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Still Single: Vol. 3, No. 6

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In the latest installment of 'Still Single,' Doug Mosurak and associates check out LPs of various sizes by Andrew WK, Atlas Sound, Cherry Blossoms, and many more.



Still Single: Vol. 3, No. 6


Sorry about the lack of singles this month - we had a backlog of albums in the till and neither the time nor the manpower to cover them all. I've enlisted some help this time from Dusted's Michael Crumsho and Matthew A. Stern, as well as longtime reader Joel Hunt. The queue has been rebuilt and you'll see us going somewhat back to normal in the next two weeks. Here goes! Keep sending in your records!

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Yours must be a single (or vinyl-only album) pressed on any size of vinyl. CD-Rs of singles will not be reviewed; they will be destroyed. We need the artifact here with original artwork, not some duplicate/digital copy. Only records released within the past six months will qualify for a review.

Still Single now runs bi-monthly, so there is no deadline for submission. I will do my best to make sure that records are reviewed in the order in which they are received.

ANY genre of music will do - don't hesitate to send punk, hardcore, metal, goth, pop, rock, country, hip hop, electronic, experimental, dub and reggae … all genres accepted and welcome.

Information on your pressing (quantity pressed, color vinyl, etc.) should be included if at all possible.

Submissions can be sent to:

Doug Mosurak
PO Box 1552
Long Island City, NY 11101
(NOTE THE NEW ADDRESS.)

Records need to be shipped securely in sturdy mailing materials and marked FRAGILE because the post office will destroy them otherwise.

Keep sending in submissions, please!



Astral Blessing
s/t LP
(Mad Monk Vinyl)

A release so limited that the fact that I currently have a copy sitting in my room makes me a potential victim of neo-psych record collector violence (editor’s note: lulz, Mr. Wand pressed these records on chocolate just to be on the safe side). The record is two album sides of lengthy live jams by this Sunburned Hands of the Man offshoot/supergroup. Kicks off with weed-seeking crowd banter, then guitars start reverberating, and before you know it you’re immersed in a warm, fuzzy blanket of far-out psych. It definitely goes for that Father Yod hippie-cult sort of feel. Begins by sounding like the some of the best parts of extended Acid Mothers tracks, with sporadic chanting and the whole bit. Right when you think the first track has disappeared off into outer space, it breaks into a cathartic left-coast inspired country-tinged psych-rocker, and it grabs you by the soul. Full appreciation, though, may depend on how toasted you are while listening. Comes with a print-out of an enthusiastic/incoherent show summation by Nashville Dave. (Matthew A. Stern)
(www.woodenwand.net/madmonk)



Atlas Sound/Mexcellent
split LP
(HOSS)

For this entry in Hoss' excellent split twelve-inch series, Deerhunter's Bradford Cox goes it alone with his Atlas Sound project, while V. Fajito and R. Mexico (aka label proprietor and Celephais member Brad Hurst) step out as Mexcellent. Cox's half here is a pleasant surprise, a step back from Deerhunter's more forceful abstract post-punk towards the pop chime of "Axis I (F. Grey)" and the mutating dub figures of "Axis II." He rounds out the side with "I Know, I Know," a piece that runs a sunny melody and a gnarled guitar through an insistent, Kraut-ish rhythm with some nifty results. The Mexcellent half of this here release is more immediately grim, with "Rhonda Price" given over to pastiches of brick-heavy, distorted beats that ricochet off distant vocals and echoing drums. "Blackface" and "RGDWTJPM" both throb insistently, dismantling vocal samples and playing them against layer upon layer of percussion for the pure and simple fuck of it. It all almost sounds like some sort of weird industrial form of dubstep, if you can imagine that. Edition of 500 copies. (Michael Crumsho)
(www.hossrecords.com)



The Bags
All Bagged Up: The Collected Works 1977-80 LP
(Artifix)

