Just what the title sez! This is The Country Teasers in all their live, super what-the-fuck, devil-may-care rawk splendour compiled from their 1999-2004 shows. Like a bunch of hillbillies (Scottish ones, no less!) who've gotten absolutely trashed out in their garage. In the past, we've compared 'em to a bastard child of garage rock and postpunk granddaddies Billy Childish and Mark E. Smith, and that still holds very true. A noisy, angular, stumbling, slurring mess, but an entertaining (and occasionally hilarious) one! Just after someone hollers "YOU SUCK!", they launch into a relatively subdued cover of Randy Newman's "Short People". Uh oh. They also throttle songs by Butthole Surfers, New Order, and Brainbombs. Be forewarned, if you're brave enough to listen to this album, you may find the drawer of your cd player littered with cigarette butts and empty lager cans.
Compilation of unreleased tracks, demos, singles and demos from this Scottish quartet. Ultra-fucked country and western garage with nasty offensive lyrics. Super lo fi and totally kick ass. Sounds a bit like some weird mix of Billy Childish and the Fall but with a fake country drawl. Soooo good. Twangy and mean. Sadie's favorite release of the month.
This new Country Teasers album -- also mysteriously known as Full Moon Empty Sportsbag -- might not be everybody's cup of tea/moonshine/battery acid. There's barked, snarled, moaned and mumbled vocals not unlike what you might expect from your old cantankerous uncle after he's had a bit of a tipple. The music is made to match - ill-tempered, dissonant and trashy, and very high on treble. Garage-y organ drones hang ominously like rain-soaked bedsheets on a clothesline. Slack guitars skreee and hang loosely like the gristly remnants clinging to the bones of a bbq rib fest. Some folks thought this was Ween doing another hillbilly romp (check out "Please Stop Fucking Each Other" - no, they're not too concerned with pleasantries, are they?!). Bristlingly raw and ramshackle in both sound and visuals. You can see the magic marker inking fix-it job on the front cover as well as the pixillated and bled-through text on the back. This has drawn some very emphatically positive in-store responses (one customer said "I love this! it's a fucking mess!") as well as some incredibly icy ones. So consider yourself forewarned, this may put either a grumpy scowl or a gleeful grin on your face.
Country Teasers always sound as though someone roused them from a snoresome liquored slumber, thrust some instruments and a microphone in their hands and hollered "Play!" Seriously we'd bet they could drink The Pogues under the table. Their music never fails to be incoherent (yet somehow clearly foul mouthed) and rambling, with parts that don't quite fit together. The drum beats stumble along. The electric guitars strain against the urge to fall horribly out of tune. The ridiculously distorted speak-sing-yer-heart-right-outta-pitch style vocals will have you jumping from bummer to bellylaugh and back again (much like those of Shane MacGowan of the abovementioned Pogues). They even provide an occasional play-by-play commentary. At one point in the seventh tune you can hear "bring the drums in again". As this album progresses though it's like the booze wears off a bit and a sober gloom emerges around the fourth tune. Then it's like they consumed some other chemical along with a revitalizing shot of whisky that sends them shambling into some other strange carnival tent. For folks who like their garage music to be extra loosey goosey.
Ok, when you think of harmonica, maybe you think of someone like Bob Dylan wearing one of those orthadontic-like apparatus thingies that lets you play guitar and harmonica at the same time. It's bluesy, it's rootsy, it's kinda square. But Anla Courtis' Harmonica F'ever will make you forget that sort of harmonica. This lil' 3" cd-r solo disc released by Jewelled Antler off-shoot Pink Skulls features Courtis taking harmonica playing into a multi-tracked realm of insanity and abstraction. Courtis is of course 1/3 of the bizarro Argentine out-rock troupe Reynols, so its no surprise that his approach to harmonica playing is about as far from Big John Popper as you can get. The disc starts off with a track that crams what sounds like random blowing/breathing by maybe a dozen harmonica players into 6-7 minutes. But then, when you think you've got Courtis' concept figured out, track two comes along. It's much less readily identifiable as being sourced from harmonia (though of course it is), and it's a much sleepier, spookier affair than track one. Droney and abstract and really quite lovely. The third and final track on this lil' disc switches focus to the higher register harmonica sounds, sounding like the harmonica version of a happy flock of birds. Overall, probably the ONLY nothing-but-harmonica recording you need to own.
Floating in with the perfectly jangly progression and the words, "If 'the past is past' is just the point..." on opener "Awake", it's difficult to see Many Moons coming from anyone but Martin Courtney. Also known as frontman of jangle-pop-revivalist group Real Estate, Courtney has become associated with such golden nuggets of sun-dappled-armchair-dad-wisdom and this album, his first solo venture, is chock full of them. This brisk but lilting opus of psychedelic pop is star-studded, with Julian Lynch, Matt Kallman (Girls, Real Estate) and Aaron Neveu and Jarvis Taveniere (both of Woods) all lending their creative influences. For a solo act, this album feels collaborative in the sense that it lends all the rich warmth of something created in the studio by a comfortable group of friends. Many Moons keeps a light, slowed-down Kinks-esque groove throughout and the string arrangements lend an unparalleled fullness. The titular track stands out with a breezy sound, bouncy bass line, and delightful flute arrangement which all combined could easily land it on the Endless Summer soundtrack. Seriously, when was the last time you heard such a killer flute solo on a pop song?! We're all in with this album and with every solo album that comes from the individual members of Real Estate (see: Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, Ducktails), it's really beginning to feel like they're hitting their CSNY stride, creating just as much wonderful music separately as they do when they come together.
