A four-track EP, this release is to precede a full-length album by 15 Degrees Below Zero, and it's a fine way for them to segue into that promised full-length. I liked this from the moment I heard the first grating notes. Beginning with "Waiting for Laraine," we begin to see the modus operandi of this group of artists. They create great washes of sound, dark and ambient in nature, as well as more noise-based grumblings. There is indeed something "cinematic" about this recording-it allows your mind to wander and dream while still retaining some control of that mental voyaging. It takes you places pleasant and dreary, sinister and stark. The second track, "Is Anybody There," stands out as my personal favorite, with odd chimes sounding in the beginning while a droning hum quietly fills the background. At times it almost sounds as though there's a voice, indistinct words perhaps, but you never can quite tell. In "Downs, Part One," we?re treated to the pleasant sounds of an acoustic guitar, slightly effected and backed by unobtrusive static-sounds-sounds which build up over the course of the song, slowly making their presence felt more and more. Ending with "Sunshine" (a song which opens with a voice repeating the word "surreal") the final impression this release leaves is a favorable one. Hopefully the wait for a full-length is not a long one. [Amanda] I'll leave it to Stylus (and the other review websites run by overthinking grad students) to ponder the dilemma of the modern man's quest to rock in a subculture that devalues any kind of genuine expression of enthusiasm or enjoyment as embarrassing or kitsch, ok? "After 9/11"... and all that. I know 25 Suaves started off as some kinda no-wave or noise band or something -- at least that's what the currently functioning 5% of my brain tells me -- but on 1938 they discovered the unabashed joy of ripping off Motorhead, Accept and the Kiss songs where Gene Simmons sang (you know, the only good ones). And on I WANT IT LOUD they do exactly what I wanted from a followup -- they don't change a fucking thing -- they just get heavier, the vocals are yet more grating, the songs still catchy as fuck. For some reason I really feel like there's an early Death influence floating around here, dig the opening riffs and they have a song called "Born Dead." It isn't a cover, but the spirit's there. This isn't the sound of college kids eager to dip their wicks in the rapidly evaporating piss-puddle of ironic metal fandom, this is the sound of love. Awww! [Gafne Rostow] The title is accurate enough -- this is definitely noise, but it's noise rendered in a lovely and romantic fashion, suitable for blissing out or making out. The band has been active since 1994 under the leadership of Jason Coffman (his only other partner in crime on the recordings is vocalist Teresa Santoski), beginning with cassette-only releases and culminating in this, the band's seventh full-length release. The album's sound is in the same ballpark as bands such as Stars of the Lid, Troum, Hollydrift, Flying Saucer Attack, RE-ENTRY-era Techno Animal, and other masters of noisy drone and minimalist beats. I have to wonder why I'm just now hearing about this band, because this is frankly amazing stuff, which means I have been missing out in a big way. WAH! While beats come and go and noise levels vary (the band's noise is not really intense at all, more about texture than power or volume), and the vocals are only intermittent, the one constant is a serious need for overwhelming drone. Heavily-reverbed washes of pure drone hold sway over nearly everything here; this is a good thing. Teresa's vocals only show up now and then, and then mainly as a faraway, disembodied chanting (see, for instance, "Tomorrow Romance") that blends perfectly into the shuddering drones. This is mysterious-sounding stuff, with drones imported from the deepest, coldest reaches of space; much of it is beatless, and when the beats do arrive, they remain basic, even minimalist. It's all about the sound the UFOs make -- when they take off, when they land, when they're drifting from one planet to the next. This is what the aliens listen to while necking in the shadow of the monolith on the dark side of the moon. Interstellar space overdrive has rarely sounded this dreamy (or sexy). Drone-rock enthusiasts should definitely check this out. When Public Eyesore started to seriously rock the house, I was hoping that head noise-tyrant Bryan Day would take advantage of his Japanese connections to bring more of the happening Japanese indie / avant scene to these shores. And he has -- more and more of the label's output is dedicated to documenting the works (studio and live) of Japanese bands such as this one. Do they bring the rock? They bring the rocks, in tiny li'l plastic cups filled with copious amounts of vodka and joy juice. This is a rockin' bunch of cats, built around the mad gyrations of snake-charmer guitarist Hiromi Unakami, devil bassist Yukio Hasegawa, and pogo drummer Yoshiro Yamauchi. Occasionally they convince their good pal Toru Kato to strap on a guitar and get up and warble along with them, but mainly it's all about the trio. The sad part is that I have no idea if the group even exists anymore; this is actually a reissue (or first issue of long-lost material) of stuff that was recorded back when I was still gaining my black belt in drunken hoodlum-fu, which was quite a while ago. The first five tracks were cut in a studio in Tokyo in December, 1982; the remaining four tracks here are from a live show in Tokyo in November, 1981. The scary part is that none of this sounds dated at all -- in fact, this is so fresh, so now, that I can fully understand why nobody back then had the balls (or brains) to put this out, because they did not understand about bringing the rock. But this does, and the Angels are (were?) swank motherfuckers and you should hear this. Swell, swell stuff. Perhaps if we're lucky PE will uncover more recordings from the madhouse and give us another dose of manic Angel-fu. Crunchy tunes somewhere between indie-rock, rap, and industrial from a band in the Czech Republic (or maybe the Slovak Republic, it's hard to tell). The first track, "Boston Baltics," is a hefty yet bizarre song about American basketball players; the second song, "While," is a strange funk-rap raveup about... about... well, I don't know what it's about, but it's catchy, very catchy. Weird, wonderful, idiosyncrastic vibes, to say the least. There's only two songs here, but they're surprising and energetic. Good things are happening on the other side of the big blue puddle. Six tracks of punishing, overamped power-electronics and antimusic from Austin noise guru Matt LaComette. This is sound violence from the Masonna / Macronympha / early Merzbow / Whitehouse school of busting shit up just for the thrill of watching people writhe helplessly on the ground with blood streaming out their ears. There's no grand artistic statement or political vision or even dirty pictures to distract from the real agenda here, which is simply destroying electronic gadgets and seeing if the speakers will catch on fire. Feel the PAIN, doom childe! Feel it! FEEL IT DEEP DOWN IN YOUR BONE MARROW! Note that the fourth track, "ARG" (all the titles are three-letter combinations beginning with A; no, I have no idea what that's about) starts off quietly and gradually, over twelve and a half minutes, builds into a high-pitched psychotronic noise hell. The sixth track, "ARJ," follows a similar aesthetic but gets down to the pain much more quickly. The rest of the tracks are the sound of angry robots sodomizing each other in the midst of electronic Armageddon. Gruesome but perversely liberating, like bathing in hydrochloric acid. Intense doesn't begin to cover it. Limited to 30 copies, so you better act fast and hope there are still a few left. The band is actually a duo of Paul Kirkpatrick (who wrote the songs and plays all the instruments, although guitarist Gordon Foley provides additional guitar on several tracks) and former Kirk & Kushty singer Adelle Kirk, and the songs on this album are thematically linked by a fascination for death and murder. The lyrics mine the same uneasy territory as TWIN PEAKS, BLUE VELVET, and similar films, with twelve songs exploring the disturbed thinking of serial killers and their victims. Given the gruesome subject matter, the songs are actually fairly tasteful and introspective; the entire approach is far more arty than lurid, with songs that incorporate elements of electronica, melodic rock, goth, and (less frequently) metal. The subject matter and unsual song structures make the album eerie without resorting to heaviness as a crutch. The feel is somewhere between Bloodrock's infamous second album (the one with the seventies cult classic about an accident victim's terminal ambulance ride) and the Golden Palominos death-rock classic DEAD INSIDE, although musicially and lyrically it's far closer to the latter. Strange, unsettling stuff -- probably not heavy or straightforward for metalheads, sure, but perfect for goth listeners in search of the latest creepfest. This futuristic jazz soundtrack is the third (and apparently final) album in a three-record cycle by this collective of musicians from Norway, and is based on the screenplay for Trista Namo's RDTR. The opening track, "Sci-Fi City," sets the tone for everything that will follow -- a mournful trumpet and tinkly piano washes are drowned out by the ambient noise of a busy city. The rest of the album incorporates elements of jazz, noise, soundtrack music, found sound, techno, and other musical disciplines to construct a complex audio narrative of a city of the future. The mood and the backdrop change from one song to the next, creating a flow much like navigating different neighborhoods in a large and varied city whose ethnic eccentricities cannot be restrained by the burdens of modern technology. Titles like "Automated Bathroom," "Police Chasing Police," "Ministry of Police Affairs," and "Going Commercial" offer an interpretation of the overall work as a comment on the Orwellian possibilities of this fictional city of the future, but the music itself (even when accompanied by cryptic narratives) provides few clues about the work's meaning. Nevertheless, the album moves from one song to the next with jazzy, droning trumpets gliding over techno beats and lush, complicated layers of sound, inviting the listener to create their own interior movies to match the mysterious soundscapes. The mysterious droning sound of the opening track is mirrored in the closing track, "Stellar Epilogue," creating a nice auditority bookend of sorts. (The actual album is followed on the cd by two untitled bonus tracks of a similar nature to the rest of the album, possibly remixes.) The ultimate result is a dark and cerebral soundtrack album filled with interesting sounds over lush, jazz-influenced orchestration, a collection of work equally suitable for close inspection or as background music. Nice, not to mention enigmatic. The spirit of improvisational jazz takes flight on this series of collaborations spearheaded by saxophonist David Borgo. Over thirteen tracks he appears in a variety of configurations (solo, duet, trio, quartet, and quintet) with a wide range of interesting players (drummer Nathan Hubbard, percussionist Gustavo Aguilar, tenor saxophonists Jason Robinson and Robert Reigle, soprano saxophonist Andy Connell, bassist Bertram Turetzky, and pianist Anthony Davis). The pieces featuring only sax players ("Sync" and "Swarm") are particularly interesting, with droning lines that weave around each other, sometimes in harmony and at other times in opposition, while the duets with pianist Anthony Davis ("Miko," "Rivers of Consciousness") sound lovely, even romantic. Borgo tends toward a quiet, reflective sound, especially on the solo piece "Conversations with the Not-Self" (in which he plays the chalumeau, an instrument I've never heard of), and even the larger ensemble pieces reflect this sensibility; this is music for contemplating the twilight and relaxing in the