerogerigegege scrunch-background/clattering quasi-tribal drumming on drugs approach of "Voice of the Sand" are certainly mondo, and they're just the standouts -- but they all sound kind of funny together. Then again, EVERYTHING Ubu does sounds kind of funny, so.... [atlas shrugged] This remastering also corrects sonic problems: On the original vinyl and CD pressings of DUB HOUSING, the entire second side was distorted, and i can only quote from the box set liner notes regarding NEW PICNIC TIME: "What happend to the mix of this record is a total mystery. You can add or subtract 12db at any point and still not effectively change the sound picture. A real mystery." Needless to say, this has been fixed. Heh.

DISC 3 (1980-1982): This contains THE ART OF WALKING and SONG OF THE BAILING MAN, two of their more focused documents. Both correct problems inherent to the original albums and CD pressings. WALKING, apparently issued during yet another period of great Ubu confusion, was originally released in two versions: the first was cut from a fucked master, resulting in a hasty recall and reissue. The version on the box set here restores the album to its originally intended configuration, in addition to fixing sonic messes: "Arabia" is without vox once again, "Young Miles in the Basement" is longer, and "Misery Goats" is the jew's harp version. SONG OF THE BAILING MAN, always one of the best-sounding Ubu albums, remains largely unchanged save for some tweaking here and there. As for the songs themselves, it's the usual mix of really cool stuff and puzzling dada that they've been foisting onto an unsuspecting public for years. The voxless "Arabia" is most cool, as is "Misery Goats," and the rest of the tracks are relatively agreeable as long as you're already used to Ubu's peculiar vision. Some of their best mid-period material ("The Long Walk Home," "Thoughts That Go By Steam," "Big Ed's Used Farms," "The Vulgar Boatman's Bird," and "My Hat") was encapsulated on SONG OF THE BAILING MAN and here it all sounds pretty stellar.

DISC 4 (390 DEGREES...): This is actually two documents: the first Ubu "official bootleg" 390 DEGREES OF SIMULATED STEREO (from a 1978 performance in Brussells), and ONE MAN DRIVES WHILE THE OTHER MAN SCREAMS (from a 1981 performance in, uh, somewhere in Europe). Contrary to the dire impression you might get from reading their explanation of this disc on their web site, the sound -- while definitely live -- isn't all that bad, actually. The performances are a lot more blunt, though, which is kind of interesting and adds a totally different spin to tracks like "Real World," "Laughing" (always one of their best), "The Modern Dance," "Codex," and so on. There are 14 songs here, pretty much all from the first three albums, so what you think about this disc probably depends heavily on how you liked those albums, eh? Well worth hearing, though.

DISC 5 (TERMINAL DRIVE): The biggest surprise here (outside of the ugly, bone-splintering Electric Eels track "Jaguar Ride") is the radically different version of "Heart of Darkness" credited to Proto Ubu. Imagine, if you will, Pere Ubu sounding like... like Hawkwind, only SCARIER. There's no telling what divergent path western civilization might have taken had they released THIS version instead. The rest of what's here is an odd (VERY odd) assortment of tracks by bands containing Ubu members: Friction, Rocket From the Tombs, Foreign Bodies, Mirrors, Electric Eels, and several others -- 18 in all, including Proto Ubu and Pere Ubu ("Pushin' Too Hard," apparently the first Ubu recording, predating the first single by a few months). All of the stuff here is, uh, really deviant (not in morals necessarily, but definitely soundwise). This is WEIRD STUFF. Fun to listen to, though.

Bottom line: Pere Ubu are still light years ahead of the curve and have never been fashionable, which means their art-damaged spoo will probably still be worth listening to twenty years down the road. Hence, given that this set was produced in "limited" quantities (i know, probably the same way those damn kewpie doll plates on TV are "limited" to only a few hundred thousand), you would be well advised to seek out this box and make it your own while it still exists. That's particularly true even if you already own all of the early back catalog -- with two discs of live and hard-to-find rarities plus the complete remastering and restoration of the early work, it's hard to beat the value inherent in such a deal....

For those not already clued in to the electrodeath revolution in progress here, Persona is the electronically perverted brainchild of Gravitar drummer-on-fire Eric Cook. Lest ye rush to your local record emporium too hastily, let me be frank: this is not a Gravitar disc. This is not freeform noize meltdown as spooged from the solar anus o' Sun Ra or anything like that; rather, it's a collection of full-on electronica tunes and nothing else. We're talking beats, mon, most of the revved-up and hyperkinetic variety, mixed in with technoish samples and bleeps and bloops and all sorts of electronic sonic effluvia. I'm not an expert on electronica by any means, but this is generally more interesting to me than most of the electronica i hear passing by, mainly because it never stops moving. Maybe this is free-jazz electronica... do they even make such a thing? Most of the beats are in the jungle territory -- fast, frantic, and unlike many such projects, really complex mothers. There's so many layers that deconstructing any given song here probably requires scaffolding and a construction permit....

Not everything is full-tilt, though. "LSRS SHM" in a slow-burn mode, with a repetitive beat and general motif, before eventually degenerating into a stew of weird noises, at which point it changes gears and moves into a new "theme" of sorts before finally petering out. One of the more "straightforward" stabs at techno here is "Cycloid," a mid-tempo groove thang with looped samples and bell-noises. I deeply grok the beats on this one. It fucking moves me, mon. "Dee-Dop" is another good one, with bass lines cooked up just to make your speakers jump and more weird sounds (there's those tinky-tinky bells again); the separate elements of the song gradually build like an interlocking labyrinth, with sounds that appear one after another eventually crowding for space all at the same time.

One of the more interesting pieces is "100 Years of Jazz -- Not in That Order," which apparently takes snippets of jazz beats and lines and shuffles, flattens, fattens, and mutates them into a violent hurricane of perverse jungle uberjazz. There are some seriously crazed beats in this one, mon. It gets out of control in a hurry. "Rim Recycler" is essentially an assortment of odd noises enslaved in the quest for rhythm -- there's very little in the way of recognizable, traditional beats and tones happening here, but it manages to be intensely rhythmic nonetheless. It's not your older brother's techno by any means....

