You can't get the Rhino Handmade Funhouse Sessions box set anymore, but here's a box set that ALSO features multiple run-throughs of the same Stooges song over and over. Which, as any proud owner of the Funhouse box can tell you, is a supremely GOOD thing. Can't get enough. So, here's SIX discs of primo live, rehearsal, and studio outtake material recorded circa 1972-1974. From London studio tapes (13 different takes of "I've Got A Right" on that disc!) to Detroit rehearsals to Max's Kansas City and Whisky A Go Go sets, there's plenty of raw power here for the true Stooges fan to bask in... some of it you might have heard before, on bootlegs and so forth, but this box set is approved by the band. Probably a must-have for the dedicated fan, what with the unreleased recordings, rare photos, interviews with Iggy and the Asheton brothers, and other stuff (including a Stooges sticker) included.
Sorry. Sorry folks. We're very sorry. In fact, we've been putting this off, so maybe we won't be the first to tell you, that this new, eagerly-awaited Stooges reunion album sucks. That's just the way it is. No songs to speak of. Terrible lyrics ("She Took My Money", "Free & Freaky In The USA"). It's just not good. Iggy's made way better solo albums than this, even in recent years. For a leathery old guy Iggy still has the long hair and rambunctious energy of someone much, much younger, that's true. But that doesn't mean that getting together after thirty some years with the surviving Stooges to do anything other than play their old songs was a good idea. We wish we could tell you different, we were excited before we heard it too. But it's bad and we've yet to talk to anyone who didn't agree. Oh well, we bet they'll still be worth seeing on tour, as long as they don't do too many of these tracks...
Hmm. We really should have gotten these listed a few months ago when they first came out, but we were debating with ourselves about whether we really needed to write a review that explained how awesome the Stooges are or not. I mean, we figure most AQ customers are hip to these punk rock pioneers, right? So basically, our recommendation boils down to this: if you don't have these albums, BUY THEM NOW. If you don't like 'em, we can't help you. But we think you'll like 'em. Some of the most primal yet avant-garde heavy garagey punk metallic rock n' roll ever made. Of the two albums, debate can rage as to which is most essential. We don't need to answer that question here. Get 'em both. "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is on the debut, whereas you get all the crazy saxophone freakouts on Funhouse.
Now what about if you do have these albums? Should you buy 'em again 'cause they're now "deluxe"? Well, yeah. They've got an extra disc apiece of alternate takes and unreleased material. Damn!! For instance, the full version of "Ann" on the second disc of the s/t package is awesomely super sleazy -- we love it. And don't you wish you could buy a "new" Stooges album every week? Take this historic opportunity! With one caveat: if you happen to be a lucky owner of the Rhino Handmade Funhouse Sessions box set, you might not need the deluxe version of that album, as we're pretty such (though we didn't do any exhaustive research) that all the extra material on the second disc also must have appeared somewhere on the many discs of that amazing (and long out of print) box set.
Want some brutal "war crust" to, um, brighten your day? Look no further. Stormcrow (from Oakland, and not to be confused with the Italian black metal band of the same name) team up with likeminded metallers Sanctum (from Seattle) for this split cd on the ever-reliable, heavy as heck 20 Buck Spin label. Dark and wretched, violent and crushing, it's a raw mix of speedy death and moody doom from two bands both of whom love their Bolt Thrower and Amebix, Winter and Doom. The grey-shaded artwork depicting armored foes in medieval combat is quite appropriate, as across this sprawling split, they're either charging forward with berserk fury, or trudging battleweary from the killing fields... (generally Sanctum do the former, Stormcrow the latter). Imagine Asunder with D-beats.
The Strangulated Beatoffs are a weird weird band. But then what did you expect from a band called the Strangulated Beatoffs? Or from a band that features members of infamous noise punks Drunks With Guns?
This demented duo sometimes use samplers and loops to make fucked up hypnotic grooves and seriously demented electronic weirdness, but as is evidenced by Greatest Hits, they're also puerile purveyors of sick sludgey noise rock and filthy drunkrock dirges. Greatest Hits is mostly a collection of seven inches, the earliest recordings of the Beatoffs circa 1988-1992 or so and thus are maybe the closest sonically to the late great Drunks With Guns. Some tracks like "Porky The Pig And Bess" and "Heeby Jeeby/Practicing To Be A Doctor" are heavy dirgey space rock drug jams that sound like they could have been yanked from a Butthole Surfers set, while others, like "Lick My Butthole" musically sound like Dutch post metallers Gore, but with the addition of some goofy fucked up lyrics, and some damaged shards of buzz and crunch.
"It's A Vile, Vile, Vile, Vile World" is a super lengthy collage of looped eighties Carpenter-ish soundtracks, that sounds like it could be James Ferraro, but it's from at least a decade before Ferraro delved into lysergic pop music, so the Beatoffs are unsung musical pioneers! Fuck yeah! There's a Troggs cover too, but you'd never know it, a murky field recording that sounds like it was captured in the bar around the corner from the show, there's a dorky acoustic ditty, some strange carnivalesque child molesting weirdness, some Mentors like punk rock, but the finest moments are when the band do their best Butthole Surfers, crafting longform drone dirge drug rock, all swirling spacey effects, gnarled looped guitars, and mesmerizingly motorik beats...
If you're not sold by now, maybe this will sway you: Strangulated Beatoffs are one of Andee's all time favorite bands. EVER. So much so that he contacted them about reissuing all of their records, maybe even a box set, but all they wanted to release on tUMULt was their record of Genesis covers! (And then he never heard from them again.) How rad is that???
Oakland's own Strip Mall Seizures spew forth a thrashing, pounding, and super noisy record on excellent San Francisco imprint, True Panther Sounds. No English is a cacophonous, damaged and ultimately danceable record for the people that like their keyboards turned WAY UP! Hella good.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Channeling the ghost of James Chance and the Contortions are the Subtonix from SF. Sax squeals amid a herky jerky mayhem of guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. Ah yes, the art-punk-no-wave spirit is alive and flourishing in these five women.
The second volume in the ongoing series of singles compilations from legendary outfit the Sun City Girls was one of the many duds that frustrate so much of the die-hard SCG fanbase. It was especially frustrating given that the first volume - You're Never Alone With A Cigarette (which as of spring 2013 is sadly out of print) - was so fucking good, mostly due to the fact that much of that material was made up of tracks that were left off the group's masterpiece, Torch Of The Mystics. At one time, TOTM was slated to be a double lp set with the Girls working towards fleshing out the whole album with a bunch of similar sounding tracks. So when the album dropped just as a single slab of wax, all of the remnants ended up finding their way onto various singles back in the early '90s. As Volume One did feature many of those leftovers, Volume Three thankfully completes the task, with two of those discarded Torch tracks culled from the Three Fake Female Orgasms 7" (released on Majora in 1991) as well as all of the cuts from the Eye Mohini and Borungku Si Derita singles (both released through Majora in 1992 and 1993 respectively, the latter featuring a different version of "Esoterica Of Abyssynia" from Torch Of The Mystics, just to make things all the more confusing). There's also a different version of "Kickin The Dragon" from the other SCG masterpiece 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda, as well as a live version of another Torch classic, "The Flower".