evening, not for jumping around in nightclubs. Even in some of the duets with percussionists (such as "In the Land of In-Between," with Gustavo Aguilar) the sound remains spare and largely sedate (although his percussion on "Beantown Bounce" is considerably livelier); it's only on the larger ensemble pieces with percussion ("On the Five," "Oddity," and "Reverence for Uncertainty") that the sound ever gets busy (and even then it never gets out of hand -- even when they're jacking up the excitement index, things still remain largely meditative). This is the sound of improvisation in a contemplative mood. Pour a martini, loosen your tie, and put up your feet to enjoy the sound as it flows around you. Ahhh... Buzzov.en. I can remember picking up a cassette copy of their second full-length, SORE, way back in 1994 at Sam The Record Man in the Village Mall here in St. John's. (This was back when you could still find intresting music at a record store in the mall.) The tape caught my eye because of the band name (Buzzoven? What the fuck is a Buzzoven?) and the intense cover art -- a warped semi-biomechanical surrealist painting (done by a guy named Craig Lima). The piece is almost indescribable -- there is a Jesus figure with a wolf's head growing out of one side of the face, a semi cat-faced woman, a body twisted and pulled into the shape of a skull, yellow and blue babies, playing cards, snakes, fish tails... I figured that if the music lived up to the art, it was going to be something. The record started with a tweaked and vari-speeded sample of some guy saying "Welcome to violence" over another sample of a woman screaming, both over a filthy, sub-Sabbath bassline. Whiskey-soaked rock with a Chapman Stick?!?! And trumpet? And mandolin? Whoa, something strange is definitely afoot in California.... Don't let the bit about the Chapman Stick fool you -- I have no idea where they got the idea to run with that particular instrument, but this has absolutely nothing to do with Rush or King Crimson or prog rock in general. This is more like Black Heart Procession minus all the cryptic effluvia, Screaming Trees with more focus, a less eccentric and idiosyncrastic Cindy Lee Berryhill, or something approximating straight-ahead roots rock. The kind of music they're making here has nothing to do with scenes and trends; this album could have been made fifty years ago (well, they would have had to live without the Chapman Stick, but somehow I suspect they would have managed) instead of in 2000. This reminds me a lot of the new-school hill country bands in Texas, only with roots in rock more than country. These are the kind of songs you would expect to hear on albums by John Prine, Steve Earle, or Townes Van Zandt. In other words, swell and timeless stuff. Favorites include "King & Queen," "Harbor," "Ocean Light," "St. Mark's Place," and "Through the Trees." If Neddal were reviewing this, I suspect this would be his favorite album of the issue. Highly recommended. This is disturbed shit and if you're over thirty, your girlfriend / wife will probably refuse to have sex with you again until you "turn that horrible shit OFF!" The band consists of six musical perverts who like to bang on metal objects, like to juxtapose very different kinds of sounds, and have the attention span of gnats on crack. They've shared the stage with the likes of Kites, Lightning Bolt, Mindflayer, The Flying Luttenbachers, and other like-minded people who prefer to dismantle music with wrenches and screwdrivers rather than do something as boring and mundane as actually, you know, play it, so you probably have an idea already about where they're coming from. "Singer" Anya Davidson also likes to shout a lot, which is always a good thing. I'm not sure exactly what the hell she's yelling about, but I get the vague impression it might be sort of obscene. Meanwhile the rest of the people jumping around and breaking shit around her sound appropriately possessed. Sometimes, as on "Elimidate," they get some swell rhythms going when they bang their gong and get it on. Imagine Pineal Ventana with a stolen saxolphone on real, real bad drugs and possessed by Satan while in the grip of a Tourette's seizure and it all becomes horribly, terribly clear, doesn't it? No? Well, that's okay -- musical obfuscation is kind of the whole point here, I think. "Fright Makes Right" is a pretty hep (and borderline smutty) ass-shaker, too. They also have a song called "Give peace a chance" that sure as hell doesn't sound like anything Lennon ever did (although the psychotic yelping does bring to mind Yoko at her scariest). "Narwhal" even manages to sound sort of like a pop song (well, maybe if you squint) buried under twiddling synth filth. There's plenty of percussion madness taking place as well, which always helps. Devolved scariness abounds across all sixteen disjointed (sometimes VERY disjointed) tracks. Andy from Panicsville mastered the thing for maximum earhate. You know you need it, if only to seduce that nice Catholic girl across the residence hall into joining you on a mattress on the Dark Side while this romantic act of sonic defilement hides your pained grunting. Five tracks from a meeting of the minds in Berlin -- San Francisco treated-guitar wizard Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Brooklyn electric guitarist Chris Forsyth, and Hamburg alto saxophonist Lars Scherzberg -- recorded by Scherzberg in Berlin on March 13, 2002. The five tracks are generally lengthy (all but one are over nine minutes each; the "short" one is only 6:15) and feature improvised noise made from the various instruments in minimalist fashion. The musicians play off each other, against each other, and sometimes even with each other, wresting peculiar and often unfathomable noises from their instruments. This is not a wall-shaking noisefest, however -- the action is largely restrained, and on some tracks (like the first), there's plenty of silent spaces between the bursts of sonic anarchy. These are exercises in patience, as disparate sounds are drawn out slowly and in cryptic fashion; wherever it is they're going, they're taking their time about it, and you'll just have to wait until they get there. As the title suggests, this album is about simple sounds, and frequently more about the spaces between those sounds than the sounds themselves. The fourth (and shortest) track and the fifth one are the only ones with the most action, and even then that only rises to brief levels of intensity before settling back into the pattern of subdued thumping and bumping. The overall effect has less to do with music in any accepted sense of the word and more with spatial composition and the deep, burning need to make strange noises. Powerfully cryptic stuff for your minimalist inner child. This odd collection of nine tracks from percussionist Brad Dutz, in concert with a shifting army of collaborators, is inspired by gardening. All the titles reference gardening, and for all I know he came up with the concept while working in his garden. The result is a series of pleasing improvisational jazz tracks with a shifting group of guests that includes Chris Wabich (drumset, steel drum, percussion), Kim Richmond (B-flat clarinet), Bob Carr (bass clarinet), Sara Schoenbeck (bassoon), Ellen Burr (C flute, alto flute, piccolo), John Fumo (trumpet, piccolo trumpet), Kris Tiner (trumpet, flugelhorn), William Roper (tuba, spoken word), Trey Henry (acoustic bass), Dean Taba (acoustic bass), Anders Swanson (acoustic bass solo), and Jasper Dutz (bass clarinet, B-flat clarinet). The sound is equally influenced by world beat as by jazz, with supple percussion on tracks like "Look at the pretty weeds... they're dead" and "I like brown leaves especially when they're torn" creating a highly infectious (and groove-laden) bedrock for the others to improvise over. Other tracks like "Rotted vegetables... too late to pick" and "Rotted fruit... infested with insects" are calmer and more meditative, but it's the funkier and more upbeat, percussion-driven tracks like "Norbert rakes bark... and mulch" that are the real backbone of the album. Par for the course with all the discs released on this label, the musicians are all excellent players and skilled improvisers, and the humorous concept they're working from lends a light and playful air to the proceedings. Bonus points to Dutz for roping his nine-year old son into playing along, and to Jasper for the swell cartoon gardeners that decorate the artwork. The sound of pure psychedelic hippie bliss being beaten and sexually molested by teenage hoodlums wrecked on paint thinner after listening to too many obscure Amon Duul albums and Thrones singles. Or something like that. This is far less spastic and noise-dependent than most Load releases, but like everything else on the label, it's obviously the product of kids with peculiar ideas about warped music. On "Jrone (three)" several vocalists warble in a weird and hallucinatory fashion over an endless psych loop; this segues seamlessly into "Jrone (two)" as they start slathering on perverted efx-laden sounds like a dub crew hoggin' the hooch, and at some point they start sounding like a deeply perverse American answer to One Inch of Shadow, an idea guaranteed to mess with anyone's mind. At some point it occurs to somebody that rhythm is good, so he starts hitting things in something that approaches a steady rhythm without technically being one. And it just gets weirder and weirder.... "The Heart Beat" returns to the looped drone and processed vocal tip, throwing in some dive-bombing guitar frippery just to keep things from floating off into the ether. Things get a bit noisier on "(the ass)" but the hypno-mantra remains supreme; in fact, hypnotic and repetitive are good words to keep in mind throughout this entire release. Somebody from the No Neck Blues Band is on this album, if that's important to you. More evidence that the kids are not only all right, but stoned completely out of their fucking minds. Fake is the EBM / dark industrial solo project of Clint Carney of System Syn (who also moonlights as the live keyboardist in Imperative Reaction), with an aggressive and largely beat-heavy sound that mines old-school industrial and electronic body rock without sacrificing any of its more modern impulses. While some of the tracks are in the same ballpark as NIN on steroids, the lyrics are far more sophisticated and often politically pointed, and other tracks incorporate elements of noise, goth, and orchestral music into the pounding rhythm assault. The disc frequently comes across as a diabolical cross between old-school Skinny Puppy and more recent NIN minus the self-indulgent bullshit either of those bands have sometimes favored. The eleven tracks are well-produced and executed, and frequently intense and forbidding. There are melodic, even pretty moments, but by and large this not even remotely wimpy music. Strong stuff that never loses sight of the beat, even when goosing the aggression meter up to the sky. Best tracks: "To This Land," "Burning You," "Blood and Skin," "The Massacre," and "We've Come To Take Your Life." Whole-grain hate for the body-rock crowd hasn't sounded this good in quite a while. This band has been around awhile (since 1989, actually), but this is their first new album in six years. The band is a duo of brothers Robert (electronic and acoustic instruments) and John (vocals) Bustamente, and their sound is one of highly rhythmic, melodic electropop. Their attack is frequently reminiscent of a stripped-down Massive Attack, especially on "Pigs Feet," but they're definitely not a trip-hop band; they probably have more in common with eighties keyboard synth-pop than anything else. Unlike a lot of EBM bands these days, they pretty much avoid aggressive displays of testosterone in favor of piling on layers of percolating, melodic, rhythm-happy keyboards. It's danceable without being obnoxious, filled with pinging keyboards and rhythms worthy of an early Depeche Mode album. "Through the Days" even downplays the keyboards, building everything around a catchy acoustic guitar