Dark, grim, dubbed out Spectre is letting some light into his music. Dominated by murky loops and funky samples, Psychic Wars is not nearly as extreme nor darkly monolithic (and thus possible less impressive) as previous efforts. The samples are culled from french cinema, noir clips, japanese film, indian female vocalists, and are altogether more varied and interesting than Spectre has ever allowed himself before, reminding me of Funki Porcini or other Ninjatune artists, right on down to the generic girl diva vocals -- why do so many artists feel the need to use this element, much less use women whose voices always sound the same, like Sinead O'Connor. Sigh. Your mileage may vary. Guests include Honeychild, Sensational, Black Chameleon, Space Poet.
MPEG Download: "Love" [/audio/spectrelove.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Love" [/audio/spectrelove.m3u]
Sniffin & Snortin (parts 1 and 2!), Run & Hide, Bad Woman, Don't Say No, Wanna Take You Home...sound good? Those are some of the song titles on this classic women-and-drugs obsessed dumbo-rock Japanese psych album. It stars guitar whiz and massive stoner Shinki Chen (also of Foodbrain and oodles of other obscure Japanese psych outfits), bassist Masayoshi Kabe (from Foodbrain too), and singing drummer Joey 'Pepe' Smith -- a Vietnam vet whom you might know from the Filipino band Juan De La Cruz, whose album "Shake Your Brains" is one of the few that tops this for sheer truly stoned rock retardation (a good thing). Too bad we can't get those in anymore. But you'll hear at least one of their tunes on this, the second SG&S album, originally released as a double LP in 1972, which we happen to like even better than their 1971 LP "Eve" though Mr. Julian Cope made that one a "record of the month" on his website Head Heritage. Anyway we have this one, not that one.
Speed, Glue & Shinki, as you might imagine from their name, were a goddamn weird, messed up, completely wacked heavy psych/blues/prog band. So messed up that this time out, guest musicans wrote (and performed?) most of it! But it doesn't matter. And even when Joey plugs in a Moog synth to do a whole LP side devoted to the Sun, Planets, Life, Moon, and Angels, this never ever remotely gets pretentious and proggy (not that we don't like proggy). It just can't. Speed Glue & Shinki are primal, so primal, too primal. At least one track hints at the Stooges, some others Zeppelin, while the rest approximates a brain-damaged James Gang. Record collector types might recall the fancy, expensive Shadoks LP reissue that was available a couple years ago for about two seconds. We were enthralled with the lovely tiger cover art and the ridiculous rock and have been hoping ever since to bring in a cd version, and at last we tracked down a few copies that we had to order from Sweden, so act fast for your Speed, Glue & Shinki fix if you think you want it.
MPEG Download: "Red Doll" [/audio/speedgluered.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Red Doll" [/audio/speedgluered.m3u]
MPEG Download: "Song For An Angel" [/audio/speedgluesong.mp3]
Volume two in the planned monthly twelve volume Jewelled Antler "Library" series of 3" cd-rs (a format for which we are suckers -- they're just so cute, darn it) is the debut recording from a group called Tomes, who are, as it turns out, basically Jewelled Antler flagship group Thuja (Rob Reger, Loren Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, absent Steven R. Smith), letting themselves get a little bit louder and noiser than they usually do in Thuja, harking back a bit to precursor band Mirza in fact. Probably the main reason this wasn't put out as a Thuja release is because Tomes' title and artwork are in fact the Jewelled Antler collective's knowing nod to a black metal aesthetic (which has fascinated Glenn particularily of late). But while intended as a tribute of sorts to black metal, the psychedelic drone music found here only holds subtle echoes of dark Nordic woodlands and burning churches. The twenty minutes of abstract heavy improv of "The Dreadful Gift (parts 1 and 2)" is darn good stuff regardless of the tangential conceptual framework. With noisy phantoms clanking chains, groaning drones, tell-tale heartbeats and and distorted freeform guitar feedback, this does achieve a dark n' dirgey but beautiful atmosphere. Too beautiful perhaps to leave the black metal hordes quaking in their corpsepaint, it still could be a Jewelled Antler Halloween soundtrack of sorts -- I wonder why didn't they wait 'til the October Library installment for this? Definitely recommended.