The title track here in particular is a classic Sun City Girls jam, with Richard Bishop's desert-blues inspired fingerpicking seamlessly shifting from Arabic flourishes to Southeast Asian folk-pop and the more commonplace No Depression styled Americana, all with brother Alan plaintively sounding out syllabically a maudlin melody that may or may not be complete nonsense or some polyglot of languages dialed in by the Girls' esoteric antenna to all sorts of wild and wonderful songs from around the world. "Gum Arabic" is a terse re-interpretation of heavy Turkish psychedelia which would certainly foreshadow Sublime Frequencies eventual reissue collection of Erkin Koray's works. "Abydos Carousel Tapsel" has a bad-ass south-of-the-border vibe which shifts into an unhinged jubliant psych-folk in "Borungku Si Derita" which strangely sounds a lot like Comus! With so much of the Sun City Girls catalogue terminally out of print, getting a hold of anything from the band is a cause for celebration; but getting an album as great as this, even a collection, maybe especially a collection, is all the more reason to rejoice. And for those uninitiated into the demented psych-punk weirdness of SCG, this is a really great place to start.
Damn we've been digging lots of stuff coming out of Australia lately. We made the latest from Fabulous Diamonds our record of the week a couple months ago and we've been getting really into Total Control and now Super Wild Horses are our newest Australian crush. We imagine you might get super smitten too for SWH's punky high energy fuzzy pop that is totally refreshingly unpretentious, super impassioned and brimming with an integrity that can't be denied. Funny that the record is named Fifteen, as it kind of reminds us a lot of the heyday of Bay Area pop punk with bands like Fifteen, Tilt, Crimpshrine and J Church. We're also reminded of some of our favorite and way underrated bands on Simple Machines from that era like Tuscedero, Scrawl, and Tsunami. In lots of ways SWH seem to connect the dots of that era to the current wave of rad lo-fi minded garage popsters like Brilliant Colors, Wetdog, and Grass Widow. So good!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've long been fans of Canadian 'supergroup' Superconductor, long before Superconductor member Carl Newman went on to front Zumpano and then New Pornographers, but don't be expecting any sort of pop here, although those pop sensibilities do seep into SC's twisted experimental noise rock. Infamous for their seven (7!) guitarist lineup, these guys kicked out some seriously kick ass jams, heavy, rhythmic, dynamic, walls of guitars, pounding octopoidal drums, howled vox, but somehow, catchy as hell too. We reviewed their classic Bastardsong a while back, their last, and poppiest record, but we just discovered that our distributor still had copies of this, SC's 1991 debut ep, which still kills, and sounds heavier and hookier than most of the bands today, and includes one very aQ jam that knocked us for a loop.
It had been a while since we heard this, but got one in and threw it on, and wait a second, we recognized one of the songs, riffy and heavy, and then the vocals, a super distinctive wail, and it dawned on us, it was a cover of Japanese '70s hard psych gods Flower Travellin' Band's "Satori", and it was awesome, not that far removed from the original, the vocals spot on, just a bit buzzier and heavier. And we were struck again by what amazing music nerds these guys were. The cover of Bastardsong was a parody of Iasos' new age classic Inter-Dimensional Music which we just listed a while back, and here they were covering Flower Travellin' Band WAY before any of us had heard them. And it's that music nerdery that informed the music of Superconductor and elevated their sound WAY beyond bash and crash noise rock. So yeah, the FTB cover here is worth the price of admission. But the rest of the songs rule too, "Bushpilot" is ridiculously hooky and catchy for being a weirdly mathy chunk of noise drenched indie rock, a should have been nineties underground hit if there ever was one. "Ride The Big Penis", besides having an amazing title, also boasts some serious churning riffage, and some skull caving drum pummel, which leads directly into "Clamhammer" (these guys had a way with titles), another melody infused slab of noiserock, that sounds a bit like Sonic Youth mixed with Unsane mixed with Polvo, angular and buzzy and sludgey and blown out. Finally, the group finishes off with "Riffmania", which is as advertised, chugging, buzzing riffage wrapped around some BIG drums, with the multiple guitarists adding all sorts of psychedelic squiggle and layered buzz, not to mention some seriously distorted in-the-red vocal howls (about as far removed from the New Pornographers as can be), the song gradually splintering into crumbling slabs of disembodied riffage, swirls of feedback and wildly loosening drum damage.
Oh did we mention the amazing confusional cover art, how about the names of the band members: Dream Whip, It's On You, Thighmaster, He Who Is Named, Flying Fist, Noise Annoys, El Impacto, Sweet Bitch, Delicious Warm, and weirdest of all... Alan Smithee (the pseudonym movie directors use when they don't want their own name on a film!).
We love these guys, and this might be their finest moment, heavy and hooky in equal measure, tongue lodged firmly in cheek, but seriously ruling!
Super limited tape from these two noisy Texas outfits. Haints deliver some seriously sick, feedback drenched noise rock pummel, all downtuned dirgery laced with distorto sung/spoken vox, over rib cage rattling, bass-heavy churn, some weird samples too. Reminds us of that classic pigfuck sound, the sort of thing we we're digging from our favorite bands back in the day, a la Homestead / AmRep records...
Sure are a pretty good match, with the same basic template, but their sound is a bit less noisy and knuckle draggy, more druggy and droney, an old school dirge/noise rock but spaced out, with some Sonic Youth-y guitar noise, shards of feedback, and chiming chords. All wrapped around some reverb heavy, distorted mumble mouthed vocals. Plenty noisy, but with loads of spaced out echoey slow burn psychedelic jammage, swaggery, a little bit swampy, a twisted noise rock / psych-blooz hybrid that sounds a lot like some lost Aussie post punk combo. Killer stuff from both bands. And Sur has another tape on Sleeping Giant Glossolalia which we'll review soon too...
Newly Reissued on Vinyl!
The Swell Maps were a brief late seventies / early eighties solar flare of totally brilliant, clattery, jangly, ramshackle experimental art pop like no one had ever heard. And without the Maps we definitely would not have had Sonic Youth or Pavement or about a million other bands. Fronted by brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, Swell Maps were a bouncy Britpunk kick in the chin, mixed with druggy clumsy psych rock explorations, speaker bashing freakouts, hypnotic droney dirges, whiny snotty British vocals, brittle guitars, splattery drumming and and downright free-noise.
A Trip To Marineville was their debut record from 1979. Reissue comes with a download card plus bonus 7" that accompanied the original release!
Newly Reissued on vinyl!