Wow, from out of nowhere comes a complete Bags discography - on vinyl, no less. Here's everything: the Dangerhouse 7”, all comp and live tracks, and 11 unreleased songs, including a stifling cover of “7 and 7 Is.” Not usually the first band you think of when you think first-gen L.A. punk, but they certainly brought an antagonistic pall of guitar noise to the proceedings, a real buzzsaw that only Ms. Alice Bag seems to be able to penetrate with her contrarian bark. Listen to these people BEAT THE SHIT out of rock 'n' roll, slashing epileptic against the beat. Fucking necessary. You've heard music like Bikini Kill and 7 Year Bitch before, but this was one of the first times such a sound was ever attempted, and you can hear that unstoppable sense of ownership in each song here. (DM)
(www.artifixrecords.com)



Cheater Slicks
Walk Into the Sea LP
(Dead Canary)

You've seen their records in stores, you've seen them play at a bar, you know you've heard of the Cheater Slicks and you never picked up any of their records. I know you did this because there have been well over two thousand people who haven't done that. Those aren't big numbers but in the long run maybe it's not the numbers that add up. And besides, six or seven albums out of a pretty desiccated relationship with In the Red, here comes their masterpiece, their best since side B of Whiskey. It hits in the album's final three songs, in which you hear a chord burial (“Crackin' Up”), a brilliant transmutation of Kiwi strum into the Who (“Westford Cemetary”), and some of their most dead-eyed blues on record (“Dry As a Bone”). If you've heard what leads up to those songs on another Cheater Slicks record, well fuck you then, because it's the inclusion of these that makes a good album impossibly great. Now that Dead Moon is gone, the mantle for pure, saved-by-age punk rock is thrown on their shoulders. Drink it up now before it's gone forever. (DM)
(www.deadcanaryrecords.com)



The Cherry Blossoms
s/t LP
(Apostasy/Black Velvet Fuckere/Breaking World Records/Consanguineous/Hank the Herald Angel Recordings/Yeay!)

Loose, joy-filled American folk from Nashville, TN which floored me on the first listen and continues to inspire and engage. Spanning an assortment of musical backgrounds, some decades apart, its membership includes pros and amateurs, but all possess a certain spirit in line with one another. It makes itself heard in the jangled nerve endings in their music, in Peggy Snow's war whoop. It beams brightest when singing in the round, or about Jesus (“Glow, Jesus, Glow” rolling ODB via the Country Teasers into a blissful hootenanny), and in a cover of “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult, reveals the tremendous burn of the Sun City Girls. Ceaseless happiness and joy surges right through this bunch, and it's way stronger than you would have imagined. I'm sold; one of the year's best records thus far. (DM)
(http://thecherryblossoms.com)



Fear Falls Burning
I'm One of Those Monsters Numb with Grace LP
(Equation)

Before I even sliced open the shrink-wrap with my thumbnail, the name of this one-man-electrical-line6-jam-band and its nausea-inducing title had me wincing. Like then I saw that the dude is Belgian and all, and no offense to our friends in Brussels, but it ain't exactly a hotbed of exciting new sounds - even when the inevitable comparison to France is made (boy do Belgians hate being compared to the French!). And who knew the Belgians were so emo? Seriously the band name and titles had me expecting some whack job eyeliner five-piece from Passaic (a place more boring than Brussels, as far as I can tell) playing gear they bought at Guitar Center with mom's credit card. What I got instead is, well, line6 and guitar rock not far afield from what everyone and their older not-into-emo brother's been doing since they read about Sunn0))) in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Aside from the kinda-nice album cover (a close-up photo of a guitar's bridge), there's really nothing here to distinguish this from about a million similar dudes. Gatefold sleeve, on really pukey-looking colored vinyl. (Joel Hunt)
(www.chronoglide.com/equation.html)



Frisk Frugt
Guldtrompeten LP
(Yoyo Oyoy)