MPEG Download: "Dreadful Gift 1" [/audio/tomesdreadful1.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Dreadful Gift 1" [/audio/tomesdreadful1.m3u]
Those Kruder & Dorfmeister gents - both individually and in tandem - do what they do exceptionally well. And what they do is make ultra sleek, mellow grooves always packaged in an exquisite fashion. Case in point, this Dehli9 double disc offering from Tosca. For those unfamiliar, Tosca is a collaborative effort between Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber which predates K+D by a wide margin. Actually the title of this release was the name of an early (highschool!) Huber/Dorfmeister project.
Disc One is filled with what they're known and loved for... enveloping, downtempo jazzy electronic tracks often with guest vocalists. It's the perfect soundtrack for a long, smoooth'n'groovy night of sipping incredibly steep and stiff cocktails in haute couture fashion. Disc Two comes as something of a surprise - a pleasant one - as it's an altogether different affair. You'd never guess it was Tosca... really. It's a dozen of Huber's piano compositions skillfully produced by Dorfmeister. Totally hushed and minimal!
The first cd will certainly please their old fans, and the second just may garner them some new ones.
The late great Uncle Tupelo's fourth album is my (Windy, and Andee's too!) favorite. It's SO AMAZING, the perfect marriage between country and rock. Dare I say that even Gram Parsons would agree!
Despite the fact that Anodyne, originally released in 1993, was Tupelo's major label debut and everyone was nervous that it would suck, somehow everything came together and they recorded their most mature and perfect album (and that's sayin' a lot since their first three records are also stellar). Artistic differences eventually broke up the band, with Jeff Tweedy going on to form WILCO and Jay Farrar forming SON VOLT. But listen, if you're a fan of either of those two groups but *haven't* heard Uncle Tupelo yet, do yourself a favor. Ditto if you're a fan of "no depression" style Americana -- most of today's bands will point to Uncle Tupelo as main inspirations.
This record is absolutely classic in flavor, staying power, talent and songwriting. Farrar's downtrodden and minor key heartstring-tuggers alternate with Tweedy's lighter ditties; upbeat fiddle-led numbers are nestled amongst slower tunes. And everywhere is the undeniable tug of the bittersweet to give it incredible depth. I have been listening to this album probably every week for the last ten years and have never gotten tired of it.
Lyrics! Five extra tracks: a Farrar tune, a Tweedy song from 2003(?), and a Waylon Jennings cover; plus live renditions of "Truck Drivin' Man" and "Suzy Q."
MPEG Download: "Slate" [/audio/tupeloslate.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Slate" [/audio/tupeloslate.m3u]
Like the "Gamelan & Kecak" and "Golden Rain" recordings in this series, the tracks on "Music From the Morning of the World" were recorded by David Lewiston. As with "Golden Rain" they were made during his first trip to Bali in 1966. And like the later recording, the tracks here are a broad collection of genres from the island which serve to demonstrate the variety of musical forms that exist there. Along with the requisite kebyar tracks (two here: one from the baris dance and the other from the Barong dance) is a medley of recordings of a genggong ensemble (small ensemble of jew's harp, flute, drums and cymbals) a recording of gambuh, an a cappella lullaby, gamelan anklung, another excerpt of both kecak and a gender wayang ensemble.
MPEG Download: SEKEHE GAMBUH "Sekar Leret" [/audio/sekehegambuhleret.mp3]
MPEG Stream: SEKEHE GAMBUH "Sekar Leret" [/audio/sekehegambuhleret.m3u]
MPEG Download: RANI "Lullaby" [/audio/ranilullaby.mp3]
Tributes are always sort of a tough call. Sometimes you'd rather just hear the originals, or sometimes there's one great version in a sea of total shit. So we're happy to report, that this tribute to Black Flag succeeds on several levels. First, it's Black Flag!! I mean, c'mon, Black Flag rule! And of course deserve to be covered, as well as worshipped. The downside of that though, is that Black Flag are so good, it almost seems pointless to cover them. But it is a covers compilation so that point is moot I suppose. And the selection of bands here is pretty strong, lots of AQ faves (Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Coalesce, Burnt By The Sun) and lots of pretty kick ass lesser-knowns (Anodyne, Playing Enemy, Planes Mistaken For Stars). All of whom give us REALLY HEAVY versions of songs we already love. Not all that different (except maybe Dillinger's sort-of-jungle version of Damaged II) but all really good. So it really depends on where you stand on tribute compilations. But metalcore's finest covering pnk rock's finest...you could do a lot worse.