before adding keyboards and beats to the layers of sound. Well-written songs and energetic performances make this enjoyable listening, and the willingness to switch between keyboard and guitar-driven songs keep things interesting. Worth checking out if you're down with catchy melodic dance-pop. As the cover indicates, it's a rabbit thing. I'm not too sure what that's all about, but this is ex-Inferno Jay Peele at work, and seeing how his aesthetic is all over the map, it could mean anything. (Actually, if you've ever read the Richard Adams classic WATERSHIP DOWN, some of the meaning might become apparent.) The disc itself, though, is a series of unusual experiments in sound (nineteen in all), with instrumentation that varies from track to track, including Fender Strat, fretless guitar, turntable, trumpet, AM radio, kalimba, Roland D-50, micro-Moog, five-gallon plastic jugs, ink pens, and so on. The tracks themselves are short, eerie, often mediative pieces, less about structure and "music" and cognitive thinking and more about the creation of unusual sounds, spontaneous behavior, and creating new music from old and unconventional instruments. A cool series of experiments from a guitarist who continues to demonstrate a wide range of talent. I know nothing about Gerritt and tragically misplaced the poop sheet in the move, but the grotesque, mulched sounds of this album are all you need to know about. On this 12" vinyl release, Gerritt sails through four tracks of broken sound and distressed electronics, frequently sounding like a series of machines breaking down. "Bon Voyage" combines noise, glitch electronica, and sratching sounds over a loop of distressed electronic sound, building in intensity and chaos as the piece progresses. "Vapor Wakes" is built on loops of rumbling, crashing waves over which broken electronic noises and disturbed grunting sounds rise and roar like wounded rhinos, with things growing steadily out of control over time -- the background loop keeps things somewhat anchored as the near-random thumping and bumping and squeaking and creaking on top grows into an avalanche of sonic anarchy. The mayhem continues on "Tongues," with the flanged sounds of high-pitched glitches giving way to subterranean growls and unexpected sounds of physical movement, combining the alien sounds of doomed electronic processing with purely analog sounds of microphone abuse and background noise. "Blindly Follow" is every bit as perturbed and inscrutable, filled with echoing sounds and rattles that come and go with a minimalist sensibility -- the effect here is more sparse and ghostlike, but still every bit as surreal, alien, and unnerving as the tracks that came before. Peculiar but oddly thought-provoking stuff. Their aim is to "bring back the danger that is missing in much of today's music," and while I'm probably the wrong guy to ask about that -- I tend to think the only real "dangerous" music being made these days is by psychotic dudes in corpsepaint who burn down churches when they're not making brooding epics about how grimly cult they are and all that, and even then there aren't many of those left -- these guys are certainly trying to bring the rock. They try real hard, actually, and are largely successful. What we have here, basically, is catchy, radio-friendly alternative rock with crunchy guitars, a rock-steady rhythm section, with ten highly listenable poptunes about all the usual stuff the kidz sing about these days. They remind me of Seether sometimes, except I thought Seether's first album (the one with the hit single, which turns out to be the only listenable thing on the album) sucked, and this does not suck. They are also largely angst-free and do not insert bad rapping / nu-metal / non-rock foolishness in their crunchy poptunes, which makes them a lot smarter than most bands around them these days. This band is actually pretty good, and while they aren't doing anything astoundingly new, they're doing it real well and the songs are consistently good; this is not an album with one or two good songs and a lot of filler. If you're down with this band's alt-rock sound, you should like the entire album. I'd certainly rather hear this on the radio than the horrible stuff I currently hear when I'm forced to endure spinning around the dial in the car. Ten songs, all of them good; I'm not so sure about their fashion sense, but the disc is well worth hearing. Green Andy has an interesting aesthetic: He prefers doing everything in one take, doesn't like going on endlessly (most of his songs clock in at less than two minutes), and doesn't like shoveling tons of stuff onto a cd just because there's room for it. The songs themselves (there's an even ten of them here) are loud, frequently distorted blasts of rhythm and cryptic instrumentation that lean heavily toward repetition and unexpected movements from one kind of sound to another. This is fractured sound-collage dementia, like something you'd hear from a band on Load Records but far more concentrated (and sometimes far more intense -- Andy's a fan of gut-busting volume hell). Cool, concentrated, and presented in a manner that gets the idea across with each song, then moves on to the next without overdoing things. It's an interesting approach, and one worth checking out. Flutist and vocalist Emily Hay has appeared on a ridiculous number of albums by other people -- including the U Totem, I Am Umbrella, Rich West Ensemble, Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet, the 5 UU's, and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, just to name a few -- but this is apparently her first actual collection of material. It's not exactly a solo album, but more a collection of pieces from various musical projects she has appeared in over the past several years. In keeping with the label's improvisational schema, these tracks are all improvisations with no overdubs or second takes (the only exception is "A Year and Two Weeks," where a vocal track was later added). The spirit of "it is what it is" gets even more hardcore with three tracks ("Swamp Moss," "Waiting For Sara," and "Crooked Hopscotch") that were recorded directly to two-track tape with no subsequent mixing -- what you hear is exactly what went down. Brad Dutz and Marcos Fernandes appear on many of these tracks providing percussion and beats, which gives them a polyrhythmic, world-beat feel, but they are just about the only constants in a sea of changing faces (and instruments) over the twelve tracks. Hay contributes flute and voice on most tracks, but on occasion favors one over the other -- on "A Year and Two Weeks" it's her unusual voicings, calling to mind a more operatic Yoko Ono, that cut through the pulsing guitar and howling synth, while on "Hibiki," her trilling flute is the only thing happening over a smattering of opaque and peculiar percussion from Marcos Fernandes. While Hay's flute and vocal stylings provide a consistent theme to the tracks, the wildly divergent ensembles and their vastly different approaches give this disc a bit more unexpected variety than than most of the label's other recordings, which tend to focus on one ensemble over the course of a single disc. A fine release highlighting a side player who, from the sound of this, probably deserves more attention. Holzborn is an improvisational composer working mainly with electronics, and this release is his solo debut after appearing on a number of compilations and collaborations on Accretions, Dot Dot, and Circumvention. His method of attack is to begin with field recordings and custom-made samples, then mutate them into hideously unrecognizable shapes through severe efx processing. Normally a guitar player, here he wields a laptop in service of noise and fractured sound, creating fifteen tracks of highly unusual textures and noisy soundscapes. This is the sound of music being blown apart, reassembled in new exotic shapes, then blown apart again. Some of the tracks are emergency broadcast tests in reimagined sound and others are pure electronic creations on the laptop, and there's no way to tell which ones are which -- it's all exotic and alien-sounding, antimusic that serves as the building blocks of an opaque and cryptic compositional approach. In other words, it's weird-sounding stuff frequently made from grating noises that owes much to the world of glitch electronica, and your mother probably won't like it. There's no telling what the original sound sources were like, but he perverts them into some fascinating new shapes, that's for sure. Fascinating, if sometimes unnerving, excursions into the outer realms of efx processing and electronic sound creation. New vistas in sonic terrorism from a band that would be equally at home on Load Records. How excessive is this gruesome exercise in chopped-up tooth gnashing? So excessive that they had to spread the sonic bud butter over not one, but two cds. The "band" is built around the core of Colin Marston (formerly of Dysthymia and Behold... the Arctopus) and pal George Korein getting their freak on with loops, devolved rhythms, and a fondness for arctic drone. On the first disc (CANCER) they open with two spazzed-out bursts of crazed sonic violence, piling sound on top of sound at hyperspeed and sawing through the works with a buzzsaw set on stun... then they segue into "Damage Fractal Series I," a twelve-plus minute dark-ambient soundscape in three movements that seethes with malevolent intent before resolving into a pounding swirl of tortured rhythms, screeching, and diseased sonic ugliness. The sound of "bedridden" is somewhere between that of a trance ritual built from looped jazz chords and faraway drones and the ominous, forbidding crawl of the last Corrupted record. The trancelike rhythms and background drones continue in "involuntary emotional response," with a gradually mutating bell-like guitar sound that would make Troum proud -- a sound that grows teeth (and volume) as the piece progresses. The second disc (CANCER; DECAY) begins with the short and heartwarming damage report "Bedsores (for G.W.B.)" -- short, crashing bursts of broken sound that are eventually swallowed in loops of noise and glitch electronica -- before settling into the lengthy "Involuntary Physical Response," itself a series of devolved loops, noise tones, and other effluvia that mutates over time into a crashing swamp of agitated percussion, tape-mulched noises, and other grim sonic junk and droning noise. "Damage Fractal Series II" combines black metal noise and glitch fury over wild sheets of amplifier noise and hum, then moves into eerie ambient soundscapes built from processed voices and keyboard drama laced with percussion flourishes. Another burst of harsh noise and glitch madness ("The Extraction of Delicate Tissue") is followed by "Damage Fractal Series III," a disorienting collage of wildly disparate noises, sounds, and tones hurled into the void with a considerably wide dynamic range. The final track, "Temporarily Dissolving Into Plasma During a Moment to One's Self," builds over twenty-plus minutes from fluctuating amp hum to delicate piano and drone, addling layers of noise and electronica along the way, growing in both density and volume as the cyclotron warms up, until by the end everything begins to dissolve into an excoriating acid bath of blind white noise and the sound of jet airplanes dropping Kenmore dryers down the side of Mount Everest. Bold and highly ambitious stuff, to be sure. Very dreamy atmospheres choke this recording. We?re treated to sounds ranging from an almost loungy feel to more expected "post-rock" fare, which all blend together in a very quiet, nice way to create the whole that is TOSLEEPTODREAMTOWAKE. Admittedly, at times the repetitiveness can be too repetitive, but it still retains a certain charm that can't be denied. I was reminded, for some inexplicable reason, of Tarantino movies. Perhaps it's the "groove" they have going on some tracks, or the fact that I've only ever seen Tarantino movies on extremely lazy summer afternoons -- something this album also put me in mind of. Whatever the case, this