Frisk Frugt is Anders from the Kirsten Ketsjer Rock Band making sunshiny Danish pop on the far-left end of left field. Guldtrompeten makes Architecture in Helsinki look downright conventional, and it's hard to believe that it's the creation of just one guy. Starts out with some fuzzy organs and moves into pop-era Eno territory augmented by a healthy dose of childlike bliss. Clocks in at 40 minutes and travels all over the place; from stuff that sounds like its being cranked out of a music box (“Lindholm Hoje”) to a song that sounds like a lo-fi version of something off Her Satanic Majesty's Request (“Love Begins in Sesamfro”). “Et Ojne Saet Til Med Saere Syn” comes on fuzzy and churning, like Amon Duul only all starry-eyed. Suffice it to say that even an uncharacteristic noise excursion somewhere in there sounds planned out and purposeful, and that this album is all Frisk Frugt with no rotting vegetables. Comes in a cute, weird sleeve with a poster of some sort of medieval magus. (MAS)
(www.yoyooyoy.dk)



Graf+ZYX
Early Recordings 77-83 LP
(Vinyl-on-Demand)

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of information about this Austrian minimal wave band that isn't in German. First side kicks off with an Asiatic incantation competing with emerging groans. Leaps into a nihilistic DAF-style number with metallically twanging synths culled from “Hot on the Heels of Love”. It's tempting to say that it sounds like a less normal version of The Normal. More accurately, it sounds like all of TGs poppiest moments on one album side, with austere, unattached German vocals that sound great, and English ones that sound decidedly less great. “Flipper” is mid-tempo, dark and dance-floor ready; it's all Fad Gadget-style nasality and extreme sideways haircuts. “Reise in die Suedsee” is a melodramatic, Soft Cell-inspired synth-cabaret misstep. Second side is more avant-garde, earlier stuff. It contains mostly longer songs that sound like early Cab Voltaire with sometimes gothy, sometimes goofy vocals, but it's not entirely without icy synth-pop tracks. Hand numbered out of 600. (MAS)
(www.vinyl-on-demand.com)



Guilt Lust
s/t LP
(Fun with Smack)

Burly, bro-hammed hardcore from a now-departed band out of Western Mass. Guilt Lust were big on melodies, particularly on the rotund Husker Du/Leatherface/Fucked Up side of things. It's not too often that you come across a punk band anymore that's trying to conform so closely to, like, one band that was around for three months in 1982, much less one that doesn't sound contrived and built for 13-year-olds. Guilt Lust scaled that peak for a short while and it's a shame they didn't do more. (DM)
(www.myspace.com/funwithsmack)



Kevin Shields
False Prophet LP
(Deathbomb Arc/RRRecords/Entropic Tarot)

Kevin Shields, the noise outfit not the guy, flip the Duchamp-signed Mona Lisa on its conceptual head, adorning a clear acetate album jacket with what looks like it could be the MBV frontman's simulacratic signature. Starts off with “1.28.06”, a barrage of tortured shrieks, electronically damaged in all sorts of discomfiting ways. “10.26.05” is made up of incoherent, feminine schizoid mutterings over phasing, tinnitus inducing high-ends. It's singularly upsetting to listen to someone babble and scream like that, all the noise notwithstanding. Sometimes the vaguest hints of synthesized melody creep in, and then everything explodes again. I go back and forth between thinking the band's moniker is clever and iconoclastic and thinking it's smug and in-jokey. It's probably both. Confused me for a second, but didn't really make me question the nature of the Queens-born Irish shoegazer's Being. The act hails from that LA Il Corral scene, where a new high-concept freeform noise springs up every few seconds. The vinyl is unmarked, wafer thin, and comes packed with a fuzzy thing that looks like a cirrus cloud in the bottom of the sleeve. (MAS)
(www.deathbombarc.com)



Lichens/Lexie Mountain Boys
split LP
(HOSS)