MPEG Download: DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN "Damaged I & II" [/audio/dillingerdamaged.mp3]
MPEG Stream: DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN "Damaged I & II" [/audio/dillingerdamaged.m3u]
While not as famous as Amha Eshete (Amha Records), Ali Abdella Kaifa and his Kaifa records was still a heavyweight in Ethiopia's golden age of record production. Kaifa essentially took up the slack from Eshete when the latter went into exile in 1975 due to the country's increasingly hostile military government. Entering the music business in 1973 with the release of the first 45s on his label, Kaifa didn't just materialize in Eshete's absence. But it was the release of Mahmoud Ahmed's legendary "Ere Mela Mela" -- the album that would become the first Ethiopian recording to be released in Europe -- that really put Kaifa on the map. He was also the one who discovered Aster Aweke (who later fled Ethiopia to build a successful career as a world beat artist in the late eighties.) All but two tracks in this collection were recorded between 1976 and 1977 at the tail end of of Ethiopia's record industry, which was squashed in 1978 (at which point Kaifa continued to produce music on cassettes.) Along with the usual collection of male vocalists (Alemayehu Eshete, Hirut Bekele, Ayalew Mesfin and Tamrat Ferendji) there are four tracks featuring female vocalists (unfortunately underrepresented in this series) Bzunesh Beqele and the duo of Asselefetch Ashine & Getenesh Kebret. Ashine & Kebret must be heard to be believed, their unearthly parallel harmonies sharing the limelight wonderfully with the Army Band's flautist and arranger Teshome Sissay.
Longtime readers of AQ's list might have caught notice of this volume's title "Ethiopian Groove", as we had once stocked an album of the same name many years ago (see AQL #42). Indeed this album is the very same as the now out of print one on Blue Silver (in fact Ethiopiques series editor Francis Falceto was the one who compiled the earlier release), but with a few differences. While Ethiopiques #13 is unfortunately missing three of the Aster Aweke tracks that graced the original Ethiopian Groove CD, it is supplemented by the addition of two tracks by saxophonist Seyoum Gebreyes, two by vocalist Muleqen Mellesse and greatly expanded liner notes & photos. We can only hope that Buda Musique is intending to issue an entire CD dedicated to Aster Aweke and her earliest recordings for Kaifa. Until then, those of you with the original Ethiopian Groove should hold onto it.
Originally released in 1977, the second volume of the (hopefully eventual) tetrad of Javanese Court Gamelan features music from the lesser of the two courts at Surakarta: the Mangkunegaran. Which is not to say that the court, or its musicians and dancers, lacked prestige. Of the two gamelan heard on this recording, one is not only considered to be the most beautiful in all of Java, but resides in the largest pendopo (pavilion in which gamelan is performed) on the island. While all gamelan are treated with the respect given a prince, the older of the two gamelan here Kyai Kanyut Mesem ("Sir Swept Away by a Smile") is exceptionally sacred (so sacred is one instrument that it is never even played). The music here is the height of refined Javanese court gamelan and the two long pieces which make up the meat of this disc are each stunning in their own ways. The 21 minute Gending Bonang Babar Layar is a piece often played to welcome important guests and on that is intended to set a "mood of distinguished silence" as much as "power and authority". Played entirely with what are generally the louder instruments and completely devoid of vocals, Babar Layar exudes an eerie austerity that is breath taking. The almost evil sounding main melody is slowly condensed and increases steadily in volume until the final section of the piece in which the pounding, heavy bronze melody instruments are brought into an elliptical, concentrated -- for lack of a better word -- summarization of what had been so delicately building up. For me (Byram), it's one of those songs that never fails to give me goose bumps. Unfortunately, space limitations prevent us from sampling enough to really do justice to the intensity of the suite as it progressively builds over its twenty minute duration. The other showcase on this disc is "Gending Ela-Ela Kalibeber" which takes the opposite approach sonically, with the softer instruments and vocals taking center stage and rendering the main melody almost inaudible. Also included are two shorter pieces, "Ketawang Puspawarna" and "Ayak-ayakan Kaloran". Highly recommended!
Yazoo finally gets around to releasing boxsets with this lulu of a collection of classic tracks from Kentucky. This is pretty much as definitive as it gets, totaling 167 recordings from the 1920's and 30's and all from the humble bluegrass state. Banjo picking, fiddle playing, church choruses and more. This is essentially the two cd "Mountain Music of Kentucky" set on Smithsonian Folkways blown up to epic proportions. Includes a 32 page booklet with historical photos.