is certainly good listening for an afternoon of reading, or a soundtrack for an afternoon drive to the country. [Amanda] This disc is a series of seven duets between Jeff Kaiser (trumpet, quarter-tone trumpet, flugelhorn, live processing) and Andrew Pask (clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano / alto / tenor saxophones, bass penny whistle, live processing), all recorded live in the studio with no overdubs or pre-recorded samples in October of 2004. These are largely extended workouts -- three are approaching ten minutes, two exceed fifteen -- featuring a variety of sounds created with traditional instruments, some of which are allowed to stand, while others are significantly mutated. The sound, especially on tracks like "Wheeling Rebus," is surprisingly vast and multi-layered for only two players being present, with a significant element of drone amid the traditional sound of wind instruments. "Dim Effigies" opens with a loud explosion of sound, as the instruments are processed in a wildly overdriven manner for several minutes before resuming a more "normal" (and less ear-frying) sense of interplay before mutant sound blasts begin to creep back in as the piece progresses, along with long, sustained drones. The album's center is taken up by the two longest works, "The Variability of Stammering Arrows" and "Blue Air Habit," themselves almost the length of a full album at over thirty minutes; the former is driven by more loud experiments in sound processing and drones, with a sense of dynamics that flow and ebb as the sound of violence dies away and is replaced by more serene playing, only to pick up again later. The latter is built more around natural sounds, although there are moments of processing that result in whirling, high-pitched drones and, toward the end, thundering waves of low-end bass rumble. The mixture of natural sounds and processed sounds makes for a shifting, drifting ocean of texture in which all things are impossible to pin down. There's something happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones? Better sit down while you try to figure out how it's possible to make ordinary instruments sound so otherworldly. Actually two releases in one, the first half of this disc consists of the Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet performing "The Alchemical Mass" in six movements, while the second half is the Kaiser / Diaz-Infante Sextet performing "Suite Solutio" in five parts. The first performance is best explained by this notation in the liner notes: "Nicholas Melchior Cibenensis -- chaplain and court astronomer to Ladislaus I (King of Hungary and Bohemia) and then Louis II -- wrote the text of THE ALCHEMICAL MASS between 1490 and 1516. Following the death of Louis II in 1526, Cibenensis fled to Vienna... where Ferdinand I would execute him in 1531. The original text is quite long and has been paraphrased for this composition." In other words, this is a concept album based on the liturgy of said document (stripped down to a more manageable size), with the Ockodektet performing as key portions of the Mass are intoned by the Ojai Camerata, composed of five sopranos, five altos, three tenors, and four basses under the choral direction of Dr. Wyant Morton. The Ockodektet this time around consists of woodwinds (Vinny Golia, Eric Barber, Jason Mears), trumpet / flugelhorn (Kris Tiner), trombone (Michael Vlatkovich), tuba (Mark Weaver), bass (Jim Connolly), prepared acoustic guitar (Ernesto Diaz-Infante), acoustic piano (Wayne Peet), percussion (Brad Dutz), and drum set (Richie West), as conducted by Jeff Kaiser and Dr. Wyant Morton. The sound is a curious and striking mix of traditional Latin Mass and experimental orchestration, in which the theme of the alchemy of metals is expounded through the alchemy of improvised sound. The ockodektet's performance is restrained when appropriate (sometimes dropping out entirely, or close to it, during the choral parts), yet robust and energetic during the more improvised moments, offering a wide dynamic range and the free exploration of sound within a largely traditional context. The rest of the disc is rounded out by "Suite Solutio," featuring Jeff Kaiser on trumpet / flugelhorn, Ernesto Diaz-Infante on prepared acoustic guitar, Scot Ray on trombone, Jim Connally on bass, Brad Dutz on percussion, and Richie West on the drum set -- the same personnel, essentially, as the first extended piece but minus the woodwinds and choir, with Kaiser in the mix. The results are similar, but considerably more active (especially in the percussion department) without the need to make room for voices. The other major difference between the two sets is Kaiser, who has a distinct and unique approach to horns, one that is put to effective use here. The sum of the parts results in a whole that is an unexpected but engaging direction for Kaiser and his cohorts. This is a live recording of a solo performance by guitarist Masami Kawaguchi at Penguin House in Tokyo on December 21, 2002. Kawaguchi sings and plays a Fender twelve-string Stratocaster on three long, heavily repetitive tracks. The recording is okay, but the performance is great (although some may find his vocals unnerving), and he gets a great, shimmering guitar sound, a lonesome sound that calls up images of wandering lost in the woods after dark. I would assume these are Japanese folk songs of (judging from the intensity of his singing) an intensely personal nature, although as the pieces wear on, he has a tendency to drift into passages of experimentation and unusual chords. It frequently sounds like folk music from another planet (which I suppose Japan is, in some ways). Somber and contemplative stuff that requires a fair level of patience to process (at least until you get to the third song, which opens up in a quite noisy fashion). The one area where I suspect American audiences may have a hard time hanging with Kawaguchi's vision is in the tortured, near-operatic vocals, but that's just too bad -- the man has an individual sense of vision and style, plus (as the last track proves) he's capable of being a totally crazed solo guitarist. Nifty, nifty, nifty. Just be prepared for that unsettling voice, okay? More madness from Japan, this time courtesy of H. Konishi (banjo) and T. Okazaki (electronics), with four lengthy, improvised tracks recorded live at Sonic Brew on March 17, 2004. Konishi has a bizarre approach to banjo playing, to put it mildly, with plucked lines and occasional strumming that is countered by odd noises and electronic filth from his pal with the gadgets. Their interaction quite often gets intensely crazed, but there are moments as well (particularly in the introductions) where the sound is more sparse, more devoted to the banjo going plink-plink-plunk! while the electronic death waits, brooding, in the background. There are moments on the third track where Konishi starts whipping up a storm, demonstrating that he can actually play the thing instead of just making near-random plinking noises, but mostly he's about less-organized sounds. The four tracks share certain similarities, but branch out in different directions at times, mainly through the deployment of different kinds of electronic devices. Strange and perplexing, even for a PE release. Is there such a musical category as "naif pop" now? If there wasn't before, there is now. Krakow is one guy with a keyboard, guitar, and some gadgets in his bedroom making simple but catchy lo-fi pop tunes about friends, girls, internet dating, first graders, and similar obsessions. The sound of these short but surprisingly catchy tunes is somewhere between Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair, although Krakow's attitude is generally far sunnier than Johnston's and more recognizable as actual music than Fair's. With 31 songs on the disc, things keep moving right along, covering a lot of stylistic ground that keeps coming back to the kind of groove-laden synth-pop that went out of style about two decades ago. Bizarre but amusing, often even fun, and delivered in a highly quirky and individual style. Some of this reminds me of the first Flaming Fire album, if that means anything. It'll be interesting to see where he goes from here. A bold assertion in the liner notes proclaims, "WARNING: THIS IS NOT NEW AGE MUSIC!" Well, no shit -- those moony New Age yahoos aren't anywhere this weird and entertaining. This is not wallpaper music for listening to while polishing chakra stones, to be sure. The band is actually a new-school psychedelic band composed of former members of Fifty Foot Hose with guests from Gong (Daevid Allen) and Mandible Chatter (Grant Miller), among others. The core consists of multi-instrumentalists Walter Funk and Reid Johnston, who have been playing with Fifty Foot Hose since the band reformed in 1995; FFH founder Cork Marcheschi plays on the title track here as well. Fifty Foot Hose were a huge influence on bands like Pere Ubu, Chrome, Throbbing Gristle, and the eternally godlike Angel'in Heavy Syrup, with their peculiar penchant for turning gadgets into oddly listenable tools of psychedelic sonic mayhem. The better-known Gong were probably an influence on seventies psych rock second only to Amon Duul (take your pick of which version), but FFH -- who released one brilliant album, CAULDRON, in the late sixties and then didn't bother to get around to putting out a second one until 1997 (perhaps they were too busy eating "special" brownies and building new noise-making gadgets, eh?) -- were always a much weirder band, and the bands they influenced have in turn been a huge inspiration to tripped-out noisemakers from the late seventies onward. This album makes it obvious they haven't lost their fondness for freaky and often homemade gadgets; following in the footsteps of Sun Ra and his Cosmo-everything tone tools, this album boasts sounds generated by such quirky items as the Cupid, the Ulysses, and the Hologlyphic Funkalizer, not to mention perverted uses for soda straws, jaw harps, sousaphones, and spark machines. (The Cupid is played by Fred "Spaceman" Long, which makes a deranged sort of cosmic sense.) The ten songs here -- with titles like "Dragon Titties," "Surrealistic At Large Domino," and "Ether Bunny's Music for the Massless" -- are deeply surreal and frequently hypnotic exercises in psychedelic funk that bridge the gap between Sun Ra and Funkadelic with lots of windowpane acid. Needless to say it's all incredibly swell, and anybody who was ever a fan of the above-mentioned bands (or just a fan of psych / devolved music in general) should want to hear this. The outer (and inner) spaceway monorail is boarding; come get your psychedelic hypnogroove on with the boys with the best toys. Kwisp -- TERIYAKI VEST ODYSSEY [Pinephone Recordings] If Walter Funk doesn't have a shelf full of Nurse With Wound, Faust and Vas Deferens Organization CDs, I'd be surprised. I know he worked with Mandible Chatter, remixed Daevid Allen and participated in the resurrection of 60s psych/rock/electronic band the Fifty Foot Hose (whose Cork Marcheschi appears on a track here). The Kwisp sound alternates between sparse and chaotic junk music ala NWW and weird, tribalistic disordered songs like liturgical music made by nitrous-crazed Alabamanian-Polynesian dwarves. Maybe a fond look back at when the Thomas Dissevelts and Tod Dockstaders of the world wrenched electronic and tape music from the hands of academia and shaped their own futuristic dayglo mushroomscapes and blacklit apocalypses. Maybe just a little less Jew's harp next time. [Gafne Rostow] This is heavy, very heavy and muddy and angry. The first song, "Baghdad," is actually one of the calmer tunes contained herein. It's a lovely song, really. Lush, winding, very full, yet still as heavy as all the rest. Then there are songs like "In the Dirt," which is short and to the point-words yelled, drums pounding. This recording is like that proverbial breath of fresh air, that album you listen to when you're angry at someone or something and despite its being just as pissed as you are it still manages to