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Another '60s occult rock act for fans of Black Widow.
OMG!, as they say. It doesn't happen very often, but once in a lucky while, one of us here at AQ will suddenly find out about some impending reissue and just about jump up and down exclaiming, "AT LAST!!!" We're talking about holy grails, like Bruce Haack's The Electric Lucifer, and Moolah, and Joakim Skogsberg, and Pandemonium... All of which we made Records Of The Week, by the way. So, last week we had another such exciting moment, when it was revealed that THIS album had just been reissued on cd, for the first time ever (barring bootlegs).
Not to be confused with a host of other Covens out there, this Coven was a uniquely doomy, gothic metal band from Detroit, who released but one record, 1987's Worship New Gods. No, we've never ever even seen an original lp copy - this band is pretty obscure. You might find a track of theirs on a DJ mix by Darkthrone's Fenriz, but that's about it. To give credit where credit is due, we first heard of Coven thanks to the great metal collector nerd website The Corroseum [www.thecorroseum.com], who had reviewed and raved about Worship New Gods with enough enthusiasm to get us to, ahem, track down for ourselves personally one of those bootleg copies previously mentioned. That was several years ago, but now, though, thanks to Shadow Kingdom, we've got a legit version we can happily share with all of you.
The Corroseum review said of Coven that "they sound like no other metal band that ever existed", yet went on to explain how in FEEL Coven could conjure comparisons to the likes of Cirith Ungol, Celtic Frost, Bathory, and even Bauhaus (more on that angle in a minute). We may as well quote the conclusion of their write-up: "Some dark, cloudy, angst-ridden days you cannot listen to anything else but Coven." Quite a recommendation, we had to hear 'em! And when we did, we fell in love. To the extent, that, like the Pandemonium, this became something for Allan & Andee here to daydream about trying to properly reissue ourselves. Fortunately, Shadow Kingdom were a little more proactive about that than we were, and here it is.
Pagan-proud true martial metal, '80s steel that those into the epick, eccentric likes of Manilla Road and Max Planck ought to bow down to. But that's hybridized with even heavier, doomier fare, a la Black Sabbath and Candlemass (triumphantly lumbering opening track "The Riddle Of Steel" definitely shares some DNA with Sabbath's "Electric Funeral"). That's the metal side of it. But there's more: Coven also convey a strong post-punk, '80s gothic death-rock vibe, at the same time. Think Bauhaus, The Mission, Christian Death, and 45 Grave... And, thus, like The Corroseum said, they don't sound like any other -metal- band, exactly. There's just something so haunting and magical about 'em.
What really puts these songs of blood and fire over the top are the stirring, echoing vocals, they sometimes struggle and strain, but that only enhances their emotive appeal. And, again, goes a long way to making this band indeed not sound like any other, their music massive and murky and melodic, swirling and psychedelic. Their battlecries from a bygone age are doomy and druggy (well, if Vikings did drugs) and oh so atmospheric.
Reissued with a 16 page cd booklet full of lyrics and vintage photos in both b&w and color. No liner notes, though, but in some ways that adds to the mystique, in fact, maybe they should have left out some of the photos, too...
SO glad this has been made available. Until now, all we could do, was reference 'em in our reviews of the underground epic metallers Realmbuilder, and hope that somebody somewhere would know what we were talking about. Now's your chance to find out. Don't miss it. 'Cause Coven's record is definitely some under the radar weird genius, a truly lost gem of metal, and more...
Oh, will this band ever be able shake the formidable ghost of their glorious Trinity Sessions album? Each subsequent album has inevitably been held up to and just fallen short. That album has proven to be something of a treasure and a curse. And let's not be mistaken, a straight-up duplication of that album is not what's yearned for. No, what's sought is the luminous magic that the Junkies conjured in those sessions. Closing in on two decades of music-making, Cowboy Junkies have made seven fine studio albums plus two live ones, but quite simply none can hold a candle to 1988's Trinity Sessions. Perhaps trying to redefine and breathe some fresh energy into their langourous sound, their 2001 album Open featured a few songs that were more spacey, psych-tinged and rockier, however these changes seemed startlingly out of character and overwhelmed the band's trademark, Margot Timmins' haunting voice. On One Soul Now, they get it a bit more 'right', integrating the more kinetic elements of Open into their overall sleepy-eyed persona and sounding more refreshed in the process.
Alt-country long before the term ever existed, these kings and queen of dreamy slower than slow, more bitter than sweet music have rarely strayed from the mellow path they've tread for over fifteen years. However, on 'Open' they venture into brief moments of almost psych/space-y territory and more upbeat tempos. Not sure if this is a good thing 'cause the Cowboy Junkies are at their
While the late great Patrick Cowley is best known for his amazing disco and hi-NRG production for folks like Sylvester and the Megatone label he started, very much like his east coast counterpart Arthur Russell Cowley wore many different musical hats. It hasn't been until the recent unearthing of literally hundreds of reels of tape from his archives that the world is getting a glimpse of all the way-ahead-of-its-time synth/electronic music he was madly creating before and during his reign as San Francisco's most respected disco maestro.
In the late '70s Cowley appeared on a record by his friend Jorge Socarras' band, the way left-field post-punk group Indoor Life (one of their great tracks was recently featured on the Finders Keepers comp, Cross Continental Record Raid Road Trip). During those same years the two were also collaborating on a project together which sadly never got released, which turned out to be Catholic, and is the first record to get unearthed from those deep vaults of Cowley's that have only just begun to be explored.
