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Ache
Musically Teenage Mondo Trash is thoroughly enjoyable. It sounds like a lot more than two people belting out these songs. While never showing off, both Tetsunori Tawaraya’s guitar playing and Keiichi Nakano’s drumming show competence and enough adventurousness to add a fair bit of excitement to the songs. They explore more avenues in thirty seconds than many bands do in their entire careers. Although I must point out that the music never reaches the madness of Fantomas, it is far more accessible with a heavy emphasis on punk and metal. The last few songs are the best examples of their impressive playing. For example, on “Torepan” Tetsunori flies all over the fretboard and extracts all sorts of great tones from his guitar without ever straying into the world of wank. Keiichi’s drumming sounds like he’s programmed to drum in time to Tetsunori’s odd notes, the two of them are tight but very natural sounding.
Tetsunori’s vocals don’t always work. He has a frantic yelping style that sometimes sounds great like on “Sirloin” but sometimes it borders on annoying (although that could be due to pounding headache I currently am enduring). He’s at his best when he counterpoints his guitar playing with his vocals, for example on “Hammer” he lets off bursts of pure guitar mayhem while letting off completely different explosions of sound from his mouth. The fact that he sings in his native language makes his unorthodox vocals sound better, I think if I could understand him I’d be less impressed.
It’s hard to get bored with Teenage Mondo Trash as it is all over so quickly. It finishes at just the right time as I think 2UP’s music works best in small doses. If I had to listen to 40 minutes of this I think I would give up but as it stands I can deal with it fine. Aesthetically I feel they shouldn’t be released on CD as they’re a band that would be ideal for a 7” only catalogue; they could fit an entire album on one record. That aside, Teenage Mondo Trash is an exciting and vibrant release that once again proves that there is an awful lot of music from Japan that needs western releases.
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3 Pin Recordings
Focusing on the audio first, there is little here to make me want to listen to this CD again. The first three tracks range from the poor industrial music-lite of DisinVectant to the absolute bollocks of CJ Pizarro’s “Dark Black Semen.” It took me a few goes to get past the second track, the urge to just press stop proved too strong at first. Even the normally excellent Daniel Padden can’t save the day; his “Cornelius” is lacklustre in comparison to his other work. Only very briefly does the disc ever verge on interesting; John Cake’s “Dawson Has Left Part 2” features a nice selection of sounds like bubbling, kitchen machinery and distorted poetry. This less than two minute piece is the best of what’s on offer here.
The problem with Electricity is your Friend is that so much of the music is derivative twaddle. I may be harsh about this, no doubt most of the artists here have put in a lot of work to sound so mediocre but I really don’t want to have to listen to this. Sampling is used to death on most of the pieces; at times it’s impossible to move without being smothered by uninspiring samples. There also seems to be a competition to see who can be the most eccentric, with all entrants sounding forced and artificial.
In addition to the one piece of audio (a dull deconstruction of The Beatles “Strawberry Fields”) provided by Jliat are two videos. The videos are completely superfluous, one is a ten second shot of what I assume is Jliat on a train and the other is a shaky, blurry video of a merry-go-round. Neither of them is interesting at all. This is a problem that runs through all the video content of the compilation. Frank Cougar’s “Peaceful Bus” is a poem set to video in response to the London bombings of 2005. In it he says: “For as weird as all that it is, it would make one heck of a good movie.” The events that unfolded in an act of terrorism might make a good movie but Cougar’s dismal poetry does not.
In all fairness, videos included on audio albums is a concept that I have little time for, there is little joy in watching a low resolution video the size of a postcard with a scratchy audio track.Even when it’s something I’m interested in I’m unlikely to load up the multimedia part of a CD more than once. When it’s something as bad as this I’m sorry I even went through the bother of opening it once.
samples:
- Dragon or Emperor, "Never Know What to Say"
- Jliat, "Strawberry Fields"
- CJ Pizarro, "Cousin of Bambi"
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I enjoyed We Hate You and Hope You Die but I can’t take it seriously. That doesn’t really matter as I don’t think Ultralord set out to make an avant proto giga meta chin stroking metal masterpiece. This is good honest to Satan rocking, as the rotten middle finger in the middle of a pentagram on the cover suggests it would be.