The first of two new installments in DC/Atlanta imprint Hoss' ongoing split twelve-inch series pairs Robert A.A. Lowe's Lichens with Baltimore's oddball chanteuse Lexie Mountain. On the A, Lowe spends a side exploring the deep facets of his drone-world, combining guitars both reversed and straight with his occasional chants to form a nice addendum to his recent Kranky full-length Omns. Long and yet still somehow lean, Lowe's "Restoration of Temperment" builds its steady tones lazily, wrapping the whole around a laconic vibe that somehow makes this more than simple sums. On the flip, Lexie's "If You So Choose" gathers up a live take from Atlanta, recorded in 2006 on what sounds like a half-busted tape recorder. Not that the sound quality matters so much on this one, as her update on Patty Waters-esque freeform vocalizing mixed with Smegma worthy cut-ups is pure headfuckery at its queasy best. Those of you who find the likes of, say, Maja Ratkje too academic should check out this little number, which is bound to bend your dome in all the right ways. Edition of 500 copies. (MC)
(www.hossrecords.com)



LSD March
Empty Rubious Room LP
(Tequila Sunrise)

Originally re-released in digital form on the Archive label, Tequila Sunrise here re-presents LSD-March's Empty Rubious Red for those who missed out on the shiny plastic version. Those expecting more of the group's current take on Les Rallizes Denude's styled speaker-crush and distorted balladry are in a for a pleasant surprise here, as this LP, save for the six-string-cum-drum-blast of the two versions of the title track, is on the unabashedly mellow tip. Main man Shinsuke Michishita handles pretty much everything on his own here, turning in wistful pieces like "As Many Stars in the Sky" that pair delicate guitars with his breathy vocals. He adds slight percussion and forlorn harmonica to "The Present Is a Storm," and comes to a graceful close with "I Only Have Hands for You." Throughout both tracks, Michishita deals in sparse, subtly melancholic territory, forming a nice overall contrast to the brown-outs for which his group have become revered. Definitely a bit of a switch, but worth seeking out for quiet time. Edition of 800 copies in tip-on sleeves with printed obi strip. (MC)
(www.tequilasunriserecords.com)



Magic Aum Gigi
Starring Keiko LP
(Fractal)

Solo circadian dribbles from Acid Mothers' Gigi, doing four longform conceptual pieces for Jew's Harp, voice, synthesizer, and guitar, respectively. Side one is tightly knit and lost in the trance. Side two explores the spaceways in Teletubby color, a truly cosmic experience and the real reason to own this record. The rest is just fine tuning for your brain. Pretty crucial for the track mentioned. Edition of 200 numbered copies. (DM)
(www.fractal-records.com)



Morka
There Was a Time… LP
(Anazitisi)

Complete discography of the bands Morka and an earlier incarnation called Stone Deep. This Greek psych/folk outfit is all over the place, from Eurovision-style pomp to West Coast psych worship to crazed maiden ergot-poisoned dash out of a Jean Rollin film into your lap. The bulk of tracks come from 1970-73 and were released either as singles for Polydor, or as unreleased demos, including one straggler from 1986 that would actually fit well in a DJ Harvey set. Pretty uneven overall, but the strong cuts here stare a hole through the beautiful textured gatefold it came in, on orange vinyl and including a lyric sheet and a four-panel poster. (DM)
(www.anazitisirecords.com)



The Naughtiest Girl Was a Monitor
s/t LP
(Vinyl on Demand)