Recorded between 1976-1979, Cowley and Socarras really found a way to create charged synth-wave/post-punk that was very much in line with what other forward minded San Francisco folks like The Units and Tuxedomoon were making. With Cowley handling the bulk of the instrumentation (synth, guitar, bass, drums, drum machines, etc.) and Socarras delivering dramatic and ice cold vocals falling somewhere between Gary Numan and Public Image Ltd. Catholic displays lots of range, from more slow burning grooves to full throttle attacks, New Romantic leanings to proto-Industrial crunch. It's cool to hear what people think is actually playing when we have this on, we've heard everything from Foetus to Ultravox to Cabaret Voltaire. We can't wait to hear so much more of the amazing music that Cowley created in his much too short of life (he passed away in 1982, one of the earliest casualties of the AIDS epidemic) but luckily for all of us he left an incredible musical legacy that will live on forever!
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What was once vinyl is now aluminum, but sounds no less than like it did before.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Limited stock on this Hooker Vision imprint, from the newly minted project Coyote Image Classic - which is the husband / wife pairing of Grant and Rachel Evans - the former better known as Nova Scotia Arms, and the latter as Motion Sickness Of Time Travel. Four tracks spread over two cassettes (one 21 minutes, the other 14) of mostly acoustically sourced songs on piano and guitar whose languid, late-night atmospheres really taps into the beautifully forest-dwelling spirits of the Jewelled Antler sound we championed back in the day, complete with self-destructing tape warbling that sounds like our crappy machine eating the tape, but such sounds are the residues from THEIR crappy tape machine. Within these sounds, it's easy to hear Roy Montgomery's downer tones amidst the cascades of delay on the B side of this set. As good as both of these two are using synths and electronics, they might be better with this set-up. Hopefully, this will be a project they'll continue and in greater quantities! Already sold out at the source. Last copies ever.
On their second album on K Records, Jonn and Lisa polish up their patty-cake pop tunes just a bit. Still very gentle and sweet. Not always in tune or in time, but that's not the ultimate point of lo-fi pop now, is it?
Debut cd from the rough-around-the-edges, super-earnest pop pair Crabs. Very lo-fi, but the crushworthy sweet/tart sentiments manage to peek through the often less than proficient playing.
In which the sweet lo-fi pop duo of Jonn and Lisa welcome Sarah Dougher into the Crabs fold. The addition of keyboards makes this all the more lovely. This is their fourth full length.
The third album of lo-fi pop confection treats from the Oregon two-piece known as Crabs. Jonn Lunsford (brother of Bret of Beat Happening) and Lisa Jackson play well off each other with a warm familiarity like two close school pals.
SF's Crack:WAR strike back with two new tracks of electro street hustle with slovenly vocalisations. No, they didn't tour Africa, but their fans sure act like animals at their live shows. Wild.
Now on vinyl! Remixed and remastered!
Here's what we said about the cd version:
"Silent Fantasy" is the dementedly catchy full length debut from SF's Crack:WAR. Like the baddest girls in the schoolyard, frontwomen Le Kim & L'Erin accost listeners with spoken-sung lyrics that often go off the rails from sassy into the realm of the surreal and sordidly bizarre. Meanwhile, King Riff and Obscuratron put together distorted disco deconstructions that the right combination of substances would probably render wildly danceable. The sounds may not be too vastly removed from the legions of electro clones, but those looking for a soundtrack to lolling about trendy clubs and shopping for designer handbags will definitely be disappointed. This is San Francisco, not New York, and noise reigns supreme. You want cutting edge fashion? Crack:WAR give you over the top renditions of clowns, sailors, and bloody, masked anti-heroes. You asked for benignly "shocking," "sexy" lyrics and dirty-girl posing? Crack:WAR will give you illicit sex in caves with mutilated body parts, but you're gonna have to pay. Unlikely to be a hit at electro clubs in Williamsburg, and I mean that in purely complimentary terms.
Cool cool. A super-limited 7" release from San Francisco's psychedelelectro dirge party band, Crack: We Are Rock. Three hundred and thirty three of these were put out, as part of a 7" series from 333 Recordings.
Electronic art-noise soundclash representing SF and Ann Arbor. San Francisco's Crack:WAR, fresh off their tour of Japan, pump out three dark electro tracks -- Liquid Sky meets Throbbing Gristle. Ann Arbor rock deconstrucivists Wolf Eyes churn out a sidelong
On album #2, Crack W.A.R. have tempered their bad girl electro-sass wild side in favor of a more brooding, dankly industrial sound. Still very energetic tempo-wise, but somewhat less in-your-face in the vocal department. The haphazard cut'n'paste fashion of their Silent Fantasy album and rambunctious live shows were what stirred a fun, messy, funky ruckus in the local hipster scene last year. On Cosmic Mind Flight, they seem to have opted for less noise and spectacle and shifted their priorities to honing their songs and sound. As a result, it does sound 'better' but you might find it a bit lacking in the C:W.A.R. bizarro personality that drenched their debut.
"Silent Fantasy" is the dementedly catchy full length debut from Crack:WAR. Like the baddest girls in the schoolyard, frontwomen Le Kim & L'Erin accost listeners with spoken-sung lyrics that often go off the rails from sassy into the realm of the surreal and sordidly bizarre. Meanwhile, King Riff and Obscuratron put together distorted disco deconstructions that the right combination of substances would probably render wildly danceable. The sounds may not be too vastly removed from the legions of electro clones, but those looking for a soundtrack to lolling about trendy clubs and shopping for designer handbags will definitely be disappointed. This is San Francisco, not New York, and noise reigns supreme. You want cutting edge fashion? Crack:WAR give you over the top renditions of clowns, sailors, and bloody, masked anti-heroes. You asked for benignly "shocking," "sexy" lyrics and dirty-girl posing? Crack:WAR will give you illicit sex in caves with mutilated body parts, but you're gonna have to pay. Unlikely to be a hit at electro clubs in Williamsburg, and I mean that in purely complimentary terms. Added bonus: seizure-inducing live videos to play on your computer!