More perverse electronic shenanigans from Gravitar drummer Eric Cook, this time in the form of a "live and not live" remix CD of material by Warn Defever's Control Panel. Limited to 200 copies and distributed exclusively by Stormy Records, this release sees Persona shifting gears -- the "hard" sounds favored on earlier discs have been toned down, the bleeps and bloops have been processed for a somewhat more organic feel, and the entire thing sounds it's working under a thin layer of maple syrup. A kinder, gentler Persona? Well, maybe... but i doubt it's a permanent move in that direction, so don't get too worked up about that one way or the other. It's actually kind of interesting to hear this more subdued version of Persona, although how much of that is due to the source material and how much due to Cook's strategic shift in tone jockeying is hard to tell -- either way, this certainly has a far different feel than earlier Persona releases. It's more relaxed, for one thing; the tempos never really go nuclear (although they threaten to go that way briefly in track 6), and there's a a fair bit of ambient doodling between the beats at times. The beats themselves, as implied earlier, are nowhere near as hard (or as frantic) as i've come to expect from Persona, and in some places (like the third track), the beats disappear entirely for long stretches as the sound drifts into outright ambient territory. Nevertheless, it would not be a Persona album without some exotic-sounding textures, and of those there are plenty -- instruments of unknown origin that have been flanged into oblivion to sound like coiled springs, wailing horn sounds, the rumble of cosmic debris... the beats may come and go, but the album is full of alien sounds from start to finish. I'm tempted to call this "ambient techno," but Eric might not approve, and everyone knows it is unwise to piss off people who hit things for a living... besides, there's too much noise happening here to really qualify as ambient. Whatever you want to call it, with this disc he proves that Persona remains full of surprises and that electronic music's parameters are nowhere near as limited as some might think.

Persona return with more super-deluxe vibraphonic technohell for the now generation, mon. First up: the groovin' "omnithrope," which opens with a dirgelike bass note looped continuously as tinky-tinky percussion fades in. It's not fast, but it's not slow either, and every so often bleeps and bloops start up, leading you to believe any minute now something violent's about to happen... but it doesn't. An exercise in drawn-out suspense that Hitchcock would have been proud of (whoo, i'm gettin' a terrifying image of ol' Alfred behind a turntable, what a scary thought, the cold medicine must be kicking in). It eventually dies out in a vapor trail of ambient synth (???) noises... leading into "supapixel," a jammin' hyperkinetic round o' overdrive. Percussion run amok! Loops whizzing by like monorails! Fast fast fast! On the flip side of the 12" (this is a slab o' vinyl, btw, but you guessed that already, didn't you, given the nature of the genre, right?) things get a tad more "traditional" in their technoisms -- "persona vs. 12 tech mob" is a mad conflagration of stuttering high-speed beats furiously battling for dominance against an army of chipmunk voices and doodling noises. You cannot dance fast enough to keep up with this (although if you're female and slinky i'd certainly like to see you try). It sure ends abruptly, though -- what, did the power die? No, it was just time for a breather before launching into "(not so) fine," an even faster (and heavier) collage of beats and loops designed to sand you down into submission. This rocks, mon. Throw it down and see how fast all those horizontal lines move at yer next fave rave....

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers -- PLAYBACK box set [MCA]

Talk about overkill -- 72 songs across six discs -- but this is QUALITY overkill, full of all sorts of interesting shit. Rather than cause your eyes to glaze over running it down track by track, instead i'll just talk about the discs themselves. The first three are essentially the greatest hits part, with all the songs the radio plays to death and quite a few that didn't get so much airplay but maybe should have. The material here covers all the albums from the first album up through Petty's solo disc FULL MOON FEVER, with "Mary Jane's Last Dance" from GREATEST HITS and "Christmas All Over Again" (from A VERY SPECIAL CHRISTMAS 2) thrown in for good measure. You know about this stuff, so there's no point in going into it... but I would like to say that hearing the SOUTHERN ACCENTS stuff on CD first time drives home just how fucked up they were at the time; the mix on "Rebels" is wildly uneven and there's other recording problems in evidence, probably the result of them all having too much coke up their noses and Jim Beam in their bellies while waffling through the endless takes ("Dave! are you SURE we need a 17th take of me shaking these li'l castanets on this track?"). And i am sorry, but no amount of sycophantic blather on the part of the guy who wrote the liner notes (by Bill Flanagan, who wrote some book about U2 a while ago) can make the stuff from LET ME UP... I'VE HAD ENOUGH! sound good even now -- Petty may still think it's all hot shit, but, uh, it's just sort of unfocused, mon -- and dammit, they didn't even include the one GOOD song from that album, either! ("Runaway Trains," if you must know, and no, it has nothing to do with goddamn Soul Asylum and Dave Pirner's unwashed hair, ok?) For that matter, they didn't include "Night Watchman," which is kind of a drag....

The other half of the collection makes this set a bit more interesting than most, though. Where most box sets offer up a bunch of hits with a smattering of b-sides and rarities, this one serves up one full disc of amazing b-sides, one full disc of totally unreleased material (much of it from the pre-signing days when they were known by the eternally awful name Mudcrutch), and another disc of various castoff material that never made it onto albums or b-sides for one reason or another. Yow! Plenty of previously undiscovered jewels here, mon... including a lot of stuff that makes you wonder why it wasn't released in place of certain other official material of a clearly inferior nature that DID appear on albums like SOUTHERN ACCENTS and LET ME UP, I'VE HAD ENOUGH!

Disc 4 ("The Other Sides") contains such weird b-sides as "Casa Dega," the loopy "Heartbreaker's Beach Party," live covers of "Psychotic Reaction" and a van Morrison song, "Trailer," the "peace mix" of "Peace in L.A.," more live stuff... and it's all pretty damn swank. Mighty weird that Petty thought it made good sense to leave "Trailer" and "Make That Connection" off LET ME UP..., especially in light of what ended up on it (ugh), though. The usual case of the artist being a poor judge of his own work and all that, i guess. Not to mention that the live version of "Kings Highway" here (transformed into an acoustic) whomps the living pee out of the hard- rockin' version on INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN.