The Swell Maps were a brief late seventies / early eighties solar flare of totally brilliant, clattery, jangly, ramshackle experimental art pop like no one had ever heard. And without the Maps we definitely would not have had Sonic Youth or Pavement or about a million other bands. Fronted by brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, Swell Maps were a bouncy Britpunk kick in the chin, mixed with druggy clumsy psych rock explorations, speaker bashing freakouts, hypnotic droney dirges, whiny snotty British vocals, brittle guitars, splattery drumming and and downright free-noise.
Jane From Occupied Europe was their second and final record from 1980. The band split soon after with Sudden forming the Jacobites and Soundtracks going on to join Crime And The City Solution. Download card included!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We're not really all that clued in to the modern Oi / mod / punk scene, and we really wouldn't know about these guys at all if it weren't for the fact, that an ex member of crust metal crushers and aQ faves Acephalix was one of the guitar players in this local hard-mod / Oi combo, named for the wave of immigrants in the 1800's, coming from Australia to SF, who were blamed for all sorts of trouble, including a fire in 1849 that destroyed much of the city, as well as much of the street crime in general.
What we do know, is we're digging both of these new 7"s a bunch, total classic old school seventies/eighties style power pop / mod / punk rock, crunchy, jangly guitars, thick sinewy basslines (that sometimes get super distorted and crazy melodic), gruff belted vocals, and ultra catchy songs, that stick in your head like crazy, songs that beside being hooky, just ooze blood and sweat and energy and emotion, it's not hard to imagine folks going nuts and jumping around like crazy, their live shows must be insane, and while the stuff we've seen written about these guys make all sorts of super obscure punk rock references, we're thinking if you're like us, and dig stuff like Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, 999, the Adverts, even the Jam, this stuff will most definitely hit the spot! We weren't gonna go into too much detail about all the songs on both of these singles, cuz we were figuring that if you dug either (or both) of the sound samples, you'd probably want both, but we will say the B side of the Esprit De Corps single is pretty goddamn great, all sung in Spanish, with some seriously kickass bass that pretty much drives the whole song, and "Stray Dogs" sounds like a punk rock classic transported from the past, but then so does "Espirit Des Corps", and hell, the B side of the Stray Dogs single is pretty classic sounding too, with a main riff/hook that kills and some seriously anthemic vox... Screw it, just buy em both, you won't be sorry...
We're not really all that clued in to the modern Oi / mod / punk scene, and we really wouldn't know about these guys at all if it weren't for the fact, that an ex member of crust metal crushers and aQ faves Acephalix was one of the guitar players in this local hard-mod / Oi combo, named for the wave of immigrants in the 1800's, coming from Australia to SF, who were blamed for all sorts of trouble, including a fire in 1849 that destroyed much of the city, as well as much of the street crime in general.
What we do know, is we're digging both of these new 7"s a bunch, total classic old school seventies/eighties style power pop / mod / punk rock, crunchy, jangly guitars, thick sinewy basslines (that sometimes get super distorted and crazy melodic), gruff belted vocals, and ultra catchy songs, that stick in your head like crazy, songs that beside being hooky, just ooze blood and sweat and energy and emotion, it's not hard to imagine folks going nuts and jumping around like crazy, their live shows must be insane, and while the stuff we've seen written about these guys make all sorts of super obscure punk rock references, we're thinking if you're like us, and dig stuff like Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, 999, the Adverts, even the Jam, this stuff will most definitely hit the spot! We weren't gonna go into too much detail about all the songs on both of these singles, cuz we were figuring that if you dug either (or both) of the sound samples, you'd probably want both, but we will say the B side of the Esprit De Corps single is pretty goddamn great, all sung in Spanish, with some seriously kickass bass that pretty much drives the whole song, and "Stray Dogs" sounds like a punk rock classic transported from the past, but then so does "Espirit Des Corps", and hell, the B side of the Stray Dogs single is pretty classic sounding too, with a main riff/hook that kills and some seriously anthemic vox... Screw it, just buy em both, you won't be sorry...
Over the last few years T.I.T.S. have proven to be one of the most exciting groups in the San Francisco music scene. Four woman who bring an immediacy and intensity to their off kilter post-punk jams. Theirs are songs that make you want to dance in such a fucked up way, as you smash and destroy, sweat and bleed and exorcise all the demons from your soul...
For sure taking their cues from the early No Wave scene, their sound so perfect alongside impassioned blasts from the past by folks like The Au Pairs, Liliput, DNA, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Bush Tetras, The Raincoats and The Slits. We also love how they songs feel like such kindred spirits to what Erase Errata were exploring on their final (?) album, Nightlife. We're also reminded of a similar sensation we feel when we listen to The Ex.
While they may be getting much inspiration from the past, nothing feels nostalgic about the sounds on The Girls. In fact every song jumps out with such a present, vibrant energy that they make the listener feel totally connected to that visceral moment in time. What makes T.I.T.S. so fucking great is that they don't just borrow from post punk's past, but instead they actually infuse so much true punk spirit into their songs. Smoking hot!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Awesome band name for sure! We were dying to hear these guys before we had any idea what they might sound like. And they do sort of sound like the name, explanation point and all. A whirling dervish of a three piece, Matthew Mottel on synth, Kevin Shea (Coptic Light, Storm And Stress) on drums and Ed Bear on baritone saxophone and
electronics. The presence of Kevin Shea should give you a hint as to what you're in for. His spastic, impossibly octopoidal drum splatter is all over this disc, a stuttering spastic free jazz soundscape dense and impenetrable. Above this tangled percussive squall, the synth and the sax do battle. And this is a serious fucking knock down drag out battle to the death. The synth seems to come out on top turning what could have been more of a free jazz record into a seriously fucked up freenoise record. Mottel is like Keith Emerson on a serious PCP bender, spitting out thick snarling sheets of synth buzz, spraying it like machine gun fire, melodies are tangled and complicated little knots hurled into the fray like cannonballs made out of steel string and roof nails. The sax is all over the place, adding tonal color, mad squawking, chittering chirps and deep fuzzy moans, this is a massive chaotic free for all. Sometimes the band members lock into a cohesive sort of drone, but even then Shea is still hurling his kit all over a huge concrete bunker, like every free jazz solo drum record played simultaneously, it's never long before the synth splinters and the sax shrieks and suddenly it a big black musical cloud, you know like in cartoons when people are fighting and there's a big black swirling cloud with arms and legs sticking out. Only now there's broken drumsticks, shattered keys from an abused synthesizer, bent saxophones as well as bruised and bloody body parts.
This an exhausting listen, but it's worth it. Heavy and thick, weirdly groovy, totally spastic and really really great.
Comes packaged in spray painted sleeves made out of old chopped up lps, each disc includes a jagged shard of some old vinyl lp as well.