Another blast of reverby eighties style pop from these Southern California retropoppers, this one even more beholden to the golden age of MTV than the last one. The last single we referenced modern weirdo pop outfits like Ariel Pink, Greatest Hits, Blank Dogs and the like, and while that comparison still perhaps applies, the sounds here is WAY less weird, and way more, well eighties. In fact, it's kinda uncanny how much these two tracks sounds genuinely 15+ years old. From the sound, to the song, to the vocals, the instrumentation, the production, total shimmery eighties MTV style jangle pop, it's easy to imagine seeing a video from these guys between, say the Thompson Twins and Icicle Works. Spidery melodies, bouncy basslines, electronic percussion, tinkling Cure like melodies, synths and keyboards, and some very broody Smiths like sad boy vox, and of course some female back up vocals on the choruses, the second side slips more into a sort of almost gothy eighties electro pop, but holy heck, this single is some sort of fantastic sonic time machine, and while we've doubted the sincerity of this next generation romanticizing what many of us consider to be an embarrassing decade, we have to say, these songs sound pretty darn good, and definitely had us pining for the (good?) old days of big hair, over the top videos, crazy clothes, dayglo, MTV and of course the super catchy jangly electro gloom pop that went with all that stuff...
Record number two from these eighties style new wave indie pop revivalists and another fantastic batch of pretty much perfect new wave pop songs, and all we could think was 'these guys are not fucking around'. Every record not only sounding more polished and more catchy, but sounding more like it actually comes from the eighties. There's no outsider weirdness, not tongue in cheek, this is pure eighties pop and it totally hits the spot. Sounding in places a bit like M83, due in no small part to the glistening glossy production, but also this new batch of songs are pretty fantastic, the guitars chiming and glistening, the programmed beats more intricate and driving, the vocals still appropriately wistful sad boy and slouchy, but this times there's also stings (or synth strings) that add a dark gravitas, and an emotional heft, making these tracks play out like songs that you totally would have put in a mixtape as a teenager back in the day. There's also a bit of a shoegaze vibe going on (hence the M83 comparison), with the guitars and synths whipped up into thick soaring swells, all held together by some awesome gloom pop basslines, especially on "Burst" which is especially bass heavy, with a wildly soaring post chorus bridge and a super hooky melody. Probably by now you know if this is your cup of tea, but if you dig this new wave of eighties, well, new wave, few do it as good as these guys. And stick around for the title track, a darkly dramatic closer, all fuzzed out and dreamily droney, moody and brooding, with cool percussion, some vibes, spidery guitar, subtle piano, and some gorgeous vox, all woven into the dreamiest track of the bunch.
After two killer singles, finally the full length from Stockton's Craft Spells, another batch of eighties worshipping new wave indie pop, and actually since all the songs from those singles, if you dug those, you'll definitely have a good idea of what you're getting into. Besides embodying that whole Captured Tracks / Sacred Bones sound, a little gloomy, a little gothy, a little new wave, Craft Spells are serious popsmiths, who probably didn't actually grow up in the eighties, although these songs sure sound like it. Not as warped and lysergic as many of their new wave gloom pop brethren, who often have us feeling like those groups must be taking the piss, "how crazy were the eighties?!" Instead, these songs are just really GOOD, hooky, jangly, bubbly chunks of classic new wave electro pop. We described one of their singles as sounding a little like a warped Style Council 45 playing at 33, and while that might be overstating the 'weirdness', Style Council is not a bad reference point at all, neither is Simple Minds, or Thompson Twins, or Culture Club, or The Smiths, or Icicle Works, or The Cure, or Echo And The Bunnymen, we could go on, but those are the bands, and the sound, that Craft Spells seem to have captured so perfectly. Barring the more modern production, and some subtle strangeness, many of these songs could be actual long lost eighties jams, the minor key guitar jangle, the mopey sad boy vox, the bloopy synth melodies, the mood and the vibe and the hooks.
And while it's definitely NOT super weird, it's just strange enough that it will probably still hit the spot for fans of Greatest Hits, Gary War, Julian Lynch, Solar Bears, Night Control, Beach Fossils, Hanoi Janes, Dignan Porch, Minks, Soft Moon, Wild Nothing and all the rest. A new retro new wave jangle pop favorite for sure!
Another fantastic new record from Stockton dream poppers Craft Spells, who have pretty much entirely distanced themselves the weirdo pop scene that spawned them (Ariel Pink, Blank Dogs, Greatest Hits, etc.). And while they made a brief stop around record number two at a sound that harkened back to Eighties MTV new wave pop, this new one finds them fully embracing a new (to them) sound, one that's simple, melodic, heartfelt, dreamily fuzzy, a little bit wistful, sun dappled and so lovely. There are still hints of their earlier sound, little new wavy bits here and there, some subtle weirdness, but for the most part this is classic sounding baroque pop, that looks back to the classics, the Kinks, the Zombies, early Bee Gees, with strings and synths, even some vibes (maybe xylophone?), lush, luxurious arrangements, plenty of jangle and strum, some subtle electronics, a softly psychedelic production. Fans of modern day recently reviewed retro poppers like the New Lines and Still Corners, as well as groups from the recent (and not so) past like Stereolab, the High Llamas, Witch Hazel and Cardinal, this definitely falls right in there sonically. Hazy vocals, laid back steel string strum, lush vocal croon, harmonies, impossibly catchy hooks, woozy baselines, lots of shimmer and glimmer, hints of Elephant Six for sure, a little paisley pop too, but with a definite power/psych pop bent. So good. And generally we'd be bummed for a band to ditch all the stuff that made them weird, but Craft Spells work so much better as a proper pop band, and this is easily the best thing we've heard from them yet.