Disc 5 ("Through the Cracks") is even more interesting, even if only for "archival" purposes, as it consists entirely of unreleased stuff, most of it from the original Mudcrutch demos and early Heartbreakers sessions. Most of it sounds pretty much what you think -- ie., a not-quite-there version of the Heartbreakers -- but most of it is pretty cool in a down 'n dirty sort of way, and the lyrics to the original version of "Louisiana Rain" are somewhat ruder than the one that ended up on DAMN THE TORPEDOES. Of course, the only real difference between the early version of "Don't Do Me Like That" presented here and the final one (you can find it on Disc 1) is the lack of an organ and a vaguely "looser" feel, so i'm not sure what it's HERE for... oh yeah, the archival thing, right. It's most amusing to hear "Moon Pie," though, an exercise in pure nonsense that probably says more about the band's night-owl hours and, uh, "recreational habits" than it does about songwriting (it's also a warning to always make sure the tape recorder's turned OFF before you just start waffling, heh heh). You can also find the original demos for "The Apartment Song" and "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" here, and they are worth hearing, even if the latter sounds really WEIRD now with just Petty singing, after so many years of hearing Stevie "look, i am a loopy Welsh witch! please hug me now! or give me coke! I'm not sure which!" Nicks on that song. Oh well, it's a weird world....

Disc 6 contains a few more items like this, plus the original version of "Ways to Be Wicked" (written for Maria McKee of Lone Justice), a cover of "Baby, Let's Play House," and a few other goodies like that. Although if you were foolish enough to try listening to all of this straight through, then your eyes have probably glazed over by this point and it all barely registers anymore.... A note about the rest of the package -- you get a mini-poster of the band (disposable), a laminated tour access card from their last tour (why do bands include this stuff in their box sets? what purpose does it serve? i'm not really sure, and it probably doesn't matter anyway), and a fat book with Flanagan's mini-history of the band, which provides a lot of valuable insight into the band's turbulent inner dynamics and explains a lot of why certain things have gone down the way they have. Plus the band elaborates on the circumstances behind the creation of every song included on this set, and there's a complete session listing for each one as well. And pictures. Lots of pictures. Plus the CDs come in tiny replica album jackets, complete with inner sleeves, which looks really cool but is ultimately annoying because they're kind of unwieldy for getting to the discs -- but this is mere pickiness. Overall, this is a dazzling box set, much better than i'd normally expect from MCA, whose packaging concepts are generally dubious at best....

On this disc -- supposedly a "concept album" of sorts about how much the music biz blows right now -- Petty gets right to the point in a hurry: within the first twenty second of the opening title track, he tells us "Well, you can't turn him / Into a company man / And you can't turn him into a whore / And the boys upstairs / Just don't understand anymore." The rest of the song (a brilliant, uptempo thumper like he hasn't done in quite a while) is just as sneering and every bit as catchy. Don't be fooled by the "concept album" tag, though: there's actually only three songs on the subject, and one ("Joe") is the album's most disposable track. As for the sound, this is what WILDFLOWERS would have sounded like if that album hadn't fallen asleep halfway through -- Petty's wearing his Beatles influence on his sleeve this time around, along with the usual Byrds jangle. One of the most interesting things happening here is that the Heartbreakers are definitely in the back seat, keeping things simple with very little flash (in fact, the only time uberguitarist Mike Campbell really cuts loose is on tail end of the final track, "Can't Stop the Sun").

Some of Petty's best work is on here, though; this is the most consistent disc he's cut since FULL MOON FEVER and INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN, and the opening three-punch knockout of "The Last DJ," "Money Becomes King" (about a great Sixties singer who descends into corporate whoredom, complete with rude lines like "And John came out and lip-synched / His new lite-beer commercial"), and "Dreamville" is so potent that even following it with the dumb stomper "Joe" can't kill the album's momentum (although it tries, o boy). In fact, the album is actually divided into two segments: the first four songs are about how fucked the biz is now (and, in "Dreamville," what was important about it in the first place), and the rest is Petty's conception of what albums should be like but rarely are these days. Petty has never been recognized for his subtlety, and a few of the songs here are creeping up on the heavy-handed side (particularly "When A Kid Goes Bad" and "Lost Children"), but everything else is a bunch of mostly-gorgeous love songs. Tom Petty is the only artist currently still in the running who sings love songs i can actually relate to (much less stand), and a couple of these (my favorite is "You and Me," one of the best things he's ever done anywhere, anytime) are better than anything he's done in the last decade, so this is good.

Which leaves me with only one complaint -- what the fuck possessed him to think "Joe" (about a greedy, piggy corporate CEO) was actually any good? (Well, it's not bad in the traditional sense of bad because the Heartbreakers are simply incapable of playing bad music, but still....) It's loud and strident and kind of a willfully crude swipe at the Big Boys that doesn't really fit in well with the rest of the album, not to mention loud and monotonous. I have a theory that this was a deliberate move on Petty's part -- "See, this is how bad the swill you hear on the radio is these days, just one big beat and a bunch of yammering, don't you wish music was better than this, hah?" -- but really, it doesn't work. The rest of the album is swank, though. A hint: when you play it, don't forget to skip track four....

Now this is a lovely surprise... two Japanese girls with ukeleles and a fondness for old songs. If it sounds camp, you're probably right -- the duo is already famous in their homeland for their theme-style albums (Petty Booka goes Hawaiian, then country, then... etc., etc.), and this is one the most recent, all songs about rain. And what better way to start such an album than with "Raindrops" (the Dee Clark one)? All of the songs are performed Hawaiian style (they have some help in the form of a backing band), more or less, which makes songs like "Rainy Days and Mondays" a huge improvement over the originals. (Their version of "Singing in the Rain" borders on the loopy, though.) This is great, and it's too bad it's only eight songs long. The good part, however, is that they have plenty of other stuff out there to hear (prepare to watch your wallet get skinny in the process -- we're talkin' serious Japanese import mojo here, boyee). Once again the Japanese prove to have a considerably better sense of style. Rock on ukelele girls, rock on....

Liz Phair -- WHIP-SMART (Matador)

OK, I'm gonna do something bold here -- namely, I'm gonna do a review of this CD without mentioning the one line in "Chopsticks" that everybody else falls over themselves to quote (you know, the line with THE NAUGHTY WORD in it). To be real blunt, I'm tired of seeing that line in every single review, especially when there's other, better lines to quote; the line "You gotta have fear in your heart" (from "Shane") has a lot more to do with the core of this album than the "dirty" lines.