put you in a better mood simply by being executed so perfectly. The dissonance they display on most tracks, offset by what can be termed discordant harmonies, only serves to makes it more likeable, which reminds you of just how fine it is to come across well-crafted heavy music. [Amanda] Levit is a modern jazz cat who normally performs at places like the Knitting Factory, the Kennedy Center, and the Montreal Jazz Festival as the leader of the Rob Levit Group, but this immense double-cd is not a jazz album. No, this is an ambitious move into the field of experimental electronics, a solo album built from the ground up on the computer, in which synthetic beats are married to strange sounds, cut and paste textures, eerie processed noise, and other sonic effluvia to create forty wildly different tracks that encompass experimental music, noise, electronica, and a peculiar kind of ambient soundtrack music. Levit was weaned on the likes of Mingus, Metheny, Hendrix, and McLaughlin, but the tracks on this set have more to do with Stockhausen, Eno, and Telstar than anything in the jazz world -- the only real nod to jazz here is in the spirit of things, the manner in which tracks are assembled and sounds are juxtaposed. The cover bills these tracks as "electronic soundscapes," as good a description as any, and while their sound and construction vary greatly from one track to the next, they share a similar feeling of eerie otherworldliness. His talent for composition (he's won several prestigious awards for composition) keeps the tracks sharp and focused, and his attention to detail results in a large variety of different sounds and beats over the two discs. It's true that two cds worth of these peculiar experiments in sound might be too much for the average listener, but there's certainly plenty of interesting stuff to hear. The two discs don't appear to be broken down into disparate themes, although the second one does strike me as a bit more beat-heavy. Some of the the tracks actually approach the realm of modern techno, and even the stranger ones are far more accessible (and listenable) than you might expect from the project's description. The tracks are generally short (most are in the neighborhood of three minutes, and often less), which keeps them from getting stale; he obviously understands the power of brevity. Strange and exotic stuff, definitely not what you'd expect of someone steeped in jazz, but highly rewarding nevertheless. With photos of Little Fydor looking like a crazed lunatic with a guitar and titles like "Oh God I Feel Like Shit," "I Am Insane," and "You... Are So Stupid," I was almost afraid to listen to this for fear that the music could never hope to match the great titles. It's a good thing I did, though, because the music is just as swell as the titles and every bit as bizarre as Fydor's unnerving appearance would suggest. I think Fydor may secretly be one of the Doktors For Bob, who all went into hiding after the failed assassination attempt on J. R. "Bob" Dobbs. He's certainly out there, with a caustic appraisal of humanity to match his weirdness. This is not new stuff: This disc was recorded in 1994 and apparently just recently reissued, but it's every bit as devolved and entertaining now as it undoubtedly was then. Drugged-out, psychotic music segues into spastic proto-punk and moves on to wigged-out blues and unnerving chipmunk-rap, and all the while the music remains extremely idiosyncrastic -- the effect is something like the Dead Milkmen or Ween channeling a Subgenius devival. Disorienting doesn't begin to describe it. This is the kind of stuff that has the power to polarize rooms, with half the listeners falling on the floor in helpless laughter and the other half stampeding for the nearest exit. (Needless to say, a sense of humor and a high tolerance for peculiar shenanigans is a prerequisite to enjoying music like this.) The song "You're Gonna Miss Me" may or may not be an "extremely free" take on the 13th Floor Elevators tune (I don't think it is, but with these jokers it's hard to be sure). Bonus points for the swank psychedelic hippie guitar in "You... Are So Stupid" (I'm a sucker for psychedelic hippie guitar). Fydor is joined by a ridiculous number of people in making these songs happen, although you'd never know it from the largely seamless nature of the tracks and the way his eccentric personality dominates the entire album. This is some kind of lost classic of whacked-out strangeness and probably deserves its own entry in the INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC series. Check it out before it disappears again. Ryan and Marty Rex (and pals Adam Brilla and Dave Doom) return for more drone-o-rific pop rock. This is the band's second full-length (after an extended ep) since shortening their name from Lockgroove Lullaby to just Lockgroove, and while it's significantly different from their previous hypno-masterpiece THROUGH THE ELEPHANT FOG, it still retains the heavy drone-fuzz guitars that have dominated everything they've done so far. The biggest difference this time around, though, is a decided shift toward songs with a pure-pop center. Weird guitar frippery often introduces or rides out the tunes, but the songs themselves are nothing but pure jangly pop with reverb-heavy guitars dropping in from time to time to launch everything into the stratosphere. Much of the time the sound is built on a thick slab of rhythm guitar that sounds like something lifted from one of the early (good) Sugar albums as another dreamier and more psychedelic guitar noodles around the edges. It doesn't hurt that Marty gets a great drum sound all over the album, a sound (in both tone and playing) that owes more to the best of sixties pop and jazz than modern rock. Highlights include "I'm Leaving," "Faded Sun," "Waste My Time," "Payin' the Price," "The Suicide Kings," "The Worst Mistake"... actually, to be honest, the entire album rocks from start to finish, something that's unfortunately all too rare these days. Psychedelic pop rock this swank is not something you should want to miss. Like, OW, dudes. Lung Lunch is a noise / power-violence unit from Austin consisting of Dillon and Zach on tapes and gadgets and extreme volume-fu. I watched them totally destroy a bunch of pedals live one night a few months ago and I thought that was loud; well, this is even louder. This is, frankly speaking, way too loud for normal humans (hell, it's too loud even for me, which is scary). I don't know how either of them can actually hear anything any more after a year or more of inflicting this kind of punishment on themselves, not to mention others. Five tracks of complete blinding noise and extreme pedal-fu, like the sound of squadrons of Stukas blowing up cities and then incinerating them in titanic walls of fire until only gray, smoking ash remains. Sort of like the remains of my stereo. The tracks have titles like "UFCOYONDAYAOOM" and "KKENZANYO" and they will shear off the top of your skull. "IPZURAI" is not quite as satanically violent and "KKENZANYO" have relatively non-painful moments, but the rest of it is diabolical earhurt at ridiculous volumes. A return to old-school noise and power-electronics, complete with perverse and unnatural packaging, limited to 24 copies. Ow ow ow. Providence, RI is home to Corleone Records and some of the strangest bands on earth. Mahi Mahi is one of them, a cryptic duo of V. von Ricci (vocals, noises) and Servicio (drums, noises), and the songs are essentially exercises in droning, pinging keyboard noise over hard beats while the vocalist intones vocals (often in the background, frequently through much processing). It's strange stuff, often deliberately irritating yet surprisingly danceable, with an aesthetic that owes as much to K. C. and the Sunshine Band as to Arab on Radar. The lyrics read like mysterious in-jokes and the entire effect is sort of like listening to a damaged SOLID GOLD soundtrack while stoned on crack. Corleone obviously shares a lot of the same fascination for eccentric behavior as Load Records, and I could see this band on tour with just about any band from that label (but especially Pink and Brown). This kind of madness is what happens when you give demented people drums and keyboards. Plenty of great beats amid the sonic bedevilment, though, not to mention keyboard tones lifted from Suicide and Devo. Best tracks: "You Can Feel Right," "The Fire Is On," "Downtown," "He Won't Give Up," and "Number Nine." The main purpose behind this band is in exploring the potential of unusual instruments; most of the instruments used on this album were made from clay by musician / sculptress Susan Rawcliffe, often based on handmade instruments from different cultures around the world. She appears here with Scott Wilkinson, who plays a wide variety of wind instruments, and percussionist Brad Dutz, who has collected over the years an enormous number of different percussion instruments from many cultures. Some of the more unusual musical tools employed on this recording include the harmonic whistle, claydoo, waterflute, ball and tube flute, howler, wind wands, triple pipe, pin chimes, superball, daff, makta, batajon, metal junk, and other equally cryptic instruments. Other, moderately more familiar instruments that come into play include various kinds of drums, ocarina, euphonium, Tibetian bells, and bass recorder. There's certainly a wide variety of unusual sounds ready to be made with all this exotic equipment, that's for sure. In spite of -- or maybe because of -- the esoteric nature of the instruments, the thirteen pieces that result are not all that far removed from the sound of other albums on the label (possibly because everybody involved with the label seems mildly obsessed with finding new and different ways to use instruments in every manner imaginable save for their "proper" methods). Dutz employs anywhere from one to five percussion instruments at a time to create tribal polyrhythms for the other two to blow over, and the lack of machine-made instruments gives the entire affair a tribal, primitive feel, like a musical jam session taking place in the jungle, or perhaps around a campfire in the age before modern tools. The tracks range from eerie and minimalist, near-solo efforts with few instruments and a sparse approach to sound to polyrhythmic workouts employing many noise-making toys and a more frantic, cluttered approach. There's also plenty of different strategies, set a different levels of tempo and pacing, across the tracks as they thoroughly explore all the possibilities for untamed sound through the use of mysterious materials. The results are intriguing, made all the more so by the trio's expertise at improvised structures and talent for discovering unique sounds and applying them in an imaginative manner. Swell, exotic stuff worth exploring. R. P. Collier returns with another odd assortment of quirky soundscape tunes created with guitar, synthesizer, toy synth, thumb piano, and drum machine (but not all at once). As with his previous release under the same name, minimalism is the key word here: Of the nine songs presented here, only three feature more than one instrument at a time, and those instruments are generally playing simple (but bizarre) and repetitive motifs. Nothing is what it seems -- the drum machine spits out beats that don't sound like any kind of percussion you've ever heard while psychotronic noise guitar blows over it in "swivel & gimbal," the toy synth on "nimbus" sounds like a groaning and overdriven drone machine, the sole guitar on "cepheid variable" sounds more like a demented synth loop... this is the music the Major was listening to out in the woods in TWIN PEAKS, where the owls are not what they seem. The tracks are all relatively short and grandly perplexing. For what essentially amounts to twisted exercises in minimalist noise and lo-fi instrument abuse, they're also oddly compelling. What we have here is seven tracks of slashing indie-pop rock from a band that frequently sounds like the Romantics with a busier drummer, an occasionally more psychedelic