Damn. This is quite a find. Tank Of Danzig was a band that few people remember from back in the day, and even fewer must have actually heard them; but this German art-punk quartet wandered into Conny Plank's studio sometime in 1982 and emerged with a pretty incredible album that they released through the equally obscure Idiot Records. It doesn't seem that anybody in the band did anything noteworthy either before or after, making this album something of a mystery. We did discover that Tank Of Danzig had a split release with Biting Tongues - another impressively obscure art-punk project, although BT's Graham Massey did go on to considerable notoriety with 808 State - but that was all to be gleaned of the history of Tank Of Danzig. The frontman was a character with the single name of Schengel, and who had a commanding rasp to his barked English lyrics, often running the gauntlet of punk dialectics about totalitarianism, capitalism, nuclear war, and the pending revolution that should take place in the face of all of existential threats. His jittery, chicken scratch guitars snap in step with the punk-disco-funk rhythm section which could have given A Certain Ratio a run for their money on a good day. Schengel shared the front of the stage (so to speak) with another man with one name Kohl, who very well could have been Germany's answer to James Chance, with his blurting, squawking sax solos that thankfully are fully aware that punk economy would never tolerate a perpetual wank. Not Trendy was the band's only album, and this cd reissue lumps this album with the band's first two singles. Fans of The Ex, James Chance & The Contortionists, Abwarts, and Swell Maps would be well served to check this out!
For those of us who came of musical age in the nineties, especially lots of you avid aQ list readers, odds are you were way into noise rock, labels like Amphetamine Reptile, Touch And Go, Homestead, and bands like Jesus Lizard, Chokebore, Unsane, Vertigo, Lubricated Goat, the God Bullies, godheadSilo, Hammerhead, Jawbox, Killdozer, Arcwelder, Janitor Joe, King Snake Roost, we could go on and on, but if that either looks like your record collection back in the day, or reads like a current iTunes playlist, odds are you're also probably familiar with Tar. Tar were a band from Chicago, who existed from about 1988 until 1995, and not only made some amazing records, but also released some of the most kick ass singles of that era. And for some reason, never hit it big like some of those other groups. Like another favorite of ours, Arcwelder, Tar toured like madmen, made record after record, and while attaining a pretty decent cult following, remained pretty solidly underground.
So in swoops Henry at Chunklet, to wake folks the fuck up to what they may have, and most likely DID, miss back in the day. And like it says in the liner notes, and as mentioned above, as great as Tar albums were, their best songs seemed to end up on singles, which makes this singles collection arguably the best Tar record there is, which is saying something for sure.
The sound will no doubt be familiar to fans of all the above mentioned bands and labels, the feeding back, wildly distorted guitars, the tight muscly drumming, the yowled vox, indie rock infused with some serious punkiness and noisiness, thick jagged riffs wrapped in sinewy basslines, some tracks crazy catchy, like a pop song in noise rock's clothing, others obtuse and aggressive and fierce and fucked up. Lots of mathy tension, post rock sprawl, these guys were so goddamn good, and listening to this chronologically, it's crazy how they transformed from a feral noise rock beast, into seriously killer songwriters. Just listen to the clips below. We made sample of our favorites, but even those were tough to pick, cuz pretty much every song here KILLS. And that AC/DC cover is a doozy!
The packaging is of course over the top, colored vinyl, with a huge 12"x12" booklet with tons of liner notes, lots of famous folks you know reminiscing on how great Tar were, notes on each track, and each single, lots of rare photos, a ticket stub and more. Also includes a download code for the record proper AND for a bonus collection of rare live tracks. Absolutely and totally essential!!!
Last time we were in New York, we managed to grab a single by this band, Taylor Bow, named for an infamous online porn site featuring videos posted by a disgruntled and spurned ex boyfriend, we heard it playing in a store, and had to buy it. An insanely furious and frenzied, blown out chunk of metallic punkness, or maybe punked out metal, either way, the speakers seemed to be melting and malfunctioning, spewing red hot daggers of sound, the vocals ultra distorted and in the red, the drums, total practice space boom and crunch, chaotic and unhinged, the guitars slipping from wild feedback soaked squalls, to churning Brainbombs-y sludge. So we of course tried to order a bunch, but it was the LAST copy.
So we waited and waited, and our patience was finally rewarded with this, the first full length from NYC hardcore noise metal weirdos Taylor Bow, fronted, you might not be surprised to discover by Dom Fernow, of Prurient, Vegas Martyrs and Ash Pool among others. Taylor Bow features the same sort of lo-fi metal-punk noise drenched crush, but instead of blasting blackly, or exploding into sheets of white noise, TB slip back and forth between freaked out on-the-verge-of-collapse hardcore and looped sounding sinister dirges, that totally push all our Brainbombs buttons. The sound is red hot, blown out, brittle and brutal, but still thick and heavy, the vocals are super intense, which sometimes makes Taylor Bow sound like a way more rocking Whitehouse, but there are definite nods to the current crop of stripped down raw black metal, Fernow's Ash Pool for sure, but also stuff like Akitsa and Bone Awl. But even with that metal edge, this stuff is way more filthy and punky, and we're loving it. Released on the same label that brought us Ancestors and that Hallow record, which makes perfect sense, just more fucked up freaked out heaviness that we can't seem to get enough of.
SUPER LIMITED of course, we may have the last 20 or so copies, so grab one while you can...
So very sadly defunct, Portland, Oregon's Team Dresch empowered young women everywhere back in '94. And continue to do so with this feistily fantastic album as a document of their inspiring greatness. Some extraordinarily right-on raging music including the awesome "Fake Fight". Super catchy, driving and emotive dyke punk for everyone. All salute Kaia, Donna, Marci and Jody. A co-release on Jody's label Candy-Ass and Kaia's Chainsaw Records. Is that enough superlatives for ya?
NOW ON VINYL!
Love her or hate her, Lydia Lunch will make an impression on you. Given her venomous poems, constant invectives, and perpetual bad attitude, it's pretty obvious that Lydia wants you to hate her. While she's not an artist without her charms, she'll probably hate you for loving her. She began a career of transgression and teeth-gnashing in the mid-'70s when she was a runaway teenager slumming around the crappiest parts of NYC and pissing off more people than not. Yet, she managed to sequester enough people to support her in Teenage Jesus and The Jerks - one of the seminal bands who defined No Wave. They were also one of the four bands who appeared on the highly influential No New York compilation, alongside James Chance & The Contortionists, Mars, and DNA. Teenage Jesus only lasted for three years, probably due to the fact that no one could tolerate the musical dictator that was Lydia Lunch. But the music itself probably did a fair share of damage upon the participants as Teenage Jesus produced hyper-abrasive, hyper-condensed songs through militant rhythmic stomps, screechingly atonal slide guitars, and Lydia's sharply barked vocals. James Chance was in fact one of the early members of the band, offering his blood-splattering sax as a suitable duet for Lydia's caterwauling.
While Teenage Jesus never managed a full album (well, they barely managed to clock in a 20 minute live set!), there have been a number of collections of Teenage Jesus tracks. This compilation, Shut Up And Bleed, pretty much has all of the tracks from the band that were recorded to tape. It should be noted that the cd version of the same name contained tracks from Beirut Slump, another early Lydia Lunch project; but none of those cuts appear on this Cherry Red vinyl reish.