Good thing someone out there is unearthing obscure old Sheffield post-punk. The excellent Made in Sheffield documentary notwithstanding, Sheffield's pioneering, Kraftwerk-worshipping scene didn't really get a fair shake compared to Manchester during the last wave of hysterical post-punk nostalgia. Side one contains all the tracks from the band's first three 7”s. The album starts off with “All the Naked Heroes”, a track of synth-wave constructed of analog sounds from the farthest reaches of outer space with those throaty, ultra-dramatic vocals that later drove other Sheffield acts to the top of the Nu-Ro pops. Listening to the 7” tracks is kind of like hearing The Human League's Travelogue again for the first time, only less focused and with more instrumentals. The live drum driven "Sensation/No Sensation" brings to mind Our Daughter's Wedding as much as OMD. Second side shows a slight turn towards the funkier, more romantic side of things for which Heaven 17 and ABC ended up getting famous. Straining vocals make it obvious why Naughtiest Girl weren't the ones to cut the nut, but it's still decent. Minimal synths embedded on one of the thicker slabs of vinyl you've ever seen make for a nice juxtaposition. Hand numbered out of 600. (MAS)
(www.vinyl-on-demand.com)



New Blockaders with Thurston Moore and Jim O'Rourke
The Voluptulist LP
(Ecstatic Peace!)

This year marks the silver anniversary of The New Blockaders initial stabs at anti-music, and to celebrate they grabbed Jim O'Rourke, Thurston Moore, and Chris Corsano for The Voluptuist. A tad bit more restrained and drone heavy than a lot of the releases dotting TNBs 25 year history, these two tracks still find the duo capably matching wits and blasts with a lot of today's more readily recognized noise jocks. The first side here pits Moore against the Blockade for the title track, all scrapes and scratches working on top of a steady din. It gets a bit tedious over the course of a quarter of an hour, though the same can't really be said of the flip. Here, Jim O'Rourke takes his turn in the din for "840 Seconds Over." While it's hard to tell what he really adds to the screech and wail that gets cooked up, percussive super-freak Chris Corsano makes his presence felt from the first second his drums erupt. True to form, he packs enough twists, turns, and superhuman thwaps into this track's spare seven minutes to make it more than worth picking up. Edition of 500 copies. (MC)
(www.ecstaticpeace.com)



No Doctors
Origin & Tectonics LP
(self-released)

Maybe a more focused and definitely a more palatable entry into gregarious underground frat rock, as it lives and breathes today in Oneida, their Pittsburgh nephews Dirty Faces, in Awesome Color, Death of Samantha, and a handful more goodtime seekers. Chauncey Chaumpers sounds like a young John Petkovic in his first feather training boa, belting out feel-good Buffettisms over a rock and roll shmear worthy of the precedents they touch upon, a lot of thin yet righteous riffin' and down on the street sax bleats that commingle nicely. LP comes with a CD copy enclosed. (DM)
(www.nodoctors.com)



Pioggia Nera
Teatri de Menzogne LP
(Pirateri Autoproduzioni)

“Macabre dark punk,” says the insert. That rules already. Pioggia Nera mix straight thrash and early '80s metal in with a gothic crust sensibility that sounds like it was rehearsed out in a barn somewhere. They're from Italy and they rule pretty goddamn hard. Songs are fantastically single-minded and threatening sounding, and vocalist Aiz has a pretty harsh raspy scream that you'll grow to be very into. (DM)
(http://pioggianera.interfree.it



Reports
Mosquito Nets LP
(The Paper Cities)

Unflappable and heartfelt noisy/psych pop here, one which grows more irresistible with each listen. Aside from a few unsteady moments, this Reports record scratches every itch I'd ever have to listen to GBV off channel 1, Neutral Milk on Channel 2, and the Thermals out of the CD player all at once. Not that I'd ever try to engineer such a moment, but there's a lot to be said for a band's abilities to harness familiarity in their sound and wield it with such graceful, encouraging results. Big, smiling bass tones come crashing directly into uptight, ringing guitars, bashing drums (occasionally played by Casey from Major Stars), and one of those perfect '90s indie rock singers in this guy named Martin. He's the main guy and you should pay this man some respects in his hand of forging Boston's rock scene back to one of respectable stature. 11 songs, maybe nine of which are as good as anything that's come out this year. Edition of 250 vinyl copies with silkscreened sleeves. Also available as a download at www.inmanstreetrecords.com. Right up there with the Cherry Blossoms as 2007's most wondrous record I'd have missed, if not for this column. (DM)
(www.papercities.org)