One thing that did annoy me about a lot of the songs is that Ultralord seem incapable of finishing them off properly. Instead they employ the laziest of all recording techniques: the fade out. “Pussy Witch” in particular is a horrid example as the song is weak to start with and the excruciatingly long fade out (well over a minute of fading out!) does it no justice. It smacks of being an unfinished demo. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to come up with an ending for a song and had the band gone the extra few yards these songs would work a lot better. Another source of annoyance is the vocals which go from being mediocre to being pretty awful. On “Blood Sinner” the lyrics are terrible and they’re not helped by the poor delivery. Luckily the music carries the songs and it’s possible to filter out the vocals by concentrating on the playing.
The riffing is all pretty standard, a mix of thrash and sludge. It is fun but not a lot to get my teeth into, a few bands have done it better but equally a lot of bands have done it far worse. From time to time it ventures too far into cheesy nu-metal territory which I could do without. Thankfully the solos are tasteful if unadventurous, although as unadventurous as they are I think they could do with some more thrown in. The world needs more solos in this age of the riff. By far the best part of the music is the drumming. Like everything else on We Hate You and Hope You Die the drumming doesn’t bring anything radical to the art but it is far above competent. Corey Bing pounds the skins like he means it, towards the end of “Don’t Fear the Reefer” he captures some of the raw energy that I’d associate with early Swans, his drumming going exceptionally well with the simple riffing and distorted guitar harmonics. Unfortunately this is another song with a crappy fade out.
We Hate You and Hope You Die adds little to metal as a genre but doesn’t stray too far into cliche. It is almost gratuitously metal but that’s the effect Ultralord are going for. It’s like giving out about Merzbow for being too noisy. It’s a good album for when you can’t decide exactly what you want to listen to as there’s a bit of everything (metal) on it. It could have been a better album if they had a better vocalist but as it stands it’s a listenable if forgettable experience.
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Sprawled over two discs, this album from New Zealand’s Mrtyu! is a lumbering behemoth of rumbling bass, feedback, and layers of distortion. It’s a gloriously unholy mess, suggesting subterranean rites held far from the light of day.
The first disc features three tracks, beginning with the ominous "Rites of Death in Body Temple." Heavy bass erupts below the surface while drones and feedback battle for dominance, setting the scene for the unfolding of some arcane ritual in "The Burning Ground." Industrial groans, insect-like whines, and clanging metal rattles make this the most turbulent track on the first disc, and the most engaging of the three. Purging the turmoil is "Ash on Ash," which serves as a boiling transition between events.
In contrast to the somewhat more leisurely pace of the first disc, the second disc is more immediate. While "For the Glory of the Fallen" with its dense waves of descending drones is somewhat similar to the tracks on the other disc, "Pyre" gives the bass a more obviously prominent role, its slow notes accompanied by tortured voices, swirling static, and explosive bursts. Likewise, "Digitalis" unleashes a claustrophobic attack that becomes an incendiary throb crackling on the edges of sanity. The album’s most rhythmic track is "The Wordly Skein," a heavy pulse accentuated by shredded noise. It’s not until "Durgas Blood (We Heed the Call)" that whatever fiendish entity the music’s been summoning finally erupts from its lair, attempting communication with a tongue too swollen with bile for speech.
Because the songs on both discs evoke such a similar atmospheric dread, at times they lack enough distinction to make them unique. Together, however, they are so singular in their effect that they effortlessly provoke a hypnotic fascination as darkly mesmerizing as any demonic siren’s song.
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- Matthew Amundsen
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Originally self-released in 2003, Graves at Sea’s short album of sludgy stoner doom peaks in all the right places. While their approach may not be shockingly different from their peers, they don't waste any opportunities to pummel the senses.
Titles such as “Black Bile” and “Praise the Witch” are pretty much par for the course, as are the throaty, pained vocals that garble lyrics into incomprehensibility. Yet the band does other things that elevate them above average practitioners of such vile metallurgy. The medium tempo riffs have a familiar proficiency but are never monotonous. Instead, they’re fused with a good sense of dynamics that keeps them lively and entertaining without resorting to filler.