Straight out of Stockton, California (the birth place of Pavement btw), via the always reliable Captured Tracks comes this latest blast of jangly new wave flecked reverb drenched indie pop from Craft Spells, whose sound, while not owing that much to the slacker pop of Pavement, does fit perfectly with the recent explosion of new wave eighties influenced retro garage pop. Craft Spells situates themselves somewhere right between Ariel Pink, Greatest Hits and Blank Dogs. Shimmery washed out glistening guitars, over softly propulsive drum machine rhythms, deep moody vocals, lots of layered background oooooh's and aaaaah's, the whole thing wrapped up in a gauzy hazy swirl. The B-side throws in some handclaps, whirring organs, changes things up a bit with a more minor key vibe, and some falsetto vocals, the result sounding almost like a warped Style Council 45 playing at 33.
Woozy and washed out, jangly and new wavey, catchy and druggy, some twisted pop that will hit the spot for fans of the usual suspects: Gary War, Julian Lynch, Solar Bears, Night Control, Beach Fossils, Hanoi Janes, Dignan Porch, Minks, Soft Moon, Wild Nothing, etc...
Hot damn! Finally more readily available and on dvd no less, this video documenting one of the most unhinged rock spectacles ever -- the legendary free Cramps concert for the patients at the State Mental Hospital back in 1978 -- has been circulating in increasingly poor quality vhs copies for ages! If you've seen it, you'll know what a cause for 'celebration' this is. If you've yet to see it, Cramps fan or not, you're in for a helluva blisterin', jaw-droppin' time in front of your television. No, the quality's still not all that great, but that only adds to the wild grittiness of the viewing experience. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy are in top down'n'dirty form. During the course of the performance, the lines between patient and band are swiftly blurred and eventually obliterated. This is as punk as it gets!
This double cd archival Cramps collection says right on it: for Cramps Fiends Only, and that's dang right. For one thing, in terms of recording quality, a lot of this sounds like ass. But hey, how good does your band's rehearsal tapes from 1976, or 1977 CBGB live tapes sound? That's what I thought. So if you're a fiend for the Cramps' brand of twisted punk rockabilly, you'll surely dig the contents of this crypt...the grimier and ghastlier the better, eh? 45 live/demo/practice cuts in all, spanning the years 1976-1988 but delving mainly into the band's early years. Disc two features two complete live sets, at Max's Kansas City '77 and CBGB '78. The cd booklet is a treat too, 28 pages cramm(p)ed with enlightening and exhaustive liner notes penned by Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, colorfully illustrated with tons of photos (ooh, Ivy), fliers, and other graphics -- including a picture of the Cramps in a newspaper ad for a NYC Channel 2 TV news Special Report on the "far-out, black leather world of the Punk Movement" being presented by a youthful John Tesh. Really well done. Fiends, get on it.
Our experience with the mbira (the thumb piano) is pretty limited. As much as I'd like to go on and on about the history of the instrument and other essential mbira recordings, I just can't. But what I can tell you, is that this is one of the dreamiest, floatiest, head in the clouds records ever, and has been our main going to sleep record these last few weeks. And 'going to sleep music' is in no way a criticism. In fact, if anything, it's the opposite. I don't care what anyone tells you, few times in one's music listening day are as important or as sacred as the time before you fall asleep, when whatever music you put on soothes you and lulls you to sleep, and obviously some of those sounds you take with you into your dreams. Crandell's mbira is the perfect soundtrack to your dreams, as long as you dream of lush green glades, huge pools of crystal clear water, blue skies and slowly drifting clouds. Mbira Magic, while light and airy and very very dreamy and mellow, remains just on the right side of new age, with sweetly lyrical muted melodies that drift lazily into subtly complex patterns and drift apart into abstract soundscapes of soft plink plonk, rich with reverb and all warm and langorous. So so nice.
Oddly enough we've never reviewed a Cranes record, a band who have steadily released really good records since the early '90s. They are one of those groups that most people thought vanished in the mid '90s not realizing they've been around this whole time, and their last album 2004's Particle & Waves was actually one of their finest moments. Long before Mum and Pluramon were crafting their shoegazey and delicately dreamy offerings, Cranes really helped lay the groundwork for what could be done with ethereal young-girl sounding vocals mixed with lush and woozy instrumentation. Cranes continue to brilliantly bring together elements of innocence, yearning and sadness with such satisfying results. Recommended!
Over the past couple of years, Nostilevo has enjoyed an unblemished run, continuing now with Craow's eponymous album that seems to pick up where fellow Los Angeles EBM synthesist Oil Thief left off last year with Obsolescence & Monality. Yes, yes, yes, that latter album was on Chondritic, but there's more than few overlaps on the Nostilevo and Chondritic rosters. Craow occupies a far more muscular, minimal, and frenetic position amidst the minimal wave recombinations produced by such recent darlings as Xeno & Oaklander or Cold Cave. The convulsively twitching electronics and buried vocal vortex of echo and delay snap against the booming crack of the goth club rhythms, walking the tightrope between heavy ear-drum noise and infectious dark techno grooves. At the album's finale, Craow disengages the throttle for a nocturnal Joy Division / Cassandra Complex mid-tempo number that chimes with suitably spectral guitar melodies. Gotta think that Regis would be floored by something like this.
