FOOTBALL RABBIT: Walking Cross-Lots CD (ANIMAL DISGUISE)
The Football Rabbit lineup is pretty much Furisubi meets Prurient, but it doesn't sound like that at all. First track "Great Wall" is like prog-metal, with a nice grinding sound to the guitars. Actually, all the tracks are like prog metal, because Football Rabbit are actually a prog metal band, staking out a compositional claim somewhere between black metal and the MIDI soundtracks of made-for-cable feature-length films. How many of you readers had your minds blown by John Zorn and Mr. Bungle? Mike Patton still casts a long shadow. But, not to worry, mostly Football Rabbit just sounds like itself, a strain of instrumental math rock that for once isn't being made by yet more Don Caballero fanboys. (I hear the drummer is actually just a guy playing a little pad drum-machine through a big amp, which is kind of amazing now that I'm listening to it and he sounds like a real drummer playing an electronic kit.)

THE FRENCH FLYS CD (THE FINKBEINER ENTERTAINMENT GROUP)
Probably a Rochester NY band, produced by the one and only Nuuj and released by the one and only Jason Finkbeiner. I don't recognize any of the names in the band, though: Bor Spillihp, Nairb Spillihp, Yasdnil Olegnad, or Ekim Eralnav -- any of those ring a bell to you?
        Track one is marked by crazed post-production. Squalling instrumental noise-rock is faded in and out, chunk by chunk, forwards and backwards, in the left speaker and right speaker randomly. Second track is an actual sequential piece, kind of lo-fi sounding. Influenced, of course, by the Dead C and Harry Pussy. A style that’s really nothing new, but on here it doesn’t really let up either, and that's in a good way, especially because after a couple more tracks the whole CD is over in less than 20 minutes.

FURISUBI: Limb of Copernicus CDR (LAST VISIBLE DOG)
This is the best Furisubi yet. The Popol Vuh worship has gotten him there, and now it’s even more thoroughly soaked than ever before. The first track is gorgeous, and really shreds any of the ‘mellow psych’ now making the Terrastock/Indie/Drone-Who??/Magnet Magazine scene. Hang on to those ‘Lapke is Popol’ bumpstickers, they’re going to be worth something some day.

GAYS IN THE MILITARY: Oceans of Butter, Rivers of Blood EP CD-R (SELF-RELEASED)
Track two sounds like ? and the Mysterians copping the structure of Flipper's "Brainwashed" with one of their trademark keyboard riffs. Only this time it's run through mountains of basement fuzz. Like ?, Gays' keyboardist/vocalist Chris Sienko is from Saginaw, Michigan, so it makes sense. Gays In The Military are located in Chicago, and really, they play something we haven't seen in a while: full-on midwestern rockwriter-in-underwear rock. Sienko writes for this very magazine, and bassist/vocalist Sir Lord Brian, guitarist G.G., and drummer Melissa are all from WHPK (also known as 'the best rock music radio station in the world, from midnight to noon on weekdays, anyway'). They're not all rockwriters, but college DJ rock and rockwriter rock are the same thing, and they do all play in their underwear. This EP was sold by the band for a dollar at their first show (after they put their clothes back on). The first two songs are both fun and harsh, really crude paper-thin garage rock with Sienko and then SLB barking over the top in some ''weird sarge' presence. Track three changes up a bit -- its noticeably more of a ballad, with an underwater vocal vibe -- as do tracks four and five, which are like psychotronic fetish-film sample/collage pieces.

GINGER BAKER’S AIR FORCE 2LP (ATCO)
Fat-ass British horn-rock, and I do NOT mean p-h-a-t. It was recorded in 1972, but I only heard about this it in 1999, due to all-around heightened interest in Afrobeat. Well, Ginger may have played in Fela's band but Air Force sounds more to me like Blood, Sweat & Tears. The jams are long heavy fusoid belters, really quite heavy metal. "White brass-rock" is how this website put it, that's kind of a funny phrase. A couple different times I've actually seen music-writers use the word "gruesome" to describe stuff like this, and it is, it's as gruesome as David Clayton Thomas's vocal style or Brian Auger's Oblivion Express plodding away so Keith Emerson can jump over his organ a couple more times. When Baker's Air Force is at full fire-power, which is usually, it’s like some terrifying kaleidoscope toy which reveals 12 rotating miniature John Wettons playing overdriven pentatonic blues leads in too-small silk bellbottoms. Graham Bond can just barely be seen in the background, blowing out an overwrought tenor sax solo. Despite these visions of Wettons, I’ll keep my copy. "Aiko Biaye" is a really heavy double-drums jam, and besides, the set as a whole is clearly the alpha male version of Soft Machine's Three. How could you pass up cultural reference material like that for only $6.99?