So what's going on here? Well, first off, this sounds a lot different than EXILE IN GUYVILLE -- where that one was just Phair for the most part, and very spare in its instrumentation, this one has a band and much thicker sound. It also sounds like they ran the entire album through a fuzzbox with a wee bit o' reverb, which is kind of interesting. And the sound itself wanders through influences rooted in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, quite often all in the same song, whic has a really weird effect. The arrangements this time are a bit more straightforward than they were on GUYVILLE (and leaning heavily toward a distinctly 70s sort of structure), but the sound of everything is pretty wonky, even noisy -- from the tinny noises in "Support System" (sounding like the fucked-up woodblock-turned-to-weird-squeak of NIN's "Terrible Lie") to the politely hateful surf guitar on "X-Ray Man," the gradually heightening babble of noise and voices at the end of "Shane," to the obnoxious noises buried in the exit of "Whip-Smart," there's plenty of bizarre sounds lurking in the background and occasionally leaping out to the forefront.

A lot of this sounds naggingly familiar at times, but only in terms of its influences; particularly on "Cinco de Mayo" and "Dogs of L.A.," where you just KNOW that melody's borrowed from something that you just can't quite remember. The beginning of "Alice Springs" is awfully reminiscent of the Beatles' "Dear Prudence," though, and the beginning of "Whip Smart" borrows heavily from the brontosaurus drum beat of Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks." I have no doubt there are plenty of other places where you can play "spot the influence" as well. And now that I think of it, the chorus of "Dogs of L.A." sounds like a distant cousin of the Association's "Brandy"....

Lyrically this isn't terribly different than GUYVILLE, although there's still plenty of clever stuff happening, particularly in songs like "Supernova" and "Whip-Smart." I think the album's sound is the strong point here -- not to take away from the lyrics at all, but I think the sonic impact of the album is pretty interesting in its own right, especially where the noise element is concerned. Forget this clever singer-songwriter crap, it's obvious that Liz needs to go make a couple of albums with Skullflower and Einstuerzende Neubaten... I'd pay good $$$ to hear THAT....

Liz Phair -- WHITECHOCOLATESPACEEGG [Matador/Capitol]

Imagine, if you the will... the horror... the fear of every band/artist/musical flake to swagger across the planet:

Our heroic fantasy artist -- let's call her Swag Moppet, for no real good reason at all -- starts out modestly, cobbles together a few songs, then starts playing on stage here and there. A few cheesy tapes get made; some circulate. One ends up in the hands of some record mogul who decides, "Eureka! Here be the NEXT BIG THING!" Suddenly Swag Moppet finds herself with a deal, making a lo-fi album that inexplicably becomes a Big Deal, partly because it's reasonably swell, partly because she is not afraid to do interviews with photos of her showing lots o' cleavage and she also has this cute habit of talking dirty in her songs. So the Swag Moppet, emboldened, continues to climb up the rungs o' the biz -- more albums, more dirty talk -- and then... then....

Then it all falls apart. Lovable Swag Moppet releases an album that bombs, blows chunks, results in a big resounding yawn from the great unwashed who have moved on to the next Big Thing. Crushed, Swag Moppet retreats to "get serious" and releases another album that does even worse. Soon Swag Moppet finds herself without a deal. Months pass... pages flying from the calendar in the breeze... meetings with disitnerested moguls... fewer gigs... back to self-released tapes... depression... alcohol... drugs... Swag Moppet descends into the chasm along with all the other one-hit wonders and is only heard from again when the papers report of her tragic death from being shot while hooking as a crack whore. In the column appears the line "Swag Moppet, now an obscure loser riddled with bullet holes, was once known for singing the semi-hit 'Poot and Run.' Next of kin cannot be located at the moment."

Yes... the horror... the future that could be....

Fortunately for Liz, this does not appear to be her destiny. This is a pretty swank album, although it's already caused a schism among Phair's fans, half of whom apparently hate it. The major bone of contention appears to be the production -- this is definitely not the stripped-down demo-style of EXILE IN GUYVILLE or even the sludgy indie-style "let's make an album in a real studio and try to make it sound like we recorded it on a malfunctioning tape deck in our basement" sound of WHIP-SMART. No, this sounds like a real album, with lots o' session players, piles of keyboards, compression, bigness, blah blah blah and all that shit. Probably the only thing that saves it from certain doom is Phair's basic flakiness, which keeps things from getting too out of hand. For one thing, she still has that charming habit of having only a vague idea of what key she's singing in....

Her black sense of humor is still present, as evidenced on "Big Tall Man," a song with a really weird structure (it moves from blurry guitar/keyboard overkill to pockets of low-key tension and back again while Liz rambles in disconnected fashion, "I'm a big tall man / I cut the grass / My left eye hurts / I am waiting and reading parts" before ending with the sardonic observation "I can be a complicated communicator." And as "Johnny Feelgood" makes obvious, her catchiness factor has increased immensely: layers of melodic guitars drop in one by one as the song strarts, a pattern that repeats throughout the tune... but this pales before the obvious single, "Polyester Bride," which not only boasts some of the best lyrics on the album (recounting a snotty, sardonic conversation with a wiseass bartender), but has so many layers of guitars, keyboards, and interlocking melodic lines that it might as well be an audio jigsaw puzzle. The real jaw-dropper of the album, though, is "Baby Got Going," a jumpin'-jive slab of boogie rock that sounds totally unlike anything she's ever done (and it turned out well, btw). My personal fave of the album is the mesmerizing "Uncle Alvarez," the cryptic story of two generations of con men, whose musical structure keeps evolving throughout the entire song in unpredictable (but ultimately sensible) fashion. The techno fascination running through the entire album (a fixation that got started on WHIP-SMART) makes its full-blown appearance on "Headache," but the crazed pseduo-Beach Boys on Valium "Ride" is ten times cooler, one of the best on the album. The next-to-last song, "Shitloads of Money," is also one of the most amusing (and misunderstood -- apparently a lot of critics have read this as a comment on Phair's rise to fame, but the song was actually written before she ever had a record deal and appears on the Girlysound tapes) songs on the album, with the immortal lines "It's nice to be liked / But it's better by far to get paid / I know that most of my friends that I have don't really see it that way / But if you could give 'em each one wish / How much do you wanna bet? / They'd wish for success for themselves and their friends and / That would include lots of money."

Of course, since this is a Liz Phair album, there is... yes... some filler. Liz has a bad habit of writing and recording waaaay too many songs on every album, and every one has included a handful of songs that probably would have been better off remaining on the master reel. Candidates for fillerdom this time would include "Perfect World," "Girls' Room," and a couple of others, none of which have anything dramatically wrong with them, but they're all a bit on the half-baked side. The good news is that there are few of them this time around. Most of the album is pretty solid. In fact, this may be the best album she's made yet, although I'll freely admit that it's one that takes a while to fully warm up to. And she finally had the good sense to curb her pottymouth, which was starting to get a bit old....