Crash Course In Science is a quintessentially American synth-punk / minimal wave outfit, whose primitive use of electronics find sonic sympaptico with Devo and Suicide. These Philly weirdos met in art-school in the late '70s and toiled in the shadows of the industrial harbors at the Eastern edge of that city, revelling in the isolation and the refuse. The trio released a couple of singles at that time and were in the process of recording a full album, only to presumably dissolve before that album's completion. In 2007, Crash Course In Science re-entered the public consciousness once again thanks to the appearance of their cult hit "Flying Turns" on an early Minimal Wave compilation, later reprised on the Stones Throw anthology a couple year later. All of this warranted the much needed Vinyl-On-Demand boxset, which featured the Signals From Pier Thirteen EP, a completed mix of that aforementioned unfinished album, and a bunch of live tracks.
As strong as many of the tracks were on that compilation, Signals From Pier Thirteen is seen by the connoisseurs as the essential document for CCIS. While just four tracks, it is an absurd, vibrant romp of jacked-up / punk-speed rhythms of proto-techno and bracingly strident sequences of metal-dance noise. "Cardboard Lamb" sports a pretty damn catchy one-note bassline that is eeriely similar to LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge", but written some 25 years earlier. The instrumental "Crashing Song" is prescient of the Pan Sonic attack of accelerant rhythm as cast through the lens of Throbbing Gristle's Death Factory. CCIS next delivers "Flying Turns" with its tinny, flanged rhythms and the monotone vocals from Mallory Yago, who seems to have more than a few circuits that are shorting out in her brain as she chants through each of the songs. The propulsive electronics of "Factory Floorhead" is an exemplary work of unhinged paranoia sounding like warehouses filled with sirens blaring in lockstep to automaton robots going berzerk in their danse macabre in welding carparts to their human masters. Absurd and vibrant, this makes for yet another great blast from the past courtesy of Dark Entries.
We had never heard of French garage rock / trash pop duo Crash Normal before, but holy shit are we loving this stuff. Inhabiting the same sonic space as other groups like Thee Oh Sees, Sic Alps, the Mayyors, Ty Segall and all those cats, but Crash Normal take that fuzzed out garage pop sound we love so much, and go fucking nuts, dousing it in distortion, piling on echo and reverb, their garage pop veering dangerously close to noise rock and we're loving it. Two guitarists. Drums AND drum machine, although it's hard to tell which usually, these guys run their shit through a wall of fuzz pedals, and what comes out the other side is pure blown out garage pop BLISS. Big booming, echo drenched poppiness that chugs and pounds and churns and crashes, the vocals a reverbed yelp/croon, the drums a primitive plod buried beneath CN's wall of sound, the jams flit from loose ramshackle chaos to chugging super distorted pound, the production is what makes it, totally blown out, needles pegged at all times, every single sound so in-the-red it starts to sound utterly psychedelic, there are whirring organs, the vocals occasionally get doused in delay and become dubbed out and disappear into clouds of blurred effects, some of the tracks are twang flecked, others are swaggery Stooges-y stomps, others are surfy, and others are gloomy and somehow lo-fi while still managing to be speaker-destroyingly LOUD, and every song is catchy as hell, like stick in your head pop gem catchy, so much so that we find ourselves not wanting to listen to much else. Needless to say, fans of all of the above mentioned outfits, and really any of the current crop of garage rock combos, this shit will flip your lid.
We reviewed the first three reissues from legendary punk rock outfit Crass a few lists back, and now here's the 4th (of 6) in the series Anarcho-punk legends Crass are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all the Crass records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Christ The Album, Crass's 4th full length, might be the group's most famous (or infamous), again not shying away from controversy, right down to the record's title, and of course the lyrical content, sonically, Christ found the band sounding as full and lush and well produced as ever. The sound was still frantic, and frenzied, blasting and thrashing and relentless, but surprisingly polished, and the band at their least 'punk', the tracks rife with killer hooks, and plenty of pop, but the record itself remained difficult, and as concerned with the message as the music, loads of samples, all the tracks beginning with a little filmstrip style beep, followed by snippets of newscasts and interviews and various other politically charged recordings before the songs kicked in.
And nowhere was this poppier sound more evident than on "Beg Your Pardon" which sounds almost like their own version of "Train In Vain" (the song infamously left off the sleeve of the Clash's London Calling, supposedly because it was WAY too poppy, although officially it was because the track was added at the last minute), which is funny, considering Crass' outspoken disdain for The Clash, but "Beg Your Pardon" is impossibly hooky, with jangly guitars, irresistible melodies, and at times does sound quite a bit like the Clash. There's also the brooding, super rhythmic "Birth Control Rock 'n' Roll", with its frantic drumming and harmony vox, and the soaring, epic, drone-y and almost proggy "Reality Whitewash", and we could go on and on...
After this, the band would release just one more record (the sprawling single song/album Yes Sir, I Will) so Christ definitely stands as the final testament to Crass's sonic journey from the raw punk of The Feeding Of The 5000, to the polished pop flecked punk found here.
Like the original vinyl reissue, the original disc is augmented by a second disc, a collection of demos and studio outtakes, called Well Forked - But Not Dead, and like the other reissues, there's a massive booklet including liner notes and lyrics, as well as a fold out poster, all housed in a super swank slipcover, which fits together with all the other reissues, the various covers combining to form a single image. Cool.