They also have a couple of extra touches that point to some grander ambitions. The end of “Red Monarch” finds them adding weird ray gun sound effects to the mix, while the ending of “Black Bile” devolves into a strange, airy loop suggesting a hazy realm of slyly disembodied voices. “Wormwood” also ends with a looping swirl, like a tunnel into another dimension. As far as the growling vocals go, the band includes a lyric sheet to help decipher the madness.
While themes of addiction, the ashes of civilization, and redemption through death’s release are hardly unexpected, they’re executed with such emphasis and passion as to make them cathartic and convincing. Since it’s only 30 minutes long, the disc is much too short yet it whets the appetite for more material.
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- Scott Mckeating
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Tracking down Graveyards releases is like taking on a part time job. Scattering their music across miniscule private press labels blink-and-miss-it editions, the current threat level of incoming albums is always elevated. Being a trio with a sax player, they’re often tagged as jazz or scumjazz, but their reach goes much further that the remit of those genres.
As a unit John Olson (Wolf Eyes), Hans Buetow and Ben Hall (both members of Mêlèe and Death Knell) easily transcend the limitations of tags. Their albums don’t appear to be compiled or released in any sort of chronological order, their evolution scattered randomly across CD-Rs, cassettes and vinyl. The frequency of their musical discharges may make it look like these things are just being shat out, but the quality shows that this is light years from the truth.
This particular cassette release is a typically good looking package for the band, a Princely purple wraparound card sleeve and a pile of hand drawn skulls, the handmade aesthetic matching their idiosyncratic path. Through their hours of jams (and being members of numerous different projects), Graveyards have mastered the ability to have numerous distinctive sounds they can cross pollinate. Like some swelling and engorging mass, they sound distinctly like themselves, but utterly different from their other releases at the same time. Head and shoulders above the innumerable ancillary and pristine studio units of the improvising trio world, the fidelity here is just above the usual American Tapes murk levels.
This is a generally more structured release, with Ben Hall leading the way with simple percussion patterns that move between brutal loops and the threateningly restrained tethering of tempos. Tapped out cymbal knocks create stiletto patterns over a deep bass note drone, leaving Olson warming the air in-between. The Graveyards music here bristles with safety pinned energy, carried by a wind from a deep, dirty pit. A battered bell and metal percussion led piece, “Three” has Olson and Buetow invoking ghosts, replying and entwining with Hall’s brutality. Each player seems to know exactly when to keep it in or drag it out. The other untitled highlight, “Two”, haemorrhages an unspoiled regurgitation of sawn cymbal sound with a Staccato cello taking the strain. The horn moving from braying howl to mournful passage on this cut perfectly sums up the trio’s refusal to sit comfortably.
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Karen Dalton
In My Own Time (CD & LP)
(Originally Released 1971)
CD Available Now
180gram LP Available Late Nov
1.) Something on Your Mind
2.) When A Man Loves A Woman
3.) In My Own Dream
4.) Katie Cruel - FULL MP3
5.) How Sweet It Is
6.) In A Station
7.) Take Me
8.) Same Old Man
9.) One Night Of Love
10.) Are You Leaving For The Country
"She is my favorite female blues singer." - Nick Cave
"Without a doubt, she is my favorite singer." - Devendra Banhart
"She sure can sing the shit out of the blues." - Fred Neil
Download MP3! Karen Dalton - Katie Cruel |
> Buy CD or Limited Edition 7" @ LightInTheAttic.net
* Bonus EP Featuring Previously Unreleased Tracks
(Only Available on iTunes starting Mid-Nov)
* Remastered from the Original Tapes
* CD includes 32pg Deluxe Booklet
* Exclusive liner notes from Lenny Kaye, Nick Cave,
and Devendra Banhart
* Limited Edition 7" with Pic Sleeve Also Available
The late Karen Dalton has been the muse for countless folk rock geniuses, from Bob Dylan to Devendra Banhart, from Lucinda Williams to Joanna Newsom. Legendary singer Lacy J. Dalton actually adopted her hero's surname as her own when she started her career in country music. Karen Dalton had that affect on people - her timeless, aching, blues-soaked, Native American spirit inspired both Dylan & The Band's "Katie's Been Gone" (on 'The Basement Tapes') and Nick Cave's "When I First Came To Town" (from 'Henry's Dream').