ANDERS GJERDE: Kylling Smask/Klunk Berry CDR (HUMBUG)
Mr. Gjerde is from Norway and runs the Humbug label. His release as himself is more music in the ‘quasi-infernal rumbling’ category, also known as ‘in the AMM style only more youthful and suburban and possibly black metal-influenced.’ This one is pretty fantastic, churning up some softly infernal process-type scape/scrape. (By process-type I mean that the patterns of the music seem more machine than human, and malfunctioning machines at that.) Track four ("dens hale til at logre faae") starts with the rather hideous sound of a dog barking, and I think I can hear another dog barking far in the background of the recording, and my cat is next to the stereo whining, and I think there's actually another dog barking somewhere in the building, which all means that I'm getting slightly freaked out by this CD. Okay, good, track four was short, and now track five ("a bingo gaga") features guitar played, apparently by a human, as it has a barely-there Beefheartian ‘groove’ factor. About the appearnance of a groove factor on the entire album, which is otherwise filled with tracks that sound like they could be field recordings of people working at construction sites. Reminds me somewhat of the Join Us As We Talk In Circles CDR from Cockey High School, reviewed elsewhere.

NEIL MICHAEL HAGERTY CD (DRAG CITY)
Heard this two or three times on college radio over the last couple years, and had it pegged as some kind of kitchen-sink studio-rock free-for-all, but now that I’ve picked it up used and sat down and listened to it all the way through, I realize it's all just Hagerty sitting at a keyboard, creating a new weird form of light American dub-rock as presented by a one-man-band roadside preacher. Or Martin Rev scoring a Disney production of Huckleberry Finn. That's right, every song is played on the same kitschy organ, complete with rickety drum machine beats and comically deep bass pedal notes. Over it, Hagerty sings & mumbles what might be jokes or parables or both, sometimes using a Prince/C.Mayfield falsetto that really brings out the soft-glow folk-soul of the album. It's not really a one man band thing, though, because Hagerty overdubs all kinds of guitar solos. Track two "Fortune and Fear" has a downright dorky tune & arrangement, but it rides out with an incredible guitar solo that goes on for like five minutes. Hagerty's good, y'know?

PAUL HARRISON: We Are All Fucking Each Other In Heaven CDR (FIEND RECORDINGS)
Forgot to include this title in last issue's Fiend Recordings Roundup, which is odd because it has one of the best cover/title combos of all of the Fiend Recordings, with art that takes the title literally. As for the music, I think all Paul Harrison projects shred. Doing mostly hard, heavy, nervous and trashed-out beat music from what seems to be a cassette/noise culture pedigree, he's the only musician I've heard that sounds like a peer to the Hanson/Animal Disguise/Michigan scene. I've already been through how every Fiend Recording has 74 tracks of music (in other words, they're always rock-opera length), but I don't care anymore, because somehow all tracks are always great. The first track is called "Gomper Romper," and it's like 15 minutes long, most of it incredible ultra-hard house pulse. Crazy beats on all tracks, sounds like taxed data drives and crying cats and contact mic'd gymnasts. And a Julien Donkey-Boy sample. And a whole lot more. Remember, every Fiend release is the same as a double LP career retrospective. (CLICK HERE FOR BLASTITUDE INTERVIEW WITH PAUL HARRISON)

ISAAC HAYES: Hot Buttered Soul LP (ENTERPRISE)
Anyone who feels that the selection of 'prime' Funkadelic albums ran out too quickly and doesn't have this album should pick it up right NOW. Side one anyway is just two long dusted jams. Shit, they remind me of "Riders On The Storm" by the Doors and/or something off Paradieswarts Duul as much as they do Funkadelic. Also, in my long history of digging through the crates (i.e. digging through endless Perry Como and Firestone Christmas albums in Lincoln, NE thrift stores), the mark of achievement was always bringing home a record on which a known hip-hop sample turned up. Hasn't happened to me in years, but listening to Hot Buttered Soul, I knew it was going to, and sure enough, late in side one, when the band is just taking "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" on and on, one Ronnie Gordon hits the nervy piano riff that the Bomb Squad transformed into the theme from Psycho for Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos". The Hot Buttered Soul back-up band was The Bar-Kays and Gordon was their keyboardist, although he wasn't an original member, and a year later he had already been replaced. Side two isn't quite as dusted, but it's something anyway, an absolutely string-swamped epic side-long version of "Walk On By," absolutely laden with strings and a then-groundbreaking extended lover-man rap by big Ike. This track may indeed be ground zero for all the quiet storm R&B you hear today, but even if Jodeci isn't your thing you should check out Hot Buttered Soul.