Slightly Less Than Nothing
s/t LP
(Inimical)

Fun, irreverent wacky-shack thrash/avant slop metal here and on this particular morning it's suiting me just fine. SLTN jumps scattershot between weird crossover (think Crumbsuckers), Youth of Today “realness,” and Naked City-style punishment. One of the singers sounds like Sam McPheeters and the other Mad Mikey Bolam, which sounds just as funny and unbelievable as you could believe. Drummer's off time a lot (or maybe just poorly mic'd) but this is a pretty great time for anyone interested in an innovative dumbing-down of any sort of metal with an ego. Mine's on clear/neon green splatter vinyl. (DM)
(www.inimical.com)



Slowmotions
Dial Eleven LP
(H:G Fact/Partners in Crime)

All sorts of Japanese punk, from that eternal '77 stance up into heavier hardcore, gets aired out on this collection of EPs. Significant West Coast influence is suggested by the voracity and expression of guitar leads, and a vaguely surfy backbone. Kind of standard stuff throughout the vocalists, but the band gets it done in each of its incarnations, drummer Izumi-MOTION being the only constant member among the three showcased here. (DM)
(www.brickwallrecords.com)



Terror Visions
World of Shit picture disk LP
(FDH)

Yet another Jay Reatard record. This one's the electronic industrial chaos album, all panic punk and minimal synth nods, somewhere between Six Finger Satellite and legit dumb Chicago (or Arizona) club industrial. Reatard pulls a coup with a really absorbing cover of Digital Leather's “Shattered Reflections.” Formalist so much that it hurts, with one of the dumbest picture disk images I've seen, but it's somewhat comforting to know that a proper minimal synth background wasn't lost on those who wish to move this music forward. Plus this guy's got like 1000 great riffs available to dump into his songs at any time, so it's not like you're getting some amateur here. I think there's an argument for idealism vs. realism in these grooves, parts where you can actually hear the id ripping out of his throat. (DM)
(no contact listed)



Tom Thayer
s/t LP
(Cardboard Mirror)

Rigorous elastic guitar/tronics/sound collages from Thayer, making his debut album out of “a broken, mildewed darkride of songs and beats held together by adhesive tape and string” (his words, not mine). Eleven pieces that vacillate from dark, forceful drone (“Cardboard Mirror”) to Severed Heads-style synthetic melancholy (“Smelly Old Haircut”), with some surprisingly sparse tracks on side two. Thayer is really reaching at disparate influences here and trying to bring them together is not an easy task. Artist-numbered edition of 550 copies, with easily-damaged newsprint outer sleeves. (DM)
(www.tomthayer.net)



Trashies
What Makes a Man Get Trashed? LP
(24-7)

Competent “spooky” wavo garage, trying to find a way to get to the next level. Their vocalist is really working for it here, prancing all over groovie-ghoulie/phantom limb punk like Jello B. and adding as much “character” as possible. Early on, the record started to take on a bit of a franchise feel, then peaked with “In the Gutter Together,” an otherwise fantastic song that a young Paul Westerburg wishes he'd have written. I kept waiting for a moment of chilled, anthemic snap-to in the rest of the record, but it never really came. Still, that one great song is more than most bands have at all. I look forward to seeing what these guys grow into. 500 copies, black vinyl. (DM)
(www.myspace.com/thetrashies)



Andrew W.K.
Close Calls with Brick Walls 2xLP
(Load)