Love her or hate her, Lydia Lunch will make an impression on you. Given her venomous poems, constant invectives, and perpetual bad attitude, it's pretty obvious that Lydia wants you to hate her. While she's not an artist without her charms, she'll probably hate you for loving her. She began a career of transgression and teeth-gnashing in the mid-'70s when she was a runaway teenager slumming around the crappiest parts of NYC and pissing off more people than not. Yet, she managed to sequester enough people to support her in Teenage Jesus and The Jerks - one of the seminal bands who defined No Wave. They were also one of the four bands who appeared on the highly influential No New York compilation, alongside James Chance & The Contortionists, Mars, and DNA. Teenage Jesus only lasted for three years, probably due to the fact that no one could tolerate the musical dictator that was Lydia Lunch. But the music itself probably did a fair share of damage upon the participants as Teenage Jesus produced hyper-abrasive, hyper-condensed songs through militant rhythmic stomps, screechingly atonal slide guitars, and Lydia's sharply barked vocals. James Chance was in fact one of the early members of the band, offering his blood-splattering sax as a suitable duet for Lydia's caterwauling.
While Teenage Jesus never managed a full-album (well, they barely managed to clock in a 20 minute live set!), there have been a number of collections of Teenage Jesus tracks. The 2008 compilation, Shut Up And Bleed, is unique by including tunes from Lydia Lunch's other band at the time Beirut Slump. Some of these tracks had appeared on another Lunch compendium, Hysterie, released way back in 1988, but they've never been on cd. In Beirut Slump, Lydia played the part of the lead guitarist, leaving the vocal rants to Bobby Berkowitz, whose growling and grunts were uncannily similar to those of Michael Gira on the early Swans records. With the dissonant organ stabs, scraped guitar noise, and jackbooted stomping, Beirut Slump must have been one of the unsung templates for Gira and Swans. Even 30 years later, this stuff is damn impressive.
Pink Skulls is a new cd-r label run by Glenn Donaldson of Jewelled Antler, for stuff that's too "punk" for Jewelled Antler to put out. A recent list's Record of the Week, Leaf Yard, was one of Pink Skulls' first releases (if you've heard that, you know that what Glenn means by "punk" sure ain't Green Day). Now comes the Teenage PanzerKorps, a band which actually features Glenn himself (under the name Edmund Xavier) in its ranks. This lil' 3" cdr looks a lot like the stuff in the on-going Jewelled Antler "Library" series, but sure doesn't sound like Thuja or Tomes or even Dead Raven Choir. It's raucous, droney, arty rawk with a German singer (a 40-year old punker going by the name Bunker Wolf here). Bunker and Xavier and joined by drummer "Catholic Pat" Toves and Boy True on bass (quite possibly actually Jason Honea, who's a member of the Knit Separates with Glenn). Loud (or at least distorted), not too fast, and Teutonically snotty: nine songs in as many minutes, with titles like "Burma Crawl", "Chinese Machine Gun parts 1 and 2", and "Get Out Of My Shadow!". It references '80s downer artpunk (The Fall, Factory Records stuff I guess or maybe some of Savage Republic's tracks), '60s garage with fuzz organ, and the hardcore bands Boy True and Catholic Pat used to play in. Noisy breaks, abrupt edits, and poppy grooves are all important to Teenage Panzerkorps' sound, but it's Bunker Wolf's accent and delivery that stands out the most. No fake German here like Zeigenbock Kopf! Then there's Glenn. He proved in his old band Mirza's more loud, scree-filled moments that he can do the aggro guitar thing, yet his sensitive side is still in evidence here, so his 6 & 12 string guitar parts here betray an indie-pop influence as pretty as what he's come up with in such outfits as The Birdtree, The Knit Separates, Blithe Sons and even Thuja (with whom Teenage Panzerkorp at least share a partly improvised approach). An interesting blend of inspirations/expertise to be sure. These guys recorded this for fun a couple years ago, and have finally found a proper outlet for it, which is cool 'cause it's pretty great.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Bunker Wolf, Catholic Pat, Edmund Xavier and Boy True are back with some more of the aggro lo-fi Teutonic art punk attack that only they are capable in this day, age, and state. And leave it to the Teenage Panzerkorps to come up with an automatically classic title like Nations Are Insane. Doesn't that sound like the title of some critically-lauded, obscuro punk rarity? Y'know, a seminal album cited by bands years later? Well anyway I think it's a great title. And the tracks on here are great too! If you liked TPK's Gleich Heilt Gleich 3" cd-r previously issued by Jewelled Antler punk offshoot Pink Skulls, you'll slaver over this. Total '80s DIY worship, sounding like something that coulda been on one of those Hyped2Death comps. Arty, punky noise rock that's equally into the Germs and the Germans (like Neu! and Neubauten). And singer Bunker Wolf *is* German so it's very authentic in that regard. Eighteen tracks that clock in at under a half-hour of murky, shambolic, distorted, somewhat-poppy urgh-splurge. Featuring members of Grim Reality, The Nazi Dogs, Thuja, The Knit Separates, The Birdtree, Blithe Sons, Skygreen Leopards, etc...
Ah, Teenage Panzerkorps. This confounding, transcontinental quartet has quite a punk / avant-rock pedigree. Edmund Xavier was born Glenn Donaldson, whose work within the forest-dwelling psychedelic collective Jewelled Antler spawned such projects as Thuja and the Blithe Sons, not to mention the paisley-pop project the Skygreen Leopards and Art Museums; and Boy True is the pseudonym for Jason Honea, who joined the leftist-punk band Social Unrest in the late '80s and Ten Bright Spikes in the '90s, before accompanying Donaldson and company on some of the more outre projects of Jewelled Antler. From the perspective of Jewelled Antler, the iconography of Teenage Panzerkorps makes a lot more sense, as a re-imagining of the childhood games playing with toy soldiers, where political and moral implications are lost within the wonder of play, all the while these childish ideals are smashed into the epiphany of hearing punk for the first time, with all of the social and political ramifications very much on the line. The Teutonic bark of vocalist Bunker Wolf and all of the militant iconography might give the impression of these guys being Nazi sympathizers, but this is hardly the case, as Der TPK's folding of symbols and metaphors is far more nuanced in its appropriation, pastiche, and parody.
German Reggae is album number four for Der TPK, and it exhibits some variation beyond the drone-punk propulsion which dominated their Games For Slaves and Nations Are Insane albums. Honea's basslines look back to the first couple of PiL records and Jah Wobble's thick punk-dub, and Bunker Wolf's delivery is a bit more understated, to which some have compared now to a Germanic Mark E. Smith. Even with these differences, Der TPK puts their collective head down for these propulsive, grimy post-punk numbers with plenty of references to the pre-Joy Division Warsaw recordings, Savage Republic, and Wire, not to mention contemporaries like The Soft Moon and Cult Of Youth.