This is simultaneously the best and worst cd Liz has ever done. Best because it's the most consistent, with some of her best songs, all of which are played really well by a band that's doing hep things; worst because she's reached the point where her li'l indie sexpot image has started to completely overshadow what she's doing, and a great many of the songs are kind of dumbed-down ("Rock Me"? "It's Sweet"? "Why Can't I"? Is this Fleetwood Mac or NIN Lite or what?). Plus most of the cd sounds like pig shit thanks to overly-tricky production and blast-cannon mastering that makes everything way too loud, shrill, and radiocentric. The songs produced by the Matrix aren't bad, contrary to what you may have heard, although they are a tad calculated in their commercial aspirations. Unfortunately, they are the most hideous-sounding ones on the album -- even when you want to like them, they're hard to listen to thanks to the gruesomely overblown production. The songs produced by Michael Penn are a lot better-sounding, and the ones Liz produced herself lead me to believe she would have been a lot better off doing the whole album herself. But of course, this is the album that's supposed to deliver her unto the lap of the gods, so she's gone to a lot of trouble to make a radio-friendly album and catchy songs -- which would be fine if the gods of the music biz didn't have such bad ears. And of course the Matrix were so successful with turning Avril Lavigne into a vapid punk-lite money machine that it only makes sense to the gods in question to take an interesting talent and turn it into a vehicle for vapid but radio-friendly ear spoo. All I know is that while the songs on here are really good, her previous disc was a hell of a lot more listenable.

TTBMD:  We should review this together. It fucking kills.

TMU: This is a brilliant idea, o swami. Let us throw it on... [hypnotic fuzz fills the room]

TTBMD:  It's not like it's brutal, raging, heavy... but it's... good.

TMU: It's way repetitive. Mantra-like. Big fuzzy riffs like... like... (reaching) like dancing caterpillars on Mars!

TTBMD:  Yes! They are in a mellow zone somewhere beneath the clouds and above the peaks of a mountain... anywhere.

TMU: Do they have words anywhere on here? I can't tell through all that beautiful, fizzy, thundering wall o' fuzz. I like that they keep things simple, like the least amount of anything possible -- riffs, melodies, whatever, just, uhhhh, ummm.... FUZZ! Did i mention it was all really fuzzy? I'll bet these guys smoke a lot of really good dope. They're like Electric Wizard with a better sense of humor.

TTBMD:  No words, they're not necessary on this album. The music takes care of everything.

TMU: I'm too goddamn busy rockin' out to actually look at the song titles -- what the fuck are all those goddamn letters doing so tiny anyway? DON'T THEY KNOW I NEED NEW GLASSES? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! I know it's too much to ask that people, like, fucking PRINT THINGS A SIZE THAT CAN BE SEEEEEEEN....

TTBMD:  (hits him)

TMU: Ouchie!

TTBMD:  MELLOW, dude. (to Buy the record or get a copy from someone -- I think you'll like it.

TMU: They get really good tones on this album. And good fuzz. Some might find them a tad minimalistic, but I like minimalism. Minimalism is good. Repetition is good. Drone is good. Riffs -- good. Pharoah Overlord -- fucking godhead. Grok them. Now. DO IT!!!!! GET UP OFF YOUR ASS AND SEEK OUT THIS MASTERPIECE!!!!!! Heh. Heh heh he heh he he he heh. FIRE! FIRE! FIREFIREFIREFIRE! (begins the terrifying and rarely-seen Ritual of Bad Ju-Ju Melvin eeny eeny woonah....)

TTBMD:  On to something else....

Ouch -- this CD is loud. Which is hardly surprising -- lo, we have entered power electronics territory. Dr. Randall Philip is the guy who brings you the controversial magazine FUCK, the Eugenics Council have been doing similar activities in noise for five years or so, and Rosemary Malign has appeared on the Susan Lawly release EXTREME MUSIC FROM WOMEN. So right up front we have clear indications that everybody involved has a bad attitude and is going for broke in the ear-punishment sweepstakes....

Here, on this disc, Rosemary Malign provides female vox and sounds for Eugenics Council and the mysterious D.N. provides sounds and maile vox. (Philip appears as himself, natch.) The 28 tracks on the disc are a scattering of tracks by the Eugenics Council, Philip himself, and -- on "Little Faggots (Plus, Dance Mix!)" -- all of them together. The disc was refused for pressing by several plants for the naughty artwork (strange, i can't imagine how anybody could be offended by the sight of swastikas and the Star of David on the same cover), rude titles (a wee sample: "Do Your Fucking Job," "Amputate & Kill," "Just-A-Cunt," "Heavenly Rape," "Jew-Gook-Nigger," "Marching On," "Stupid Nigger," etc., etc.), and song content (really, some of the spoken parts are among the most awesomely, intentionally offensive things you'll ever hear). Apparently some people are easily upset.... I personally don't really see the point in all the push-the-envelope offensiveness, but it's a free world, and there is an audience for this sort of material (witness the cult of Whitehouse and Taint, for instance). So let us review the thing and let the readers make up their minds whether to partake, eh? (I must admit i found "Shut Up and Fuck Me" really, really amusing.)

So, the big question: do they deliver the goods? Well, as i mentioned already, they're goddamned loud and they have the buzzsaw power-electronics thing down cold -- many moments of ripped-up sound roaring through the speakers like a malfunctioning transformer rigged up to a dozen contact mikes and tumbling down a steel staircase, plenty of high-end ear damage ("Genocide Now" is particularly savage in this respect), the use of treated CDs to provide skipping rhythms on occasion (see "Born to Be a Victim"), and just a sheer joy for horribly abusing sonic equipment in general. I'm sure this disc redlines well past "proper" redbook audio standards all over the place.... One of the interesting things about the disc is that, in general, they favor very different approaches -- the Eugenics Council like to mike in bizarre samples (old records, marching bands, radio transmissions, talk-show commentary, God knows what else) in with their power-assault, and they have the advantage of having a female singer, an unusual and ear-catching thing to hear in the power-electronics field; Dr. Philip is more aligned with traditional power-electronics, preferring as a rule to lay down bedrock sonic assault from heavily processed efx over which he can sneer about all sorts of deliberately offensive subject matter (think Macronympha here, perhaps, or Taint). Another advantage of having the artists trade off tracks (but not necessarily one after another -- sometimes one will do two or three in a row) is that their different styles make the disc far more unpredictable than your average power-electronics disc. Where many such bands start out hard and stay that way, causing boredom to set in fairly early, this disc is wildly up and down in its attack, which prevents the listener from getting stuck in a rut. It doesn't hurt that Rosemary sounds like a caged animal half the time, either... check out "Go Away" and you start to wonder what might happen if Lydia Lunch decided to dabble in power electronics. Bonus points for the live track being one of the most chaotic, obnoxious shoutfests around, sort of like ranting bag people with efx boxes. Rosemary sounds genuinely psychotic, which is always a plus, and it's really amusing to hear an actual dance loop mixed into the noise/shout festival.