Second volume of psychedelic, exotica, go-go, groovy tunes from the people who brought us the beloved Turkish Delights compilation. Much like the first, there's lots of strings, fuzzed out guitars, sexy eastern-esque tabla-clarinet duets, sitar, hammond organs and echoey everything. Cover tune award on this one goes to The Soulful Strings for their sitarred and feathered version of the Beatles "Within You Without You". This album is a must for fans of Vampyros Lesbos and sundry other exotic porn soundtracks. And like the last volume of Mind Expanders, this one comes on a beautiful picture disc and -- maybe more importantly -- is also a very limited pressing... ie: so don't hesitate. This one features tracks by such obscurities as: The Stradivarius, The Flying Guitars, Mr. Acker Bilk, Emery Deutsch & the Astro Sounds, The Scottmen, The Dynatones, Bauer Productions, Shell Steel Orchestra, Didier Vincent, The Renegades, Robert Gretch, Jaime Perez, Timezone, The Soulful Strings and Thomas Natschinski und Scine Gruppe.
MPEG Download: PEREZ, JAIME "Tema Arabe" [/audio/jaimepereztema.mp3]
MPEG Stream: PEREZ, JAIME "Tema Arabe" [/audio/jaimepereztema.m3u]
Yet another blast of misanthropic, demented and damaged, ultra complex and super sick splattercore-broken-beat-drum-and-bass madness from Aaron Funk aka Venetian Snares. This stuff is so much more complicated and fucking creepy than any of his contemporaries. Take Aphex Twin at his most complex (Boy Girl maybe) mix in some Lesser (totally irrational beats chopped to bits) plus some truly creepy samples and some hateful misanthropy (Pornography, S+M, Snuff films, Whitehouse, Trevor Brown who once again supplies the suitable pervy album art, etc.) and filter it all through the 'Snares wicked sense of drama and melody, and his knack for making impossibly stuttery beats and retarded rhythms coalesce into some painfully dark, amazingly appealing and truly nightmarish electronic mayhem.
MPEG Download: "Befriend A Child Killer Remix" [/audio/venetianbefriend.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Befriend A Child Killer Remix" [/audio/venetianbefriend.m3u]
New ep from AQ fave Greg Weeks, on the tiny Spanish label Acuarela. "Slightly West" takes up right where Weeks' totally amazing "Awake Like Sleep" record left off. More lonely low key psychedelic folk (ala P.G. Six, Charalambides, Tower Recordings, etc.), wrapped in a wash of thick warm analogue-sounding synths, making for a sort of dark and melancholy, alien folk music.
Dreamy and gauzy, ethereal and wispy, warm and summery, but not in a Beach Boys-surfing-USA-fun-in-the-sun sort of way, more like a last-day-of-summer-before-the-girl-you've-spent-the-past-two-weeks-falling-in-love-with-leaves-forever-late-nights-wrapped-in-blankets-in-front-of-a-roarin-fire-crashing-surf-moon-reflected-on-the-water-broken-hearted sort of way. Gently plucked guitars and mournful sad-boy vocals (with occasional angelic female background vocals) weave gorgeously simple tales of love and loss, while tinkling pianos glisten on the surface and gossamer keyboards, sustaining on 2 or 3 notes, turn simple pop songs into dreamy late night psychedelic soundscapes (the same way keyboards transformed Yo La Tengo's "Painful"). Also features some really disturbing/amazing/sexy/demented cover art by Tracy Nakayama, featuring naked young people and a woman strangling an ostrich with a belt!