Kauf Nicht Von TPK is a collection of oddities from the Deutsche-Americanische punk outfit Teenage Panzerkorps. Spearheaded by San Franciscan out-rocker Glenn Donaldson, Der TPK sports a German giant of a vocalist in Bunker Wolf, plus grizzled American punks Jason Honea and Catholic Pat Toves. Their sound is one of a forgotten bleak punk as if belted from some shitty squat in the shadows of the Berlin Wall circa 1981. Not the Neue Deutsche Welle sound of synth-based crooners nor of the Geniale Dilletanten crowd of Neubauten, Sprung Aus Den Wolken, etc; but the very dirty and very pissed-off punk sound of a group that wouldn't ever consider recording on anything with higher quality than a second hand 4-track. Even knowing this about Der TPK, we were caught offguard by the trainwreck pace of the first few tracks, which crash through 4/4 rhythms as the jangling guitars and throbbing basslines struggle to keep pace. Even Bunker Wolf sounds like he's pitched up his baritone barking just a bit. These couple of numbers sound as if the turntable was set to 45 rpm when the record's supposed to spin at 33. The tracks tend to return to a more manageable pace throughout the rest of the album which is still quite brisk mind you, with cuts rarely exceeding the three minute mark. These dark-gritty punk numbers drone through guitar, bass, and drums with Bunker Wolf chanting his way through each of the tracks, rounded out by the aptly named "Degenerate Disco." A few of the tracks are different versions of tracks found on the Harmful Emotions lp and the Nations Are Insane cd-r, both of which are way out of print, with plenty of unreleased tracks to boot. Limited to 300 copies, Italian import.
First full length from these Swedish metalheads, after a 7" we reviewed a few lists back that kicked our asses, and like that 7" Tellusian, featuring members of late great grinders Crowpath, while still plenty grindy, are way more melodic metal, and it totally suits them. The songs heavy and furious and fast, but crazy catchy, epically hooky.
A long time ago, we reviewed a grind comp, and on it, a seriously sick grind band did a cover of an old track by pop punks Propaghandi, a it was the best, an impossible fix of incredible poppiness, and frantic heaviness, and we remarked, how come bands don't just SOUND like that, it's only when a band is doing a cover of another band, but that's the first thing we thought of when we heard these guys, and this record especially, it's exactly THAT, a super heavy grind metal band, not at all afraid of melody, who manage to merge those two elements seamlessly, without taking away from either. Check out opener "Rivalry", a sub two minute blast of everything that makes these guys so great, frenzied lightning fast riffing, impossibly chaotic mathed out drumming, loads of metallic chug, but killer harmonized guitars, crazy catchy melodies, a little churning downtuned doom, and heck even an extremely brief bit of (very) surprising almost funk bass, literally a second or two, before it's right back into the chug and churn. And it continues like that, dizzyingly flitting from tangled math metal, to churning metallic grind, to soaring melodic epicry, and usually some killer mix of all of those. But for a metal/grind band, the melodies and arrangements are pretty goddamn stunning, and the sound not as grind or metal as you might expect, instead, almost like a metallized noise rock band, or a super heavy, slightly grindy math rock band, so much so, that with a slight tweak, even with a proper clean singer, it would be a whole different kind of band, but as it is, Tellusian deliver some seriously addictive, and ultra catchy pop flecked, melodic grind metal, that KILLS, and that we've been listening to pretty much nonstop since we got this in. WAY recommended!
Tender oozed out of, naturally, SF's Tenderloin 'hood (all the way up to a studio in Petaluma) to record this lp, a nasty platter of ugly, metallic punk rock n' roll, with wild psych-shred soloing, rubbery basslines, and gruff, in-your-face, high-in-the-mix vocals. Gnarly & nasty, but also not un-groovy, Tender dwell in the same freaky, filthy gutter with such misanthropic bands as Pissed Jeans and Cuntz, to name a few. Vocally, we're reminded of Killdozer, or maybe even Rob Zombie from White Zombie. With a lot of psycho-sexual issues. You can get an idea of Tender's general sick attitude from the song titles: "Ugly People Fucking", "God Likes To Watch", "Jesus Rides The UFO"... just yr basic blasphemous sexually deviant drug-fueled good times. Classic boogying rock gone to a very dark place. Or as the cover sticker sez: "A non-stop string of obscenities coupling feverishly with skull and bones aliens and new age conspiracy pastiche". Yes, they have problems. But secretly seem to be having a lot of fun. Tender's lineup features such veteran musical miscreants as Ed the Creep from The FuckEmos and Whitey Sims from SST's The Leaving Trains, by the way.
(Note to any preexisting Tender fans to avoid confusion: all of these songs previously appeared on a cd-r from couple years ago but now, in advance of a new album soon to be recorded, they've released their faves from that disc on vinyl.)
Indie cult flick fans, here's something to celebrate! It's the dvd release of Jon Moritsugu's wild'n'weird underground classic Terminal USA! Yep, his 1993 twisted, gritty ode to a most unconventional Asian American family has finally followed the slow but steady dvd birthings of his more recent films Scum Rock, Fame Whore, and Mod Fuck Explosion. What's possibly most bizarre about the film itself is that its creation was actually commissioned by PBS (yes, that meant a serious production budget for the usually shoestring Moritsugu!), was broadcast across the land in 1994-1995, and was screened at film fests around the globe. That and the film itself might not seem all that strange by today's standards, but need we say, it was a whole different world in the early '90s. This probably caused convulsions and conniptions in many unexpecting viewers. Totally raw, gnarly, and punk-as-fuck on PBS! Yow, keep your eyes peeled for appearances by Neil Hamburger and a bleach blonde haired Moritsugu! This dvd features the original cut as well as Moritsugu's director's cut which includes 14 additional minutes.
Formed in NYC in 1977, the Terrorists were a punk infused reggae/ska band that predated the UK Two Tone movement by two years. Regularly playing such clubs as CBGBs, Max's Kansas City the Terrorists quickly became the darlings of NME and Melody Maker. The recordings here, which feature guest appearances from both Roland Alphonso and Lee Perry, sound a bit dated but may interest those
Finally! The debut full length from these Bay Area punks, after two kick ass singles, and we have to say the full length definitely fulfills the promise of those 7"s, the sound is essentially the same, if anything even more kick ass, big crunchy, fuzzy guitars, pounding drums, super melodic basslines way up in the mix, that totally drive the songs, and the super distinctive vocals, which had some of us thinking of the Smoking Popes, that sort of Morrissey style croon over buzzsaw punk pop. We mentioned the Undertones and the Buzzcocks in our review of the last seven inch, and it's hard not to hear that here as well, but listening to these tracks as an album, the sound really blossoms, and somehow the sound seems way more pop than punk with every listen, the songs just impossibly catchy, hooks galore, and unlike most records, that tend toward being front loaded, Killing Time, seems to just get better and better, catchier and catchier, with some of these tracks sounding like classic pop songs from years past, albeit with crunchier guitars, fuzzier bass and pounding-er drumming, occasionally wreathed in feedback too, even some cool boy/girl vocal interplay, and that's sort of what makes Terry Malts so good, that undeniable punk energy, but wedded to some of THEE best songs we've heard in ages. Haven't found ourselves listening to a record this much nonstop since the Veronica Falls record...