This came out in, like, Korea and no place else until now. Early downloaded listens, coupled with its odd geography of release, braced us all for the worst, and in a way, we got that and so much more, as Mr. Wilkes-Krier shows up at your front door, beaming in his mom's lipstick. Load's doing this one up vinyl-only as a courtesy to the States, in a ridiculously thick, full-color Stoughton gatefold, two slabs of colored 180g vinyl, and a glossy eight-page booklet of lyrics and artwork, not to mention five surplus home studio jams on side 4. On the surface, the bombast in this outing is surprising, even for W.K., as it's taking a markedly dramatic tack, not dissimilar to some of Sparks' most rocked-out moments (or more likely, any Meat Loaf record). He's not the most positive guy on this one lyrically, either, and while the album stops short of that nervous breakdown in the studio quality they refer to as “real people,” it's made by people very much cognizant of that sort of thing existing. Balanced across the peaks of every type of hyper-compressed AOR out there, from an electro-Spector-sphere of pop (“Don't Call Me Andy”) to chugging space rock with Galactic Cowboys-quality leads (“Mark My Grace”), to jittery prog (“Pushing Drugs”), to godawful floorshow spectacle (“Las Vegas, Nevada”), this is clearly the work of a man who is not simply going to “go away” following a quick ascent into celebrity. To love it, you must also love yourself. (DM)
(www.loadrecords.com)



Warkrime
Get Loose LP
(No Way)

There are a lot of people hating on this band, and maybe that hate is deserved, but I dunno, I'm kind of into the record. It's like watching “Jackass” or skate videos, nothing but crazy fall-apart stunts in between grunts and laughs. Lyrics truly are some of the worst ever high school study hall musings I've come across; the “come to San Francisco and we'll kick the shit out of you” song being one of the dumbest, as is BL'AST!-like closing track “Mind Kampf.” They also wrote a song about touring, and prop up that old evergreen for the umpteenth time with nothing particularly new or exciting to say. But I do like them musically - the title of the album says it all. They're not worried so much about precision and just splatter acne-scarred punk songs all over the place. My copy is on colored vinyl and it seriously looks like a 12” loogie. So gross. (DM)
(www.nowayrecords.com)



Various Artists
Music of Shinkoyo LP
(Shinkoyo)

A label sampler that explicitly claims it isn't a label sampler, this collection of impossible-to-find and unreleased tracks from Ohio-based Shinkoyo has a sleeve decorated with outsider-looking/super stoned doodles and random paint blobs. Pressed on white vinyl with no breaks between tracks, so it gets hard to tell what's what without scrupulous attention to listed track times. Most notable is that white-boy electro-porno-funk act Skeletons make a more aggro than usual appearance with a blared-out and dissonant carnivalesque sax attack on “giant broom”. At some point, the porn-rock deficit is filled; a later track sounds like Neil Young doing Barry White karaoke. How soulless would you have to be to use this as mood music? There's plenty of decent electronically-tinged avant rock, though, like Carsion Halegar Hart's noodly, spacey “Projections in 4D”. One act tries to channel Beefheart's avant-poetic recitations over a building static drone with limited success. The second side is farther out there. There are some nice cerebral tracks; a squelchy exploration of deconstructive dance, a great bendy and building excursion into electronic hippiedom that uses a guitar slide and some sort of woodwind. A few abrasive, loopy noise tracks, too. (MAS)
(www.shinkoyo.com)



Various Artists
Pisspounder 3xLP
(Deathbomb Arc)

I was shocked to find that the nickname my parents called me as a child was coincidentally being used as the name for this 3 album set on Deathbomb Arc. Pisspounder contains eleventy-million minutes of percussion (with some screaming and extreme distortion on a few tracks for good measure.) It's a nice concept with some aurally crippling results. It's hard to tell if some of the sounds created are functions of percussive elements interacting, or the result of malfunctioning eardrums. All those drums together make me think about that Boredoms-organized 77 Drums thing that I missed, though that sounded like it was way cooler than this. Plenty of real interesting rhythmic and vocal stuff going on here, as you'd expect when you've got a bunch of avant-garde noise-ists with only rhythm and vocals to work with. No labels on the albums, but an insert that unhelpfully names the band, and is done up in that DIY cut-out style like punk flyers from days of yore. (MAS)
(www.deathbombarc.com)


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