MPEG Download: "One Summer Night" [/audio/gweeksonesummer.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "One Summer Night" [/audio/gweeksonesummer.m3u]
Seems like only moments ago, my favorite record of last year came out. Maybe that's just because I still listen to it almost every day!! It's that good. If you read the AQ list you know I'm talking about the totally amazing Woven Hand record, a solo project of David Eugene Edwards from Sixteen Horsepower. Let's quickly recap for those who don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Sixteen Horsepower make weird backwoods gypsy folk, augmenting normal instrumentation with fiddles, accordions and mandolins. Dark and swampy tales, campfire stumps and lugubrious dirge folk crawls. Sound good? Well that's 'cause it is!! A huge AQ favorite. We weren't sure what to expect from Edwards solo record. We certainly weren't expecting it to surpass 16HP in every way, but it did!! Darker and creepier, tales of apocalyptic doom and Biblical salvation rendered in dreary, droney folk, lit by the fire of a bayou campfire. SO SO SO GOOD!!! One of the few records that really moved me. Seriously, like to tears. It's so gorgeous and passionate and sinister and perfect. Yes, PERFECT. So here we are a year later and a new record from the Woven Hand. Blush Music is music composed for a modern dance performance by the Belgian dance troupe Ultima Vez. It's about half re-worked songs from the first record and half new material. At first I was a little disappointed that it was different versions of old songs, until I heard the new versions. GOD!! This record perfectly complements the songs on the first record. One of the highlights from the first record was the cover of Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine", a perfectly gut wrenching, tear jerking slow motion valentine to lost love. On Blush Music, "Ain't No Sunshine" reappears as the 12+ minute "Animalitos", with the original stretched out into an entirely new shape, complete with dark, mornful ambient passages, wheezing organs, bombastic percussion, rumbling drones, bird calls, and forest sounds, with the vocals and melody occasionally surfacing only to be immediately overwhelmed by the turbulent soundscape. A couple songs from the first record get this treatment and the results are sublime. The new tracks, while not as immediately catchy as a lot of the tracks on the first record, still capture the same dread and dark hope. A good way to imagine this record in relation to the first, is imagine the first record as the -soundtrack- to an epic biblical southern love story equal parts Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, Southern Comfort and All The Pretty Horses. Now imagine that Blush Music is the -score-, all the incidental music, the theme reworked and stretched out to hover emotionally beneath dialogue, or to guide the viewers emotions. I think this record works better if you already own the first one (thankfully the first one was just released domestically), but that isn't to say Blush Music is not a perfect slice of dark and droney, fire and brimstone, forlorn and forgotten, gorgeously damaged, gypsy psych-folk. 'Cause it is!
Xasthur is a one-man, home-recorded black metal outfit delving into the distortion-washed realm of Burzumic bliss, and is a favorite of both tUMULt's black metal master Leviathan *and* the Jewelled Antler/Thuja crew, so you know it's beautifully primitive and droney stuff, with majesty undying. The music is all shades of grey, like the packaging, with strains of melody obscured in mists of mostly mid-tempo metallic mayhem a la ancients like Darkthrone and Burzum, achieving, even at speed, a trance-inducing dirge quality. It's truly "A Walk Beyond Utter Blackness" in the "Forgotten Depths Of Nowhere", as per two of the song titles. If you like cultish black metal that verges on experimental drone (or vice versa), Xasthur should please you greatly, and offers more proof (along with Weakling and the aforementioned Leviathan) that even "sunny" California can produce black metal to rival that from Nordic climes. From the same label that just brought us that Lugubrum "De Totem" reissue we recommended recently, this has been a sleeper hit here at the store, and we're happy now to have enough in stock to give it a listing.
The guy behind Xasthur goes by the name Malefic, which leads to a little Andy Rooney question I've got: why do folks need to make up two names when one would do? why not call your band (ahem) Malefic? Although, his contact address is c/o "Scott" so we can see the need for at least one pseudonym in order to maintain the aura of grim darkness that his music deserves.
MPEG Download: "Soul Abduction Ceremony" [/audio/xasthursoul.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Soul Abduction Ceremony" [/audio/xasthursoul.m3u]
Xiu Xiu, one of the Bay Area's most original bands, is like a synth pop group that doesn't let the shiny happy face of the genre take over. They know the genre is merely a vehicle for expressing the fully intense and anguished emotions they've got bursting out of them. So instead of punchy casios and happy go lucky tunes, the foremost element is this hushed, trembling voice straining towards the epic wail. Yes, it's dramatic but the sincerity of emotion prevents it from becoming melodramatic. Out of the shards of anguish come experimentally structured songs that dart amongst jittery drum machines, wintry minor key piano, fuzzed out noise, clanging percussion. Building new, fresh songs out of raw emotion that might by a lesser band be inarticulate and messy, Xiu Xiu transcend the genre and any of their many influences, which clearly include Joy Division (Ian Curtis is namechecked on a songtitle here) and Talk Talk. Includes a stark, desperately sad cover of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car."