These anarcho-punk legends are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all three of these records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Feeding Of The 5000 was the group's incendiary debut, originally released in 1978, and almost didn't come out, as the pressing plant refused to carry it due to the lyrical content of the opening song, an intense spoken word rallying cry against religion, against God, filled with violent images and foul language, all over a field of buzzing feedback. They replaced the song with silence, in protest, and then and there decided to start their own label, which then re-released the record the way it was initially envisioned. And even now, 30+ years later, FOT5K is a fierce, frantic chunk of pure punk rock, wild chaotic angular guitars, wild scowling urgent vox, caffeinated drumming, samples and snippets of spoken word, all wound up into something frenzied and frenetic, heavy on the hooks, whether intentional or not, these songs manage to be angry and caustic and intense, but still catchy as hell, the lyrical vitriol reflected in the relentless punk rock energy, just a glorious collection on intense, emotional, swaggery, ramshackle, energetic, sweat soaked, pop flecked, PUNK, that has definitely remained as fresh, and as lyrically relevant as it was all the way back in 1978. Which speaks well of Crass, but not so well for the state of the world...
Included as bonus tracks are various live sessions and studio demos, some of which show another side of Crass, sounding almost like some sort of busking skiffle band, all shuffly and Billy Bragg-ish(!). The packaging is incredible, a gorgeous slipcover, which judging from the design is meant to join together with the other 5 reissues to form a single huge Crass logo, inside is a massive booklet with new liner notes from the band, all the lyrics, as well as photos and artwork, there's also a reproduction of the original insert, a fold out poster with the distinctive Crass artwork, a poster on one side, collages,and the lyrics as they were originally printed on the other.
These anarcho-punk legends are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all three of these records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Penis Envy was record number three, released in 1981, and was a serious shift for the band, and easily their most polished and accomplished, but the changes were big, first, all the vocals are female this time around, and in keeping with this new more feminine vibe (or more likely it was all a single concept), the lyrical focus of Penis Envy, as is suggested by the title, is sexuality, specifically how it relates to women: feminism, marriage, sexual repression...
And the music, wow, the opening track sets the stage, a little flurry of synthy weirdness, the sound strangely proggy, it quickly launches into a super hooky minor key angular punk pop workout, the riffs woozy, the guitar sound crunchy, the drums powerful, the bass thick and low slung, and the vocals incredible, powerful and emotional, passionate and BAD ASS, spitting out some seriously intense lyrics, a wickedly sarcastic tale of feminine subjugation.
And so it goes, the whole record a fantastically and fully realized groove heavy punk rock blowout, that seems to sonically foreshadow the various post punk bands that would eventually cite Crass as an influence, lots of tension and release, horns, even harmoniums, plenty of drones, and intricate arrangements, bizarre vocal harmonies, super distorted buzz, some almost funkiness, some proto-electronica, that dub vibe in fell effect, choral voices, swooping backwards sounds, super strange, but really kick ass production, hard to believe this record is 30 years old, especially considering how many bands are making sounds just like this now, and probably don't realize, Crass were doing it decades ago, and doing it better.
One of the best stories about Penis Envy, is when the band somehow conned teenage girl's romance magazine to include Crass track on a giveaway flexi disc, credited to Creative Recording And Sound Services (yep, Crass), sonically on the surface, it was a sweetly innocuous pop song, but it was Crass after all so the subtext is much more damning, and needless to say, when the hoax was revealed there was a bit of an uproar. That track is included here, as is a collaged soundscape combining the original track with responses to the hoax, as well as an archival track and a rare 2003 remix.
The packaging is incredible, a gorgeous slipcover, which judging from the design is meant to join together with the other 5 reissues to form a single huge Crass logo, inside is a massive booklet with new liner notes from the band, all the lyrics, as well as photos and artwork, there's also a reproduction of the original insert, a fold out 6 panel foldout with that distinctive Crass artwork, the original blow up doll album cover, collages and graffiti and lyrics...
These anarcho-punk legends are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all three of these records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Stations Of The Crass (another poke at the Catholic Church, just one of many) was record number two, and was released in 1979, and found the band's sound shifting pretty dramatically. Their lo-fi sound not so lo-fi at all, and it wasn't just the recording, the band sounded way more confident, the songs catchier and more complex, the vibe more new wavey in places, the root sound was the same, jagged sharp guitars, pounding frantic drumming, but the bass is way more of a presence, sometimes getting seriously woozy and new wavey, introducing some definite dub vibes throughout, like a leaner meaner Clash in places (although there's at least one fuck you shout out to the Clash), and the vox, even more intense this time around, anguished and super emotive, sometimes spoken in a super thick cockney accent, other times vitriolic yelp, and often breaking down into a super intense tortured howl. To these ears Stations was when Crass finally became a musical force to rival their already established political and punk rock force, the music powerful and more mature, heavy and hooky and more able to convey Crass' anger and disappointment and fury in the form of sound.
While the original Stations came accompanied by a collection of live tracks, those have been left off, and in their place, as bonus tracks, is a 1979 Peel Session.
The packaging is incredible, a gorgeous slipcover, which judging from the design is meant to join together with the other 5 reissues to form a single huge Crass logo, inside is a massive booklet with new liner notes from the band, all the lyrics, as well as photos and artwork, there's also a reproduction of the original insert, a fold out 6 panel foldout with the distinctive Crass artwork, collages and graffiti, and the lyrics as they were originally printed on the other.
We reviewed the first five reissues from legendary punk rock outfit Crass over the last year, and now here's the sixth and final in the series, and as we mentioned in the other reviews, we're so thrilled that these anarcho-punk legends are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. In case you missed the reviews of those first five, here's what we had to say about Crass the band (before we get to Ten Notes On A Summer's Day):
Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
And these records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all of these records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again.