Bottom line: I had to turn this CD down to listen to it, which is so rare as to be statistically improbable, and it came close to giving me a migraine headache halfway through. If that's not a recommendation for those who like their electronics out of control, i can't imagine what is. Just make no mistake: this is offensive. Definitely not for the politically correct. Don't say you haven't been warned....

There must be some virus in the water up in Canada that affects people with synths and samplers, because a lot of the better industrial bands seem to come from up there. Phycus is one of those bands, with a style that falls somewhere in between Severed Heads and Skinny Puppy, while remaining distinctively its own in the process.

"This Is the Burn" kicks things off with percussive fury and a severe attitude problem; "Grandmaster Phycus" is bizarre and funky, in a cold, sick way, with a throbbing bassline and minimal rapping provided in a deathly rasp. The marching-style "Fanculo Neoism" is vaguely reminiscent of Skinny Puppy's "Fascist Jock Itch," only dirtier. They even prove to have a warped sense of humor (rare in the industrial genre) by covering both Motorhead and Madonna ("Motorhead" and "Like A Prayer") and rendering them totally unrecognizable.

"Be My Naber" dips into the old-school industrial style by incorporating samples over sheets of noise; "Faktory Amerika II" employs similar techniques to a much different effect, with heavier results. "Empty Temples" closes out the demo with a menacing hum and strange things going on in the background, like the slow-motion soundtrack to a demolition demonstration. Total result: feel the burn and twitch in flames....

Phycus -- EFFLUVIATOR [demo]

More cool Canadian industrial-type eardeath from an apparently prolific band. Recorded in 1993, this one kicks off with the lo-fi sludge creep of "Blood Crave," followed by the distorted hip-hop beat of "Scars and Meat for Evil." On "Destroy the Earth," down-tuned drums pound your head into mush like the slow grinding doom of a giant shaking the ground with every step, while the singer rants like something out of a late-night Hammer horror flick. "Guerra Devastadora" ups the noise ante with the satisfying sound of buildings being ground to paste in an earthquake; "Tottering Structures" returns to the funky hip-hop beat thing, only this time with a levitating bass totally drenched in reverb. And that's just the first half....

"Grandmaster Phycus" (originally featured on BURN) makes a reappearance here, along with "Faktory America III," apparently an expansion (sequel? or continuation? something like that, anyway) of BURN's "Faktory America II." "Do Not Adjust Your Mindset" comes across like a somewhat more straightforward version of RABIES-era Skinny Puppy, while "Meat is Might" is... uh... just plain strange. (This is good.) The last track is "Mental Illness," which sounds like a sampler with a really bad hangover (like, after drinking 51 shots of Jagermeister in a row) projectile vomiting. Yow. Acquire this and use this as your secret weapon the next time your dorm gets caught up in the Stereo Wars.

Phycus -- LUMPTHZ [demo / compilation]

More punishment from Canada... this is a hodgepodge of demo tracks, compilation appearances, and new songs from March 1994. "Missing Foundation" lurches along in slow-dirge mode, propelled by weird and compelling rhythmic noises and a generally noisy ambience, kind of like a more rhythmic Whitehouse, while the less-harrowing "Powercide" incorporates horns (at least i think they're horns; with these guys it's hard to tell) and an almost military synth-pulse. The long instrumental "Get On the Drugs" is a brooding dirge that occasionally erupts into fiery bursts of noise at unexpected moments; it's followed by the totally twisted "Yo Momma," a pig-slaughtering "interpretation" of ABBA's "Does Your Mother Know" that, needless to say, bears no resemblance to the original.... "Veins" is primarily sample-driven, and the amusingly-titled "Tibetan Monks Buckle Up For Safety" is so brief that it hardly registers as a complete song (it was recorded, along with several others on this tape, for a CD compilation of songs 20 seconds or less). "No (More!) Pain" is another oppressive dirge -- this tape is really heavy on the brooding doom thing for some reason -- and the final song, "La Claire Fontzine," is yet ANOTHER dirge, this one drenched in echo and pulsing in huge, gritty waves, until the weird sound of a child's voice singing in a foreign language (?) cuts through the murk toward the end. Weird.... Those who like their industrial danceable and beat-heavy probably won't care for this one much, but it's highly recommended nonetheless for its brooding menace....

Phycus -- BRAINMOWER [Terra Vox]

I find it interesting that Bile are going over like bimbos handing out free beer in a Tejas heatwave in certain circles, because all they are at heart is a sludgier, more monochromatic version of this Canadian export. Phycus, who've been around for many years now churning out a sizeable stack of self-released cassettes but have just now gotten around to appearing on CD, are firmly rooted in what i like to think of the "classical" period of industrial music -- they harken back to the first wave of machine-happy doomsayers who sprung up in the wake of pioneers like Throbbing Gristle and Neubaten, before industrial turned into one giant homogenized bad-spook- flick-sample-grafted-onto-dance-beat-plus-funny-haircuts-let's-all-get-laid- by-skinny-goth-babes-now thudfest dreamed up by spoiled suburban brats. In other words, their angst is a bit more generalized and less "romantic" than the musings of the current crop (that's all Trent is, you know, a hopeless romantic crushed by reality and buried in a truly immense bed of synths and gadgets).

Musically, Phycus lean mostly toward the sludgy side of things -- their sound is deliberately hollowed-out and mechanical, and they're one of the last bands left that actually still sounds interesting ranting through a vocoder -- and this CD is a collection of the best material, essentially, from the many previously-mentioned cassette releases. They often lean toward a hip-hop kind of beat without ever falling into the rap camp (even though they have a "rap" song, "Grandmaster Phycus," that really isn't a rap song), but mostly favor a slow, pounding thud that just beats you into submission so they more easily indoctrinate you and fill your head with the knowledge that we're all hopelessly fucked. As i said, classical industrial....