Recorded over a six month period in 1970/71 at Bearsville, 'In My Own Time' was Dalton's only fully planned and realized studio album. The material was carefully selected and crafted for her by producer/musician Harvey Brooks, the Renaissance man of rock-jazz who played bass on Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" and Miles' "Bitches Brew". It features ten songs that reflected Dalton's incredible ability to break just about anybody's heart - from her spectral evocation of Joe Tate's "One Night of Love," to the dark tragedy of the traditional "Katie Cruel." Known as a great interpreter of choice material, Dalton could master both country and soul genres with hauntingly pining covers of George Jones' "Take Me" and Holland-Dozier-Holland's "How Sweet It Is."
"Karen's mother was full Cherokee, and told her that if your vibrations were right, plants would grow into your room, as Karen had grown onto the Village folk scene. She had the Beat spirit as well, the existential angst which felt life was dark, perpetually in pain, and that was how you became your art, if you were a real artist.'
"'Karen was tall, willowy, had straight black hair, was long-waisted and slender, what we all wanted to look like,' Lacy J. Dalton said. And her blend of influences - the jazz of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, the immersion of Nina Simone, the Appalachian keen of Jean Ritchie, the R&B and country that had to seep in as she made her way to New York from Oklahoma - created a 'voice for the jaded ear.'"
Karen Dalton on MySpace
Light In The Attic
Records & Distribution
www.lightintheattic.net
P.O. Box 31970
Seattle, WA 98103
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Brothers John and Michael Gibbons of Bardo Pond take an exquisite and enjoyable side trip into harmonious interstellar regions with this low-key study of vibrations. With stripped down instrumentation, they drift into shimmering passages of temporal displacement.
"Apostacy" starts with an acoustic guitar in each channel, accompanied by hand drums and rattles. After a brief pause halfway through, the direction of the song changes into something a little more strident. Before long, a mind-shifting sax enters, altering the mood into soothing transcendence. In the background toil drums with heavy reverb that accent the piece but never dominate. "Blood Sacrafice (for JD)" starts and ends with the only vocals to be found on the album, a sampled voice that describes the Big Bang as the original force of the universe. Rapid hand drums and electronic drones comprise this song and while it’s not a terrible detour, it’s the least satisfying track.
Amplified guitar notes hang in space on "The Medicine of the Third Order," as a quietly churning noise hovers in the background, adding a nebulous presence that’s a balm of sorts. Of the four songs on the album, "Deliquium" is the monster, taking up half of the total running length. It features two acoustic guitars again, but this time the tempo is more relaxed and lackadaisical. The brothers repeat a gentle musical phrase with minor variations, and the effect is relaxing and peaceful, suitable for blissful meditation. Only in the last minute do the strums grow more insistent, as if trying to send out pulses that will linger on in outer space well after the song’s over.
It’s a satisfying album equally at home in the dark or in daylight, and one that illuminates the promises offered by distant horizons.
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After several months of hefty improv submersion it’s possible to cultivate the taste buds enough to be able to sift out the quality from the claptrap. This is most definitely the former, a 21 minute improvised freak out wrapped in a brain-splurge primary colored aggro cover
The latest in Low Point’s 3" CD-R series sees various luminaries of the Manchester scene (pulled from Inca Eyeball, Sculptress and Our Beautiful Ridiculous Plan) pouring out their heads into a cauldron of kaleidoscopes. The highest praise here goes to the drummer who sounds like he’s leading the proceedings from the back; the rest of the quartet squalling in his wake like sparks from a firework. The cracked open snake pit of guitars could’ve ended up a mush of sounds if not for the fine recording job here by label head Gavin Hardwick.
"Beta Carotene"s creak-and-jerk onslaught begins with a manic sonic attack that slows down about half way though, as if everyone had got the caffeine (and the rest) out of their system. This whistling and drum lull (and low-key guitar work) court each other carefully till a Thurston/Ranaldo holocaust bursts into the room.
Again it’s the drummer who seems to be directing the performance as the music threatens to roll off the road into some Turkish psychedelic murder spree. The band lands in a pattern of heaving itself to its knees before being slumping to the floor as if shot in the head. The sounds rises and falls, rises and falls until a timely loose percussive end.
samples:
 
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