Ten Notes On A Summer's Day was the final proper Crass record, originally released in 1985, and like on past records, displayed yet another dramatic stylistic shift, this time toward something much more European and avant garde, two tracks, one an instrumental version of the other. The music loping and rhythmic, atonal and a bit abstract, jazzy at times, proggy at others, definitely not punk, at least not in the traditional sense. Blurts of synth, wild squalls of free jazz drumming, spidery melodies, all manner of vocals, choral, choir like, at times the sound is super academic, at others, warped and woozily whatthefuck. The instrumental version ditches the drums in addition to the vocals, transforming the sound into something much more swirly and shimmery and atmospheric, still angular and atonal in places, but much more blissed out and hauntingly ambient, not nearly as prickly as the vocal version.
The reissue tacks on a handful of bonus tracks, remixes and unreleased jams, the sound tending toward the experimental, collaged and chaotic, one track sounds like weird warped eighties MTV pop, albeit more tweaked, while another sounds like Current 93 style apocalyptic folk, the vocals a dead ringer for David Tibet, while the last track is a lovely bit of haunting choral music, that near the end splinters into some twisted synthy angular pop weirdness. Wow.
Like the other reissues, the packaging is incredible, a gorgeous slipcover, which is meant to join together with the other 5 reissues to form a single huge Crass logo, inside is a massive booklet with new liner notes from the band, all the lyrics, as well as photos and artwork, there's also a reproduction of the original insert.
We reviewed the first four reissues from legendary punk rock outfit Crass over the last few lists, and now here's the 5th (of 6) in the series Anarcho-punk legends Crass are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.
These records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.
Legendary for a reason, all the Crass records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Yes Sir, I Will was Crass' last 'official' album, and was originally presented as a single album long track, spread out over both sides (making it the longest punk rock song ever!), and unlike the overt poppiness of Christ The Album, Yes Sir is dense and tense and tangled, rife as always with samples and sonic snippets, even a haunting piano ballad, the music was furious and vitriolic, dueling male/female vocals, over crunchy angular riffing, all wound around frenetic drumming, the production raw and brittle and a little lo-fi, the entire record mostly improvised, Crass version of 'jazz', much of the lyrics culled from a poem by drummer/vocalist Penny Rimbaud, an attack on prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her handling of the Falklands War, it's a pretty intense record, sonically and lyrically, and very ambitious, especially for a 'punk' band, but by now Crass were far from the typical punk band. The extra tracks here, a bonus disc entitled "Why Don't You Fuck Off", is a 2002 'jazz remix' imagining of the whole record, which is about as 'jazz' as the record proper, a slightly noisier and more chaotic take on the original, although there is some saxophone
Like the other reissues, there's a massive booklet including liner notes and lyrics, as well as a fold out poster, all housed in a super swank slipcover, which fits together with all the other reissues, the various covers combining to form a single image.
This anarcho-punk classic, recently reissued on cd, now available again on vinyl!!
Anarcho-punk legends Crass are finally getting the deluxe reissue campaign they always deserved, but probably never really wanted anyway. Having spent the seventies and eighties kicking against the pricks, these DIY iconoclasts pretty much lived and breathed punk rock like few others since, making music, putting on gigs, setting up squats, coordinating political actions, starting a label, creating art, making films, advocating animal rights, environmentalism, feminism, direct action, anarchism, pacifism, criticizing various subcultures, encouraging dialogues, and encouraging participation and protest, and obviously, and perhaps most pertinent to this here review, making some of the most awesome punk records EVER.�
Their records sound impossibly and incredibly fresh, intense and dramatic and emotional, heavy and hooky, jagged and jittery, their ideals clearly on display, backed up by musical muscle, pop smarts, and some super original and innovative sounds and songs. The crazy thing, revisiting these records again, is how much they've influenced modern underground music, there are at least a handful of bands, who now with these records fresh in our ears, sound almost criminally beholden to Crass: Arctic Monkeys, The Fall, Louis XIV, Art Brut... the list goes on.�
Legendary for a reason, all the Crass records should be required listening for punks and metalheads and hell, anyone into underground sounds, and are totally worth revisiting, we had sort of forgotten how goddamn great all three of these records are, and even if you still own beat up original copies, there's enough extra stuff, music and artwork wise, that they're totally worth picking up again...
Yes Sir, I Will was Crass' last 'official' album, and was originally presented as a single album long track, spread out over both sides (making it the longest punk rock song ever!), and unlike the overt poppiness of Christ The Album, Yes Sir is dense and tense and tangled, rife as always with samples and sonic snippets, even a haunting piano ballad, the music was furious and vitriolic, dueling male/female vocals, over crunchy angular riffing, all wound around frenetic drumming, the production raw and brittle and a little lo-fi, the entire record mostly improvised, Crass version of 'jazz', much of the lyrics culled from a poem by drummer/vocalist Penny Rimbaud, an attack on prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her handling of the Falklands War, it's a pretty intense record, sonically and lyrically, and very ambitious, especially for a 'punk' band, but by now Crass were far from the typical punk band...
In the mid-90s, Ian Crause had fronted Disco Inferno, one of those difficult to pigeonhole entities that led Simon Reynolds to coin the term post-rock. Crause had also helped out on the fantastic Piano Magic album "Low Birth Weight." Those two elements would make you think that a solo outing should make for an interesting listen... unfortunately not. Instead of experimenting with fractured melodies or electronic treatments on guitars, Crause turns in two tracks of '80s college rock sounding much like The Church.