guitarist, and several pots of coffee in them. They're also unafraid to "borrow" from the school of rock that has come before them -- the beats on the first song's intro and some of the guitar riffs are pretty much cribbed from "Mississippi Queen," for instance -- but they make up for any lack of originality with driving performances and torched guitars. Their overall sound is somewhere between Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Seether, and a whole bunch of other bands who favor that churning, squealing, heavily-compressed guitar sound over a steady hard-rock groove. This is not the most original or earth-shaking disc you'll ever hear, but it's energetic and well-done, and it rocks. I'll bet they bring the rock live. The trio consists of Tom McNalley on guitar, Jonas Tauber on bass, and Ken Ollis on drums, and they're good enough that legendary crank / reviewer Richard Meltzer, who heard the disc while it was still in pre-release form, loved it so much he begged to write the liner notes, which appear on the inside of the booklet. As for their sound, think of a version of Last Exit that's okay with standing near the cliff above the abyss but less inclined to dive in headfirst. Or maybe William Hooker and Borbetomagus leaning toward more jazz, less chaos. There's certainly a cerebral element to the six tracks on this disc, but the band's playing is often ferocious enough to move from the realm of nuanced improvisation into the more familiar territory of purely rocking out. As Meltzer points out in the notes, McNalley is obviously influenced by the likes of Sonny Sharrock, Pat McLaughlin, Derek Bailey, and Nels Cline (among others), but purely in the spirit of building on what they have done before him rather than "borrowing" riffs and ideas. Think of him more as a diabolical melodic outrider, with the other two running along at a breakneck pace to give him a structure and a backbone that will keep everything from falling apart. They do this well -- McNalley is not the only genius here; drummer Ollis is one of the few recent drummers I've heard who matches Ronald Shannon Jackson and Mick Harris (in his role as drummer for Painkiller rather than Scorn) in sheer bombast and intensity while still retaining a firm grip on the mighty beat, and bassist Tauber provides the propulsive bridge between the two of them that keeps things cohesive. They manage to cram more activity and ideas into the first two songs than some bands do into their entire careers, and not only is this their debut release, McNalley is barely even old enough to drink in my state. No wonder Meltzer shit his pants when he heard this. Check it out and you just might too. MBS is actually Chris Stepniewski, who also releases material as Noisecore Freak. In this guise he unleashes ten tracks of pummeling, beat-heavy industrial dance music in the old-school style of bands like Severed Heads, Front 242, Cabaret Voltaire, and early Skinny Puppy (you know, before they started spending all their $$$ on heroin and started to suck). You can tell it's all about the big beat, too, because he doesn't bother with vocals (a good move, if you ask me -- too many of the old-school bands inevitably hung themselves with cheesy overprocessed vocals while yelling about nothing substantial). He does make a nod toward more recent developments like glitch electronica and chopped-up beats, and there are ambient interludes here and there, but by and large this is an ass-quaking throwback to the hard style of late eighties / early nineties electronic body rock. That he's a Canadian is probably a point in his favor -- Canada always had the quirkiest and most interest IDM bands back in the day. Clubbers looking for a reminder of how the old-school was probably better could do much worse than to look into this. Nadja is the ambient doom vehicle of solo drone artist Aidan Baker (credited here with guitars, flute, vocals, and drum machine), aided and abetted by Leah Buckareff on bass and vocals. This, their latest release, consists of three long tracks (one over ten minutes, two over twenty) centered around the theme of a rare congenital disorder, Firbodysplasia Ossificana Progressiva, in which the bones of the body literally lock up and ossify. The resulting sound is very much in the ballpark of Earth, Sunn O))), and other death drone bands, although Baker favors a lot more high end in his guitars than most death-drone bands. On "clinodactyl" they also have a phenomenally slow drum machine going too, as a dark, eerie drone riff is repeated endlessly over amp hum. The drone of doom is gradually joined by a cascading whirlwind of white noise, until -- nearly nine minutes into the piece -- it finally takes off with a thunderous beat and shimmering, apocalyptic walls of wailing guitar. The whirling dervish riff that opens "autosomal" stops and starts abruptly, and by the third time it does it becomes obvious that another layer of sound is happening behind it... then the riff settles into a cycle of endless repetition as the drums eventually come in, slowly but surely, building from a slow, pounding patterns to patterns that are... um... not quite so slow. The final track, "ossification," gets off to a quiet start with shuddering drone in the background and pinging reverb in the foreground. As the song progresses, layers of sound and drone begin to build as the ping-pong guitar recedes into a morose ambient fog. The drums don't even show up until somewhere past the ten-minute mark, and even then they're nearly drowned out by the hovercraft guitar. Nadja's minimalist death-drone shares the stunted tempos and epic sensibility of such time-challenged bands as Khanate and Sunn O))), but without the metal component -- in many ways the band is closer in intent (if not necessarily execution) to Maeror Tri or Troum. Suitable for floating away into the ether, with or without the aid of hallucinogens. Newbould is a pop-rock singer / songwriter who moved to Austin from NYC in 2002, and that makes sense -- he sounds much more like a quirky Austin artist than anything I could imagine going over well in blase and avant-garde New York. He's done well enough in indie circles that the first track, "See You On the Other Side," was featured on the dvd for DAWSON'S CREEK: SECOND SEASON (you know, the series that launched the career of Tom Cruise's current zombiefied Scientology slave, excuse me, fiancee). This is indie-pop rock with Americana leanings plus a solid grounding in roots rock and the singer / songwriter tradition, and it's my understanding that this disc is actually a collection of tracks from three previous EPs and the aforementioned track, rounded out with a demo and several live tracks, all recorded in Austin at KUT, Antone's, and KO-OP FM. No information is given about the backing band (who are a solid bunch), but they work well together with Newbould, and the tracks all have plenty of depth and energy. The live tracks are also well-recorded, which makes this disc a pretty comprehensive picture of his sound both in and out of the studio. The disc includes thirteen tracks, divided equally between studio and live / demo tracks, as well as an enhanced video for "See You On the Other Side." If you're in Austin or happen to catch him on the road, drop in and see what the fuss is about. Trent's last studio outing was the beyond-overblown double-disc THE FRAGILE, a beautiful but intensely excessive collection of pretty sounds in search of some actual songs. This time he's pared everything down and largely abandoned the search for Epic Grandness in favor of composing actual songs -- what a concept, huh? The funny thing is, this is probably the most consistently listenable album he's released since CLOSER. A lot of people have compared this to his first album PRETTY HATE MACHINE, largely because it's more basic and song-oriented (and it's far more beat-heavy than most of the material he's favored over the past few albums), but that's a misleading comparison. For one thing, the songs here are better -- PRETTY HATE MACHINE was swell-sounding, sure, but a bit deficient in the songwriting department. Trent supposedly wrote an enormous number of songs for this album and then weeded them down to the best thirteen, with excellent results. Sure, he's not exactly doing anything new here, and lyrically he goes as far as to steal lines from previous albums, but he's tinkered with the plan a bit with interesting results. The sound this time is a lot cleaner -- the noise element has been pushed into the background, and there's a lot less emphasis on the wall-of-sound approach and more on quirky rhythms by a small number of instruments. The piano that overwhelmed the tracks on THE FRAGILE is employed far more judiciously here -- in fact, the more I listen to this, the more I think this is the album that Trent really intended to make the last time out, only to have it turn into an overblown monster. It doesn't hurt, either, that nearly everything on here (especially "Every Day Is Exactly The Same," "Sunspots," and "Beside You In Time") is insanely catchy, or that the beat (Dave Grohl contributed drums on at least part of the album) hasn't been this big and pounding since CLOSER's "Eraser." Trent may have some game left in him yet. This is the harder-rocking side (sort of, kinda) to Chris Stepniewski's other band, Murder by Static, one that combines beat-heavy dance and rock rhythms with metal guitars and shouting to mixed effect. This disc was apparently first released as WELCOME TO THE STITCHFACE SCAR SITTER EXPERIENCE in 1999, and has since been extensively remixed and remastered. The thirteen (mostly short) tracks here combine industrial, metal, and speedcore in a metal reminiscent of early Ministry doing hardcore tunes. I don't know that there's anything "new" about it, but it's certainly energetic. Unlike his other band, this one features vocals, mainly angst-ridden metal-punk stuff shouted through miles of distortion. The tracks are rampaging and borderline out of control, which is a good thing, but they don't particularly go anywhere, although they are heavy and menacing. It's not bad and certainly in your face, but I think I like the other disc better. The sound of Null Objct (actually guitarist / composer Gary Hebert) is one of approaches and strategies, a sound that mines from both indie rock and techno, where loops and sequenced parts battle with free-form sections, and guitars (real and processed) are every bit as important as the synths and machines. The techno impulse is prevalent mainly in the insistent, repetitive machine rhythms; on top of these mechanical beats and loops, however, are layers of evolving sonic architecture. Hebert's doing interesting things here as the tones move from one set to another over a shifting bed of rhythmic intensity, and the results are every bit as atmospheric and mysterious as they are danceable. The nine songs don't stray far from a midtempo groove, giving the album a flow and consistency that never grows boring thanks to the constantly changing layers of sound whirling around over the beats. Compelling, highly listenable stuff with the potential for appeal even to those not necessarily fans of techno or indie rock. Okay, now this is kind of interesting -- operatic metal from San Antonio, Texas that fuses elements of death metal, folk music, goth, and opera into something resembling a collision between Opeth, October Project, Fear of God (the metal band, not the hardcore one) and Mercyful Fate. In other words, expect lots of drama, soaring keyboards, abrupt shifts of tempo and texture, and above all, excellent vocals from Alessandra Zinicola, who has an impressive vocal range. This style of hybrid metal has surged forward in popularity since bands like Lacuna Coil and Evanescence started heaving up piles of platinum records, but Of Infinity -- who've been together for over five years -- pretty much predates all of that. The band behind Zinicola (Nazareth Sando -- guitars, Kurtis Kyllo -- bass, and Carlos Teller -- drums) includes former members of Fallen Empire, Pinkeye, and April Death, and they're all