Their pounding, skull-scraping minimalism works best on tracks like "Destroy the Earth" and "Blood Crave," while tracks like "Endorphinate" slow everything down to a doom-soaked crawl that will make you nod off and have really creepy dreams all night. A few songs like "Tottering Structures" edge up into the danceable territory, but even then it isn't long before the baromenter swings wildly and you fall into the chasm of such extended pain jaunts as "Phycus Sector." Occasionally they just get plain weird -- witness "No Sleep at All," where the bulk of the sound comes from what sounds like a hideously detuned toy piano being fed through a battery of sick gadgets, all running low on batteries. (And are those CELLOS i hear?) DEAD ANGEL approves of this shiny round slab of sonic ruin and pessimism. Of course, including a song called "Meat is Might" that actively encourages people to mindlessly consume meat products and rails out against the wild heathen vegetarians is also an easy way to win favor with the cheesburger- lusting chinawhite....

Once upon a time, way back in the wasteland of the dimples 'n chads (in other words, Florida), there was a progressive metal band called Inferno. They dissolved (for all the usual reasons) after making a couple of cassette-only releases, but guitarist and all-around swell guy Jay Peele has resurfaced in this new band, which kind of picks up where Inferno left off while shedding most of the obvious "metal" influences. Which means they can be as heavy as bulldozers when they feel like it, but they incorporate a lot of distinctly un-metalish elements (funk, chicken-scratching guitar, bizarre kitchen-sink noises, etc.) into something that's simultaneously much weirder and yet far more accessible to a non-metal audience. In fact, my guess is that the average metalhead would be hard-pressed to make heads or tails of this, and that it would actually hold more appeal to people who normally don't listen to metal at all. A strange set of affairs, all right....

From the very first track ("High Sun") it becomes obvious that this is not your average metal band -- sounds like a bass emulating a wood block (or vice versa) mix with straight-ahead rock drumming and guitars that move from jazzy riffing to flat-out power drone and back at unexpected intervals. There are probably more complicated song parts happening in this one track than on all of any nu-metal album... and that's just the first track. All of the songs that follow are full of inventive and unexpected structures and sounds. What i really like is when the abruptly shift gears from this layered and complex progressive-metal to flat out power-riffing, the first example of which pops up on "Drowning" (which also features swell harmony vox on the choruses). Even better is "Suppress," which starts like a funk track with ping-ping chicken-scratching guitar and starts a happening groove, then suddenly turns into pure overdriven metal guitars designed to test amplifier strain limits. The effect is like RED-era King Crimson dabbling in death metal, and the results will shear off the top of your skull. The ominious kitchen-sink bass and gruesome riff immolation running through "Nailhead" is pretty damn boss too.

Not everything is an exercise in slablike heaviness, though -- "Forts" is highly melodic (with lots o' chicken-picking guitar, too) but never stoops to the excess of devolving into a metal ballad or something (thank God), and "Push/Pull" incorporates a really nice piano part into the metallic swirl. "Mandala" is just plain different, beginning with ping-pong guitar, a lonely li'l wood block, and not much else; it gradually turns into something on the order of ambient funk (a bizarre concept, i know, but it's working here, so what the hell). "Smoke Screen" is another odd one, fading up from nothingness into a a heavily-flanged and gated swirl of sound that constantly sounds like it's on the verge of shutting down, an effect that creates heaviness almost as a byproduct. The rest of the songs fall somewhere between these extremes, defying all attempts to figure out how the hell they ever came up with such genuinely different ideas. Playing "spot the influence" would be a tough one with this disc....

This (along with bands like Sour Vein and Electric Wizard) only proves my point that the best heavy sounds these days are being made far, far outside the shadow of major labels. This is what the young skatepunks in flannel should be listening to, not horrible shit like Limp Bizkit and Korn. (I exclude Static-X from my derisive scorn o' nu-metal mainly because of their penchant for playing riffs endlessly and for coming up with "The Trance is the Motion.") This lays waste to 99% of what passes for "heavy" music at the moment (the other 1% would be doom metal, where all the action is, natch).

The guys in Pigeonhole are also recording engineers who run their own studio by day, and apparently during (and in between) sessions for CHANNELS, they did a lot of farting around in the studio, jamming on improvised instrumental tunes... but because these guys are stellar musicians and influenced by a wild range of stuff, their off-the-cuff jams sound far more alien and interesting than your average jam session. As befits a bunch of studio engineers, the sound on the disc is brilliant, and there are some mighty strange sounds indeed: buzzing bass drone on "Abstract I" and "Mayflower," strange, chopped-up syncopation moves on "Jet Children," rattling noises on "The Imaginary Escalator Transmitter," mutant beats all over "Heart Haunts," what sounds like perfectly-timed skipping CDs on "Here Come the Fleas," and all sorts of bowel-scraping sonic effluvia on "Abstract II." In lesser hands this would just be an indigestible mess, but these guys pull it off through the application of savvy recording and serious chops. (Of course, it's anybody's guess how much -- if any -- of this is "live" and how much of it is pieces they liked and stitched together in bizarre configurations.) My favorite pieces, such as the semi-funky "Cruising With Mr. Phelps" and"E-Man On...," are the ones that approach sounding like backing tracks for actual songs, as opposed to sonic jams, but exotic sounds abound all over the place, so it's all pretty enjoyable. Strange but happening stuff. Well worth searching for.

Pineal Ventana -- LET THEM FUCK [Scuss Records]

Okay, before i even put the record on the turntable, they get bonus points for the title alone. They also get bonus points for the promo thingy that comes included, because its front cover has a drawing of underground roots in the shape of a skeleton. Like, MONDO, mon... Plus the record itself is a full-color picture disc with spiffy artwork that includes a deformed angel And they have an even niftier logo -- an inverted arrow that has been stylized to resembled a question mark (or a tentacle rising from a woman's crotch, depending on how perverted your interpretation of the picture is). So between all this and the fact that singer Clara Clamp occasionally plays topless, obviously this is a band with mucho style and rare taste, and thus DEAD ANGEL must bestow the seal of approval....