A couple of years ago, San Francisco's Magic Bullets reinvented themselves as Terry Malts. The former owed their existence to The Housemartins and The Smiths, in an admirable rehash of sashaying / hipswaying UK mod-pop; but the latter embraced those all American punk icons, the Ramones (with Andee here at aQ positing Terry Malts as deadringers for the Smoking Popes). Snotty petulance, suburban boredom, slacker idiocy, oversexed / underfucked moodiness, and lyrics that seem to always start with "I don't wanna..." before issuing a cornflakes-n-beer statement of punk philosophizing. Vocalist Phillip Benson was the Morrissey impersonator in the Magic Bullets, and strains of that maudlin theatricality lilt throughout the three-chord, 1-2-3-ROCK, power-pop punk riffs that Terry Malts trade in. The bashed punk tunes are deliberately simple stomps that make no bones about referencing the iconic punk songbook (a bumbled bassline right out of The Damned here, a gloriously fuzzed out punk riff from any given Lookout! 7" circa 1993 there); and yeah, it's totally dumb. Shit, they even admit it in the feedback dusted ballad "Comfortably Dumb." You know exactly what you get with Terry Malts, and it's a hell of a lot of fun. Yup, the vinyl comes with a download code too!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the same Japanese label that brought us Bathtub Shitter (still the best band name ever!) comes Tetsuo, a band that has way more in common with Corrupted or Boris than their bathtub shitting labelmates. Sludgy and repetitive, heavy and crushing with lots of solid state feedback a la Eyehategod and loads of midtempo wall of guitar pummel a la Neurosis. One epic twenty minute track that goes from slow motion sludge to furious almost-death-metal to crusty grind to stoner groove and back again. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands definitely need this.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Found two (2) of these hidden in a box in the back of the store, haven't listed 'em since 2003, great album, grab one if you can, first come first served, sale price...
AQ pal Drucifer (and the guy who runs Dielectric Records, who released those amazing 12" a while back: Sote, Karen Stackpole, etc...) had been threatening to play this record for us for a while, and he's got pretty darn good taste so we were looking forward to finally checking it out. We always just sort of assumed from the title and from talking to Drucifer that it was going to be some sort of jazz, but boy were we surprised when we threw this on. The quartet in question is actually a trio, and while the music these three play does have certain qualities one might find in jazz, this is GRINDMETAL through and through. Five tracks of furious, chaotic, brutal and pummeling hyper complex metallic grind a la Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Pig Destoyer, Discordance Axis and the like. But unlike most grinders, TGWMQ stretch their songs way out (none of the songs is shorter than 3 minutes, most significantly more), allowing them to explore and develop and stretch out a bit. The final track is nine minutes long ferchrissakes, with lots of splattery free noise, rumbling ambient passages, found sounds and ethereal female vocals, almost-groovy riff rock parts, and buzzing droning weirdness. But don't be frightened off by all that, 'cause the core of this record is dense and grinding, ultra complicated, dizzyingly agile, and crushingly savage heaviness. So good. All you folks who freak out over Agoraphobic Nosebleed and their similarly sonic minded ilk definitely need this!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It would be nice to think that These Records have only been releasing the reissues of "Deceit" -- This Heat's second and final proper album -- every ten years after the original release of the album in 1981. The first CD pressings arrived on 1991, and this
Almost all of the histories of UK avant-garde music have claim allegiances to This Heat, as Punk, New Wave, Industrial, Prog Rock, Jim O'Rourke, and even Electronica place the seminal outfit somewhere at the beginnings of their respective etymologies. To a certain extent all of these histories may be true, but then again the broad aesthetic and ideological contexts between all of those different styles may cross-each other out, leaving This Heat as one of the few artistic forces that truly exists all by itself.
Just a trio comprised of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen, and Gareth Williams, This Heat manifested an incredibly explosive sound that hybridized all of the countercultural fury of Punk and Situationism, within a sonic context informed by technological advances of musique concrete techniques and electro-acoustic synthesis. Musically speaking, This Heat did not espouse the three chord structures or the snarling postures of Punk, instead injecting the complex pop agendas of Brian Eno (which were purposefully seeking to conflict the archetypes of rock into a new aesthetic language) with nervous tension building up to dramatic cathartic releases. "Deceit" is a record that was so ahead of its time that it has taken twenty years for artists like Fennesz and Radiohead to articulate ideas with such intensity and attention to the play between musical creation and technological advances. So highly recommended.
It's tough to review the records of This Heat separately, knowing that there is a box set, a box set most of us had been waiting for for years! Like imagine if you heard about Christmas, and spent the next decade waking up and rushing out to the living room only to find nothing there. That's what it was like waiting for the long rumored This Heat box. It seems almost self evident that it is honestly one of the few box sets, that is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL. But okay, $100 might be a bit much to drop on a band you're not all the familiar with. And probably some folks already have some of these discs, as they were briefly available in the nineties. But let's be upfront and warn you straight up, we know very few people, who on hearing any music from This Heat, even a single song, weren't immediately compelled to get their hands on every single bit of recorded material they could find. The music of This Heat is most definitely that powerful, that intense, having informed almost all of the music we've loved since. And sounding as fresh and forward thinking today as it did when it was first recorded.
Before we get to reviewing This Heat's second release, the Health And Efficiency ep from 1980, let's give you some background on (and no small amount of gushing over) one of our all time favorite bands.
Trying to explain why this band is so good is sort of like trying to explain why ice cream is so delicious. Or why Bush is such a terrible president.
Or maybe it's kind of like writing an introduction for the new Pynchon novel. Or telling a few jokes before Richard Pryor comes on stage. Or throwing a couple quick passes before Joe Montana comes on the field. It's that daunting, that overwhelming, that impossible.
The trio of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen and Gareth Williams known collectively as This Heat were one of the few bands that literally changed people's lives. Changed the way folks thought about music. I (Andee) couldn't believe music like this actually existed. It was everything I wanted to listen to before I knew that THIS was exactly what I wanted to listen to. Hit It Or Quit It publisher / rock critic / indie scenestress Jessica Hopper once wrote that she literally pee'd her pants the first time she heard This Heat. And it's not hard to see why. Without This Heat, modern, alternative, avant-garde music as we know it would be a whole different beast. Post-rock, math-rock, avant rock are hugely indebted to the genre shattering experimentalism of This Heat. Tortoise, You Fantastic, Yona Kit, Brise Glace, Psychic Paramount, Laddio Bollocko, Radian, Village Of Savoonga, Larsen, Starfuckers, Circle, Salvatore, I Am Spoonbender -- none of those bands would even exist if it weren't for This Heat, or if they still did you can bet they would sound a whole lot different. And that's just off the top of our heads, AND that's -just- bands whose sound directly reflects the influence of This Heat. Imagine how many performers and artists were influenced by This Heat but who let that influence manifest itself in not so obvious ways.