excellent, which is hardly surprising since you have to know just a wee bit more than basic bar chords to play music this complex. The three songs are all long enough to allow for plenty of changes in tempo, intensity, and texture without getting bogged down, and everything sounds excellent -- the recording and production are excellent throughout. This disc passes the DEAD ANGEL air guitar test as well. Fans of Type O Negative, Lacuna Coil, Dream Theater, and the like should find this of interest. I know little about this (apparently French) band except that I like this EP a lot. There's a lush sound and hypnotic sensibility to "Helice," which is filled with constantly-strummed pop guitar, swelling keyboards, and expanding layers of melodic sound that eventually resolve into pure lush pop over a steady beat. "The Punishment of the White Rose" is a more straightforward pop song (in English, no less) that sounds like it could have been in regular rotation on the American charts in the late eighties / early nineties. The remaining two tracks are a langorious ballad ("L'Ebloui") and a live version of "Helice" (recorded in Prague in 2002) that's more piano-driven and considerably more bombastic. This is great stuff, and one of my unexpected favorites of the issue. The live track is also on the limited-edition live cd PRAGUE 2002; both the cd-ep and live cd are available by mailorder directly from the band. This disc is the audio documentation of a live performance at Jackstraw Productions in Seattle on April 12, 2003 with the Phonographer's Union and special guest Marcos Fernandes. The Union consists of sound artists and manipulators Steve Barsotti, Christopher DeLaurenti, Mark Griswold, Alex Keller, Dale Lloyd, Robert Millis, Perri Lynch, and Toby Paddock. For those not hep to the terminology, "phonography" is essentially the art of field recordings -- and as anyone who has experimented with field recordings will tell you, when you aim a tape recorder (or any recording device) at a sound-making subject, what ends up on tape is not necessarily what you heard floating through the air. Tape and digital recordings can also be processed, manipulated, slowed down or sped up, and so on, until the original sound is unrecognizable; even recognizable sounds (or at least sounds that, on tape, distinctly resemble what was recorded) can sound totally unfamiliar when taken out of context and placed in another. This, then, is what the Phonographer's Union is all about -- the use of field recordings in unusual settings, juxtaposing vastly different sounds to see if a new sound will emerge, laying down sounds in a compositional format to create compelling soundscapes. For this recording, nine phonographers gathered together with their cd players, md players, and one laptop, then performed two improvised sets using only their field recordings from a wide variety of sources. The only requirement for their interaction was the use of largely untreated material (equalization, filtering and / or compression were deemed acceptable for the purpose of making certain sounds more equitable in terms of volume levels for recording and broadcast). The first improvisation is tracked on the cd as the first five tracks, while the second improvisation takes up the final three. Both pieces appear here unedited, with a sound that consistently evolves as different phonographers step forward with material reflecting their own distinct interests and sensibilities. The result in both cases is a series of flowing, evolving, overlapping sounds, including sounds from nature, the city, conversations, and basically anything that could be captured on a recording device. Random location-based sounds (man-made or otherwise) are integrated into new and distinct shapes of sound, with intriguing results. Credit for the brilliant engineering and mastering go to Doug Haire at Jackstraw Productions, himself a producer and engineer associated with the art of phonography was has released similar work on Anomalous Records. This is a must-have disc for anybody seriously interested in the mystical recording art of phonography and field recordings in general, not to mention the individual artists involved, many of whom have released powerful works completely separate from this fine slab of audio. The Poetry Band is the brainchild of Wilson Sherman, and this recording is one hour-long track, a long and winding and frequently devolved psych jam with poet and automobile safety activist Sherman singing / reciting over the top. Originally from San Francisco and the author of two books (EXIT and ROOMS), he founded the Automobile Safety Foundation to raise public consciousness about the dangers of automobile steering locks. The band behind him on this disc consists of guitarist Darrell Fields, drummer Jim Guercio, bassist / pianist Steve Blake, and saxophonist / flutist / clarinet player John Rekevics. As the band plays an endless death psych jam, Sherman holds forth like a man possessed, going on with genuinely apocalyptic fervor about the terror of dangerous automobiles, angels, devils, greed, guns, government run amok, Jesus rising from the dead, children in graveyards, rape and plunder, the air turning to poison gas, and even scarier-sounding stuff. Terror and paranoia reign supreme as the band plays on with improvisational fervor. This is one of the most genuinely fervent and demented recordings I've ever heard. Somebody should lock the doors of Congress and pipe this into their sound system and force them to hear it. Wild, wild stuff. I have no idea if anybody's paying attention to him or not, but this is destined to become a lost psych classic somewhere down the line. When they get around to doing an INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC volume that catalogs the amazing, underappreciated weird musical artifacts of this decade, this recording will listed there. This will be this decade's version of D. R. Hooker's THE TRUTH; trust me on this. Of course, you could check it out now and get a copy while it's still available. You probably won't, of course, but a decade from now you'll wish you had. Prine returns with his first full album of new material in nearly a decade after being momentarily sidelined by throat cancer, and it's a good one. It's also a lot more laid-back and less rock-oriented than his last two studio albums, but with musicians as stellar as the guys backing him this time around, that's okay too. It's a bit more serious and more concerned with the mundane but revelatory pleasures of ordinary life than his last few albums, but that's hardly surprising given his boxing match with the angel of death -- these things have a way of making you reexamine your priorities and interests, nu? I was worried that his bout with throat cancer might have had an adverse effect on his voice, but while he does sound mildly different, he's still got that same distinctive voice that I always look forward to hearing again. (And let's be honest here -- the number of people who listen to Prine expecting him to sound pretty is probably the same number expecting Bob Dylan to sound like Roberta Flack, which is to say, not very friggin' many, right?) The instant classics this time around include "Crazy as a Loon," "Some Humans Ain't Human" (in which he takes aim at the "cowboy from Texas" responsible for the current mess in Iraq), "She Is My Everything" (a simultaneously humorous and touching paean to his current wife), and my personal favorite, "Bear Creek Blues," a rocking take on the kind of country-rock the Band used to do back when they were still all on speaking terms with each other. The disc also includes two live bonus tracks, the absolutely hysterical "Other Side of Town" (which he introduces as a song about a man imagining himself somewhere else when his wife starts going on and on -- "I read about this guy," he says with a cough that makes it clear that he's just playing a bit of CYA), and the loopy (so loopy that he actually cracks up halfway through) "Safety Joe." A great return. This unusual track by Radulovich (who sometimes fights musical crime under the name Titicacaman) was commissioned by members of Lower Left for a performance called "Mars," and is focused on George W. Bush's lurid obsession with terrorism. Samples taken from news broadcasts, mainly of Bush lecturing the nation on the evils of terrorism and the fight against Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, are arranged over an electronic soundscape to create a satirical dialogue that questions the validity of the war on terrorism and its effect on the United States. The soundscape beneath the samples was constructed from short wave radio, Airsynth, cat-litter tubs, and digital processing, and sounds suitably ominous, even violent at times. Scary, unsettling stuff. Satire can be that way, you know. The band sent this to me quite a while back, and I'm just now getting around to reviewing it, possibly because I suck. Random Touch, however, does not suck. The band is actually a duo of Christopher Brown and James Day who have been collaborating together in both visual and auditory mediums since the late seventies. This time around they're also joined by guitarist Scott Hamill and video guy Matthew Ebbin. On this, their fifth release, they combine the two disciplines with a cd (nearly seventy minutes of enigmatic listening material) and dvd (over an hour of short video clips). The music is exotic and interesting; unlike their previous disc, A PARADE OF DUSTY HOBOS, the music on this one has less to do with traditional instrumentation and songs than with improvisation incorporating traditional instruments employed in odd fashion, vocals, samples, found sound, field recordings, and other strange auditory behavior. Over the course of 17 tracks ranging from twenty seconds to more than thirteen minutes, they throw down complex soundscapes that sound very much like a film soundtrack, or perhaps the soundtrack to a cryptic interior monologue. Given that their sonic palette encompasses everything from rock, folk, prog rock, free jazz, field recordings, and the joys of studio manipulation, there's plenty of imaginative sound stylings to keep things interesting. While the overall sound definitely leans more toward the experimental / free-jazz tip, there's a structure and melodic sensibility at work that keeps it all hanging together even when things get strange. There's a lot more vocal improvisation than I recall happening on previous outings, which adds a nice new dimension to the proceedings. As with earlier releases, the combination of their years of experience as eccentric tone scientists, fevered imagination, and attention to detail result in multilayered tapestries of sound sure to reveal more elements with each repeated listening. As for the dvd, many of the short films here were originally shown at film festivals in 2003 and 2004, including the New York Video Festival, the South by Southwest Film Festival, and the 47th San Francisco International Film Festival. Nine of the clips are videos made to accompany tracks from this cd release and earlier ones, while six of them are performance clips recorded at various shows between 2000 and 2003. More cool stuff to check out. They used to be just the Eyesores until a band in California with the same name started giving them grief, so now they're stuck with a much longer name. More reasons to hate lawyers, to be sure. The band is currently main songwriter Redfearn (accordion, vocals), Margie Wienk (upright bass, cello, vocals), Matt Everett (viola), Alec Thibodeau (electric guitar, AM radio), Matt McLaren (drums), Sara Stalnaker (cello), Ann Schattle (French horn), Erica Schaffle (bassoon), Chris Saraullo (percussion), and Jason McGill (alto sax, percussion, short wave radio). Thibodeau is also in Noney; McLaren and Ann Schattle are also in Barnacled. This is the band's third full-length cd (they've also released a split single with Iditarod and a six-song cassette
All reviews are by RKF unless noted at the end. Other reviewers are: Amanda, Frankenstoner, Gafne Rostow, and Neddal Ayad (n/a).