If you're new to Xiu Xiu, check out their first two releases before this one, not that they're better, but they are simply a teensy bit more upbeat amongst the beautiful despair, and that makes 'em that much more accessible. This one is a downer, albeit in a gorgeous, shimmering beautiful way, like Talk Talk's "Laughingstock."
The UK's Richard Youngs is a treasure, and his new release is a stellar one. Psychedelic, haunting, gorgeous, unique. As with his recent albums like "May" and "Making Paper" Youngs draws on British folk traditions, but here also melds his voice and acoustic guitar with electronics, for less of a minimal approach. The balance is perfect, of warm human melody and calming, sheening electronic drones, densely interwoven, or ringing out alone in the open, songs being both epic and intimate. Think of his last album "May" (a sad-song acoustic guitar and voice affair) with space-rock sound effects, adding drama and proggy intrigue. What's great is that the sci-fi mad scientist laboratory type of sounds here (theremin, ring modulator) are recognizable, but used uniquely, not ending up sounding like what they usually connote (thanks to the acoustic element perhaps). Meanwhile, the colorful, cartoony cover art looks like it was done by someone from a local high school art class, perhaps inspired by a '70s era after-school TV animation or something. But that's part of Youngs' charm, his aesthetic is wholly his own, not conforming to any hip scene, unafraid and honest. Both solo and with collaborators (notable among them Simon Wickham-Smith, Kawabata Makoto, Matthew Bower), he's created a fantastic body of work, from quirky noise improv to metallic drone to psuedo-prog to minimalist folk, his creativity and talent deserving of greater recognition (when's he going to show up on the cover of The Wire?). We'd imagine that although a lot of AQ regulars probably know Youngs, many more don't, and as this latest Youngs is certainly one of his best (of many great albums), it gets a big recommendation to all! So good, so heavenly. Also, if you liked Glenn Donaldson's Birdtree cd as much as we did, you'll definitely want this too, for Youngs is an obvious comparison/influence...
Why get Enya for the Lord Of The Rings movies when there is a perfectly good, dwarf/orc obsessed combo, composing dark, vaguely rennaissance faire-ish dark ambient soundscapes that would work PERECTLY. And I'm sure they're cheaper than Enya. And come on. When you think Ring Wraiths and Golem and all that, do you think 'this would go great with some new age music'? Neither do we. So come on Peter Jackson, here's your chance to add some credibility to the LOTR soundtrack/score for part three!! COME ON!!! Anyway Za Frumi are a Swedish group who create fantastical worlds with orcs and dwarves and battles and journeys and all the D&D stuff we love. Their classic remains their debut record Za Shum Ushatar Uglakh where dark and ominous soundscapes were peppered with dialogue (IN ORCISH!!!) as well as battles and celebrations. Really strange and totally appealing. Their second disc didn't move us as much as the first, and while Legends is not necessarily a "return to form" we do like it a lot more than the last one. The focus is still on the music, having apparently discarded the dialogue and sound effects completely, which is fine, but unfortunately it moves Za Frumi from that niche where they were basically the ONLY band doing what they were doing, to the more populated field of Cold Meat / dark ambient. Fans of Dead Can Dance, Summoning Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud, Empyrium and other dark ambient will dig this a lot!! Very dark and cinematic and quite pretty, in an ominous sort of way. Rumour has it that they're working on a new record about vampires! Here's hoping it's as weird a record as we know they're capable of making!
Zeigenbock Kopf began as a joke to see if a legitimate techno / house label would put out a cheap imitation of 'gay disco' pseudonymously recorded by a giggling San Francisco rocker boy. Yet, the joke -- complete with S/M stage antics, ditzy sketches, and really clumsy music -- has been dragged out through three releases, unintentionally sparking a firestorm of public outrage and invoking a wide range of discourses on identity politics and cultural appropriation. Zeigenbock Kopf should really just stop these shenanigans, not because of the perceived insult to certain elements of the gay community, but because the musical well has run dry. Overdriving clunky, slightly off-kilter rhythms through distortion pedals, ZK comes across as second or third rate, post-Industrial knock-off of Hunting Lodge or Sleep Chamber, two bands who were mediocre at best. The vocals which monotonously slur through a cheap German accent have lost the ability to carry the joke and now come across as another boring dose of disinterested post-irony which this city has been subjected to for far too long from all of the arts, not just music.
MPEG Download: "Boom Car Boys 2" [/audio/zeigenbockkopfboomcar.mp3]