Not to mention that they sound an awful lot like, uh, the Butthole Surfers disemboweling Angel'in Heavy Syrup with twangy guitars, at least on "Let Them Fuck," anyway. They make a pretty surreal noise, all right. A lot of the reviews included with the promo thingy strongly insinuate that they are sort of an industrial band, but i don't think so, even if they do use samples here and there. Gothic isn't quite accurate either... psychotronic Southern gothic with twisted proto-punk art-damage riffing is probably closer to the truth. There ARE comparisons to Sonic Youth, which would be unfortunate except that they are better/more interesting than said unit. "Vacant Twat" throws in sax bleating (i think) to accompany the ominous sludge-riffing that surges over Clara's schizoid vox. Hmmm... maybe they're really more like the Butthole Surfers disemboweling the Scissor Girls, eh?

Side Two of this picture disc is a long (twenty minutes), flowing, free-form quasi-ambient spookathon with wailing, sustain-driven guitars like violins (well, maybe they ARE violins -- with these guys, one never knows) and cool, cryptic noises worthy of an O'Rourke disc. Eventually tribal drums start thudding away while the violin-like guitars saw and wail, with an effect not unlike that of, say, Crash Worship. Most suave. They won't necessarily replace Angel'in Heavy Syrup or Band of Susans in my pantheon of godhood, but they are definitely doing something interesting and it is a good thing they sent this disc to me....

This is definitely a step up in every direction for Atlanta's weirdest band -- in terms of artwork, production, cohesiveness, everything. This is the first album on which the glandular ones actually sound like a band instead of a shrapnel-infested cyclone in progress. Not that there was anything wrong with that -- their sonic fury has always been most pleasing -- but it's nice for once to hear their ominious dirges o' doom articulated with a bit more precision and clarity. Some of the credit for the sudden step up in production values undoubtedly goes to Martin Bisi -- given his inolvement, i don't think the Swans-like feel of the drums on tracks like "The Hooded Mirror" are any accident -- but i suspect a lot of it is just simply due to the band finally having the chance to work in a proper studio after eons of fire-breathing live shows.

The album opens with "Hollow," a creepy dirge of bowed electric guitar squeals and moody stuff (more guitar drones? keyboards? who the hell knows?) lapping like the ocean in the background as Clara Clamp goes on about being washed away by the sea... which, from a sonic perspective, is a perfect intro to "The Hooded Mirror," basically a Swans-like snare beat repeated endlessly with psychotic intensity as the rest of the band builds on top of it. By the time the keyboards come in and Clara decides to weigh in with her quavering harpy vox, she sounds like the angel of death flying over a city collapsing block by block. "Crack in the Light (Crack in His Eye" fades in with their specialty -- loping tribal drums and Clara (heavily reverbed here) carrying on like a woman deep in the throes of psychosis or possession, followed by twisting reels of guitar distortion and at last thick waves of sound; "Taenia Solium" follows in a similar but even less restrained fashion, harking back to their earlier hurricane-delirium style.

But then comes the surprise -- the slow, brooding pulse of "Dora's Deliverance," like the blues gone tribal. Clara starts out in talk-talk mode, carrying on a conversation that's almost impossible to discern since she's mixed down below the music, but as it increases in intensity before drawing back like a snake and suddenly revving up to cyclone speed, she goes into full-tilt shriek mode, sounding most scary and flat-out demented. Oooo, the headless sno-cone girl approves! "Rats for Belmer" introduces weird found sounds into the atmosphere (along with another heavily repetitive beat) and mainly gets bonus points for the title, but "Flesh That Moves" is a most swell exercise in atmosphere that blends an obscure sample (i think) and washes of sound into a thick soup that gradually coalesces into an actual song of no small fury and impact. "They Hide Life" is mainly an exercise in scary drones (more of that bowed guitar at work) that leads into "Ruin," apparently the Pineal answer to goth, one that works much better than you'd expect for a band weaned on the runaway -train-on-fire aesthetic.The final track, "Practice," clearly demonstrates their newfound confidence in mixing the quiet and subtle with the loud and scary -- a twinkly keyboard motif is gradually joined by oscillator tones, squeaks and squawks, and other ominous noise, all serving as backing for a sample of a medical professional pontificating on the subject of medicine... but instead of going out in blinding waves of sonic terrorism, they allow it to fade back down and out. A suave move.

Needless to say, this comes highly recommended, particularly as an introduction to the band. Special mention should also be made of the power-packed graphics -- Unit Circle has a reputation for turning out nice-looking CD packages, but this is something else. Never ones to shy away from the concept of presenting the beauty in ugliness, the front of this CD must be seen to be believed....

Remember the possessed li'l girl with the nasty mouth and bad dietary habits in THE EXORCIST? Did you ever wonder just what happened to the demon nibbling on her tasty popcorn soul after the priest helpfully cast it out? Well, i know what happened to the demon -- he took a long vacation on the Nile and then came back to inhabit one Clara Clamp, the "vocalist" for this here band (although calling Clara a "vocalist" is about on par with calling the Unabomber "mildly eccentric"... understatement gets you nowhere in some cases, do you dig?). Either that or she's been coached by Diamandas Galas, which practically amounts to the same thing anyway. To say that Clara is intense is sort of like saying the ocean has some water in it. It's not enough for the band to sound like a manic fusion of punk, industrial, and metal that frequently moves in three separate directions at once, all of them loud and forbidding, no, they have to have Clara floating over the whole catastrophic panorama of sonic immolation like a floating harpy heaving poison-tipped harpoons at the unwary. I could go on in this vein, natch, but i think you get the idea... this band is not for the weak, okay?

This is the band's second offering on Unit Circle, following last year's savage and bludgeoning MALPRACTICE, the disc on which their years of sonic experimention finally coalesced into something that not only lurches, explodes, and shrieks, but actually swings. (Blame it on Martin Bisi, best known for his work with the Swans, a connection that is not even remotely coincidental given the importance of percussion to both Swans and Pineal Ventana.) Bisi is back tihs time around to help out again, and while the band has shed two members, their replacements are so in tune with the swirling-shrapnel-mantra ethic that you'd never even notice the difference. There is a progression of sorts, though -- if the last album was where they finally shaped their amorphous attack into something streamlined and angular, this album is where they loosen their grip again, unveiling songs that hold together at the core but are ready and willing to splinter apart at the seams at any given moment. Unlike most bands, Pineal Ventana are genuinely unpredictable -- very little of what they do is built on the concept of "chord progressions" leading to "obvious" places. Their entire aesthetic is more like several bands colliding at once, and with every album they've gotten better at making this work without dissolving into sloppy chaos (it's harder than it looks).

What i like on this album is that they've added metal moves to their whirling attack -- occasionally, as on the downright