We once described This Heat as "Krautrock-ish hyper rhythmic tape-looped prog." Which comes close to succinctly describing the magical musical alchemy of This Heat, but still only scratches the surface. The sound of This Heat is rhythm and texture and dynamics. The recording studio as instrument. Every sound and every song is based on rhythm and texture. There are hooks, and melodies, but they exist to serve the rhythm and are often born from the deft manipulation of sound and tempo. Even the most static and repetitive parts manage to sound -musical-. There are vocals, but they are minimal and otherworldly, weary and sing songy and completely mesmerizing. A droning musical accompaniment to the haunting whirs and clanging percussion in the background.
Their entire catalog has gone in and out of print over the years, mostly out, with all of their records pretty much completely unavailable for the last 7 or 8 years. Rumors of a complete box set and reissue campaign began to circulate a few years back and it has finally happened and it's everything we could have hoped for and more. Every single release, remastered and repackaged in swank digipaks. We're almost jealous of folks who have never even heard This Heat. The thought of entering into this music completely blind, is almost frightening, as the world of This Heat is so singular, so powerful, it will be difficult to ever listen to music the same way again. Trust us.
The Health And Efficiency ep followed This Heat's self titled debut and took their sound in a strangely pop (for them at least) direction, sounding like some tweaked and twisted version of Wire, the title track all angular new wave guitars, monotone vocals, driving drums, strange convoluted arrangements and creepy background sound effects before the whole thing splinters into super abstract rhythmic experimentalism, looped grooves, played over and over, while sounds float and careen in the background, so incredibly hypnotic and repetitive. The second track on Health And Efficiency (which runs a brief twenty minutes) is "Graphic/Varispeed (45rpm)", a lengthy drone, a warm synth whir that surfaces within other This Heat tracks, recontextualized and often chopped up and reassembled, but here, it's a slow shifting slow motion single tone soundscape, with the tone occasionally being pitched up or down, very simple but quite haunting, and a cool glimpse at how This Heat managed to mix and match, use and reuse, without ever treading water. Kinda pricey, as it's only 20 minutes long, and two songs, but it's still well worth it.
It's tough to review the records of This Heat separately, knowing that there is a box set, a box set most of us had been waiting for for years! Like imagine if you heard about Christmas, and spent the next decade waking up and rushing out to the living room only to find nothing there. That's what it was like waiting for the long rumored This Heat box. It seems almost self evident that it is honestly one of the few box sets, that is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL. But okay, $100 might be a bit much to drop on a band you're not all the familiar with. And probably some folks already have some of these discs, as they were briefly available in the nineties. But let's be upfront and warn you straight up, we know very few people, who on hearing any music from This Heat, even a single song, weren't immediately compelled to get their hands on every single bit of recorded material they could find. The music of This Heat is most definitely that powerful, that intense, having informed almost all of the music we've loved since. And sounding as fresh and forward thinking today as it did when it was first recorded.
Before we get to reviewing Live 80/81, a killer live disc that was included in the box set as a bonus disc, let's give you some background on (and no small amount of gushing over) one of our all time favorite bands.
Trying to explain why this band is so good is sort of like trying to explain why ice cream is so delicious. Or why Bush is such a terrible president.
Or maybe it's kind of like writing an introduction for the new Pynchon novel. Or telling a few jokes before Richard Pryor comes on stage. Or throwing a couple quick passes before Joe Montana comes on the field. It's that daunting, that overwhelming, that impossible.
The trio of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen and Gareth Williams known collectively as This Heat were one of the few bands that literally changed people's lives. Changed the way folks thought about music. I (Andee) couldn't believe music like this actually existed. It was everything I wanted to listen to before I knew that THIS was exactly what I wanted to listen to. Hit It Or Quit It publisher / rock critic / indie scenestress Jessica Hopper once wrote that she literally pee'd her pants the first time she heard This Heat. And it's not hard to see why. Without This Heat, modern, alternative, avant-garde music as we know it would be a whole different beast. Post-rock, math-rock, avant rock are hugely indebted to the genre shattering experimentalism of This Heat. Tortoise, You Fantastic, Yona Kit, Brise Glace, Psychic Paramount, Laddio Bollocko, Radian, Village Of Savoonga, Larsen, Starfuckers, Circle, Salvatore, I Am Spoonbender -- none of those bands would even exist if it weren't for This Heat, or if they still did you can bet they would sound a whole lot different. And that's just off the top of our heads, AND that's -just- bands whose sound directly reflects the influence of This Heat. Imagine how many performers and artists were influenced by This Heat but who let that influence manifest itself in not so obvious ways.
We once described This Heat as "Krautrock-ish hyper rhythmic tape-looped prog." Which comes close to succinctly describing the magical musical alchemy of This Heat, but still only scratches the surface. The sound of This Heat is rhythm and texture and dynamics. The recording studio as instrument. Every sound and every song is based on rhythm and texture. There are hooks, and melodies, but they exist to serve the rhythm and are often born from the deft manipulation of sound and tempo. Even the most static and repetitive parts manage to sound -musical-. There are vocals, but they are minimal and otherworldly, weary and sing songy and completely mesmerizing. A droning musical accompaniment to the haunting whirs and clanging percussion in the background.
Their entire catalog has gone in and out of print over the years, mostly out, with all of their records pretty much completely unavailable for the last 7 or 8 years. Rumors of a complete box set and reissue campaign began to circulate a few years back and it has finally happened and it's everything we could have hoped for and more. Every single release, remastered and repackaged in swank digipaks. We're almost jealous of folks who have never even heard This Heat. The thought of entering into this music completely blind, is almost frightening, as the world of This Heat is so singular, so powerful, it will be difficult to ever listen to music the same way again. Trust us.
Live 80/81 is a compilation of live tracks recorded between 1980 and 1981 all over Europe and sequenced to resemble the set list the band used on tour in the eighties. Recorded using a single stereo mic, the sound is less that crystal clear, it's blurry and murky and lo-fi, but captures the band in their element at the top of their game. And the sound quality almost adds to the music, the band were such experimentalists, you can almost imagine them spending weeks in the studio trying to perfect the perfect lo-fi method of recording. But the songs are amazing, the extended rhythmic jams, the dense bursts of furious angular pop, it's simply awesome to hear the band recreate pieces that on record relied so heavily on the studio, more evidence as to the genius of This Heat. Rumor has it there are tons of other live recordings soon to get the deluxe reissue treatment as well. We can hardly wait.