Crunch Pod Media15 Degrees Below Zero -- MORPHINE DAWN [Crunch Pod Media]
25 Suaves
Bulb Records
25 Suaves -- I WANT IT LOUD [Bastard Sun / Bulb]
Anaphylaxis
Parasomnic Records
Anaphylaxis -- NOISE FOR LOVERS [Parasomnic Records]
Public EyesoreAngels -- s/t [Public Eyesore]
AnticageAnticage -- WHILE ep [Skeleton of Snail]
Instincto RecordsAunt's Analog -- ACTION RECORDIST [Instincto Records]
BasilicaBasilica -- SINS OF THE FLESH [self-released]
Bogus Blimp
Jester RecordsBogus Blimp -- RDTR [Jester Records]
CircumventionDavid Borgo -- REVERENCE FOR UNCERTAINTY [Circumvention]
Alternative TentaclesBuzzov.en -- WELCOME TO VIOLENCE [Alternative Tentacles]
Then there was the disclaimer in he liner notes, "These words and lyrics are merely the thoughts and ramblings during periods of homelessness, drug induced confusion, and frustration and as usual are subject to change without notice." This was some heavy shit. And it really took me a while to get into it. SORE eventually became an almost permanent fixture in my car tape deck and over the years that followed I went after every Buzzov.en single, album, e.p., and bootleg that I could get my hands on. I managed to track down most of the official releases, except for their debut, TO A FROWN.
Which brings me to this collection. Alternative Tentacles in collaboration with Buzzov.en main man K-Lloyd (aka Kirk Lloyd, aka Kirk Fisher) have reissued Buzzov.en's now long out of print debut full length, the above-mentioned TO A FROWN along with their also long out of print WOUND and UNWILLING TO EXPLAIN e.p.'s (all originally released on Allied Recordings) and put them together on one neat piece of plastic with new artwork from Arik "Moonhawk" Roper (You know him from those Sleep album covers...) The liner notes consist of commentary and reminiscences of the band by such luminaries and contemporaries as Jello Biafra, Mike Williams and Jimmy Bower of eyehategod (former Buzzov.en tourmates, and, probably literally, partners in crime), Hank Williams III, Jeff Clayton from Antiseen, former Allied Records boss John Yates, Sour Vein and sometime Buzzov.en guitarist T-Roy, and Kirk Fisher himself, amongst others. The commentaries shed light on the band and its troubled history -- the booze, the pills, the junk, the self-abuse, the fights (this was a band who got themselves kicked out of their own record release party), and the music.
The music... perhaps the best description comes from Jello Biafra, "I hadn't seen a band this physical since Black Flag, I hadn't seen anyone put so much of their bodies into their playing since DAMAGED-era 'Flag with Chuck Dukowski, still the most amazing, scary, and intense band I've ever seen..." And it really comes across on this disc, Buzzove.en really did pick up where DAMAGED-era Black Flag left off. Unlike Black Flag, however, Buzzov.en were able to capture the intensity of their live show in the studio. (Not that 'Flag were slouches in the studio, it's just that the studio albums after DAMAGED are nowhere near as intense as the live show -- compare any of the post-DAMAGED albums to WHO'S GOT THE 10-1/2? and you'll see what I mean.) You can practically feel Fisher in your face when he screams lines like, "Are you ever fuckin' clean?" ("Behaved") or "You fucking piece of shit, I never needed you..." ("I Don't Like You.") It's relentless stuff, and definitely not for the faint-hearted. [N/A]
Cathedral & RumCathedral & Rum -- s/t [self-released]
Load Records
Coughs -- FRIGHT MAKES RIGHT [Load Records]
Ernesto Diaz-Infante
Chris Forsyth
Lars Scherzberg
Public EyesoreErnesto Diaz-Infante / Chris Forsythe / Lars Scherzberg -- A BARREN PLACE OF OVERWHELMING SIMPLICITY [Public Eyesore]
pfMENTUMBrad Dutz -- NINE GARDENERS NAMED NED [pfMENTUM]
Load Records
Excepter -- THRONE [Load Records]
Fake
Static Sky RecordsFake -- LOS ANGELES SYNTHETIC [Static Sky Records]
Fektion Fekler
Static Sky Records
Fektion Fekler -- INTO THE SUN [Static Sky Records]
Fiver's StereoFiver's Stereo -- s/t [self-released]
Dielectric Records
Gerritt -- ...SAILS THE SEAS OF DISPLACEMENT 12" [Dielectric Records]
Greatness in Tragedy
Brando Records
Greatness in Tragedy -- s/t [Brando Records]
Green AndyGreen Andy -- THE MAYBE PILE [self-released]
Emily Hay
pfMENTUMEmily Hay -- LIKE MINDS [pfMENTUM]
Damon Holzborn
Accretions
Damon Holzborn -- ADAMS & BANCROFT [Accretions]
Infidel? / Castro!
Crucial BlastInfidel? / Castro! -- BIOENTROPIC DAMAGE FRACTAL [Crucial Blast]
Interstellar
Plan Eleven
Interstellar -- TOSLEEPTODREAMTOWAKE [Plan Eleven]
pfMENTUMJeff Kaiser / Andrew Pask -- THE CHOIR BOYS [pfMENTUM]
pfMENTUMThe Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet + The Kaiser / Diaz-Infante Sextet -- THE ALCHEMICAL MASS / SUITE SOLUTIO [pfMENTUM]
Masami Kawaguchi
Public EyesoreMasami Kawaguchi -- LIVE IN DECEMBER [Public Eyesore]
Public EyesoreKnot + Over -- s/t [Public Eyesore]
Jesse Krakow
Public EyesoreJesse Krakow -- OCEANS IN THE SUN [Public Eyesore]
Kwisp
Pinephone Recordings
530 Divisadero St. # 197
San Francisco, CA 94117
Kwisp -- TERIYAKI VEST ODYSSEY [Pinephone Recordings]
Wantage USA
Last of the Juanitas -- IN THE DIRT [Wäntage USA]
Rob LevitRob Levit -- ANATOMY OF ECSTASY [Symbol System Music]
Little FydorLittle Fydor -- DANCE OF THE SALTED SLUG [The Elephant 6 Recording Co.]
Lockgroove
SRK
Lockgroove -- CALM RIGHT DOWN [SRK]
Lung LunchLung Lunch -- UTTRFTITUT [self-released]
CorleoneMahi Mahi -- HE NO WA [Corleone Records]
pfMENTUMMany Axes -- 2 MANY AXES [pfMENTUM]
Map of the Sky
CD BabyMap of the Sky -- s/t [CD Baby]
MarashinoMarashino -- DISEASED ROOM [self-released]
pfMENTUMTom McNalley Trio -- s/t [pfMENTUM]
Murder By StaticMurder by Static -- THE ART OF PERPLEXITY [Deadsix Productions]
Nadja
Nothingness Records
Nadja -- BODYCAGE [Nothingness Records]
David NewbouldDavid Newbould -- EP'S, DEMOS, LIVE & HEADACHES [self-released]
Nine Inch NailsNine Inch Nails -- WITH TEETH [Nothing / Interscope]
Noisecore FreakNoisecore Freak -- MY MOTHER THE ANARCHIST [Deadsix Productions]
Null ObjctNull Objct -- THE BLIND CLOCKMAKER [self-released]
Of InfinityOf Infinity -- THE ESSENCE OF INFINITY cd-ep [self-released]
One For JudeOne for Jude -- HELICE ep [La Farandole Egaree]
Accretions
Phonography
The Phonographer's Union -- LIVE ON SONARCHY RADIO [Accretions]
Poetry Band
Oh Boy RecordsJohn Prine -- FAIR & SQUARE [Oh Boy Records]
Marcelo RadulovichMarcelo Radulovich -- THE EVIL ONES cd-single [Titicacamanbox]
Random TouchRandom Touch -- THE YOU TOMORROW [Road Noise Productions]
Alex K. Redfearn & the Eyesores
Corleone
Alex K. Redfearn and the Eyesores -- EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL [Corleone Records]