HONEYMUZZLE: Crack Science CS (ANIMAL DISGUISE) I dig noise more on cassette and vinyl than I do on CD or CDR. This is because of durational issues. On cassette, without the digital readout technology, it's much easier to not pay attention to how many 'tracks' are on the release, or how much "time remains" when any given thing is playing. The same goes with vinyl, that is if you're not directly watching the stylus as the record spins. Besides, vinyl is beautifully limited to at most only 20 minutes of music at a time. The 7-inch single is, of course, more limited still, and might be the single best forum for noise music, just as it was for rock 'n' roll when it first hit. After the Beatles introduced higher art to rock 'n' roll, it became something that required a longer format, and the whole thing has gotten pretty convoluted ever since. Noise is thus what rock 'n' roll sounds like now, and just as punk was the first attempt to return rock 'n' roll to a singles genre (from the LP), noise is the second attempt (from the CD).
       Then again, as with both rock and punk, sometimes immersion can be good, which is another reason cassettes have their place even beyond LPs. That is, when the noise maven is damn good sometimes you wanna listen for quite a while, 30 or even 45-50 minutes (about as long as one side of a cassette will rationally go). Also, if the noise maven is damn stoned, which often seems to be the case, there might not actually be any urgency to it at all, just heavy texture or some shit, that might again lend itself to an extended bubblebath-like length. Honeymuzzle, a guy I've never heard of named Jonathan Browning on "metals, electronics, tapes, guitar," may not be damn stoned at all, I really can't tell, but he is damn good. This cassette wails. Very heavy and recommended, and, because it's a cassette, immersion is possible. (I just can't do it when I have a CD 'time remaining' display to look at.)

IMPALED NAZARENE: Latex Cult LP (OSMOSE)
Finnish band. Album opens with an air-raid siren thing for 30 seconds or so, and then it blasts into the first song with a direct homage to the very scream that Tom Araya introduced Reign in Blood album with, lo those many years ago. (Ten, to be exact.) The second track on here, simply by removing that “Angel of Death” scream, stands on its own better, as does the whole album, really. Even more entertaining are the titles of two other EP releases by Impaled Nazarene: Motorpenis and Goat Perversion. In 2000, they put out a compilation album called Decade of Decadence, which is also a great title because Motley Crue already used it for their compilation album, nine years earlier.

(I couldn't find a cover image for Latex Cult, so here's the covers of three other Impaled Nazarene albums instead.)

INCAPACITANTS vs. [IN SPITE OF FLAMING CREATURES]: Vitamin Buckfast LP (STARLIGHT FURNITURE COMPANY)
Nice record, limited to 300. Some of the best artwork yet from Starlight Furniture Co. The center labels on the record itself look especially great. Mine also came with a 16-page booklet from the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse called "How's Your Self-Esteem?" I bet yours does too...
        The music is harsh noise. You knew that already, and I did too, although I don't think I've ever listened to the Incapacitants before. This LP just kind of takes over the room like some exploded digital room sculpture or a glitchy CGI mayhem effect that skips constantly. It keeps reminding me of Michael Snow's new *Corpus Callosum film, if you happened to catch that. Good film, good album. I have no idea which parts of the sound are coming from Incapacitants and which are coming from [In Spite of Flaming Creatures].

JANDEK: Six by Six CD (CORWOOD)
Never has an artist released a second album so exactly like their debut. Who else, The Seeds? I can’t think of any other bands whose first and second albums are this alike. Although by the 5th track on here, “Wild Strawberries,” Jandek does try out a new strumming style. Sure, it's the same detuned chord he played throughout both the first album and this one, but the strumming style is new. Vocal style is the same. It's not that Six By Six isn’t as good as Ready for the House, because it's exactly as good; it's the same thing with different words. Ah, yes, but the words are what makes it, because every now and then something that J-Dogg is saying might just catch your ear and you will most likely find yourself riveted for a few scary moments. Here’s a rather terrifying passage on Six By Six that I noticed: “Ah, my hands burn!/ Scarred with these prints/They will leave when I die, that is a fact /The blood will drain/Infection will mix with the blue corpse/But you have it here/You see how it is like the wind/At your back and at your face/Leaves dry and aching branches creak/You walk alone down boulevards/I take you to the sky/Take you to the sky/Take you to the sky/Take you to the sky…”
       By the way, the lyrical passage that I always fell into on Ready for the House was (sing along at home), “Well I chose this love (life?) completely/When you took away the charm/Set your mind on breaking burdens/Said you done no one no harm/I feel a bit like floating water/Headed for the rocks at bay/Crash upon some ocean liner/Comes the permanent lonesome way/Thought I see your eyes a-flashing/Thunder in your hair/I burnt a match for your complexion/The lights went out and you weren't there/Seated by the ??? I'm owning/Staring at the cellophane/Somebody came in for a question/I bought a glass out in the rain/The reason I have (haven't?) been accepted/Is that I failed to come on strong/Found a chair beside a window/Found a place where I belong/Inside myself there is no question/Just the jangle of our brain/Three times four is twenty-seven/Only fragments still remain/I curse the day I found my freedom/You took the mirror from the wall/Placed it in a single suitcase/Pointed down a hollow hall/You said you see your true direction/I'll be there behind the sun/And I'll go with you in the springtime/When all your travels have been done.” Damn. Shit is mythic!
       I do prefer House, probably just because I heard it first – but I also like the cover photo better. Still, the Six by Six cover is the first of the self-portrait covers, so even though the music is exactly the same as the first album, you’ve really gotta have this one too if you’re ‘that’ way about Jandek. (Seth Tisue is ‘that’ way about Jandek, and to great ends, with his great Jandek information site, and its great url, tisue.net/jandek, where I got the exact lyrics as you see them above. Good stuff at just tisue.net too, like a picture of the back of Seth's head.)