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REVIEWS
by Larry "Fuzz-O"
Dolman
LIQUORBALL:
Fucks The Sky LP (BLACKJACK)
 Last
issue, I had only heard of this record, but that's how
the Blackjack label always was for me. I never owned any of
their records, I just knew the label from the hand-drawn ads
they took out in mags like Muckraker and Bananafish. ("Wanna
play pirate?," anyone?) Even now all I have is a Monoshock
7-inch I bought used for a couple bucks last year, but I would
pay at least five bucks for a copy of this album, the one
I'm reviewing, Liquorball Fucks The Sky. Hell, I'd
pay $6.99, but for now I'm borrowing it, and it's a pretty
mutant sound. Side one: Amorphous lurch by rock guitars that
seems to go on quite awhile until the drummer saves the day
. . . sort of . . . and the band finally settles into a riff
. . . sort of. The singer is great, and he really ties the
forlorn jamming together with vocals that are both funny and
scary. Julian Cope describes his style as like an "E.T.
Gollum"; he sounds to me like a really good black metal
singer, and as improvised black metal this is much better
than the Abruptum CD I bought two years ago (even though it's
not technically black metal, I know, I know).
GRADY RUNYAN of MONOSHOCK and LIQUORBALL:
Jeez, top that look, will ya . . . . very Emmett Grogan
. . . |
BUNNY
BRAINS: Holiday Massacre '98 CDR (PUBLIC
EYESORE)
 I
didn't really know what to expect from this, but it certainly
wasn't this. Only other real album I've heard from these guys
is the Sin Gulls one, which had clear-cut songs,
production, and energy. This, on the other hand, is nothing
but burnt-out lassitude translated barely into sustained psych-rock
jams. Sounds like the drugs really caught up. If Liquorball
tried to set a record for longest non-stop jam, this is what
they'd sound like on the eighth day. The singer doesn't scream
anymore, he just intermittently mumbles into the mic, using
his regular voice. Someone -- a roommate, a neighbor, a parent
-- has turned their amps down considerably, but they're too
wasted to get up and readjust. In fact, they're all laying
on the ground, barely conscious, their hands keeping the riffs
going somehow as their eyes stare blankly into the ceiling.
The bass player, "Davo," seems to have the most
fight in him, and the drummer also might not be medicated,
and the two of them keep the jams moving with harmolodic (or
is just out-of-tune?) drive, keeping the door open for the
other players to join or abandon the song-form at will, jabbing
and weaving and missing completely as they suddenly trip out
out on their shoes or whatever. Seemingly a live show, with
between-song banter and tuning-up sounds, but there really
doesn't seem to be a crowd, and it doesn't matter anyway,
so deep is the band and singer into their own spaced-out world.
In fact, I would call it focus, and despite constant absurd
asides, tuning problems, glaring mistakes, lost and aimless
builds, and a general decrepit aura, this focus never wanes.
Stuff like "Sister Ray" and "It's My Life"
by the Animals and I swear "Dem Guten, Schoenen, Wahren"
by Amon Düül II bubbles up and passes, harmolodically,
and the band just keeps moving like it's not even happening.
The result may be thirteen tracks but it's really one long
song, deep within the zone, but I'm enjoying it a great deal
these days.
AYAMI
YO-KO CDR (PUBLIC EYESORE)
 Put
this on and the influence of Keiji Haino is immediately in
the room with you. One Japanese man strumming an electric
guitar with effects on it, singing high lonesome songs from
some void of solitude, occasionally breaking into loud guitar
heaven-leads from hell. Then again, the tone of the voice
goes into different territory than Haino, less like a (fallen)
angel crying, more like a human crying. In that sense, this
is more 'normal' than Haino, a little poppier, if you could
say that, but then again the songs are all around 10 minutes
long, which isn't poppy at all. And I don't know what's going
with track two, where he actually seems to mewl the entire
song, and quite a lost ballad it is. Dare I say . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the Japanese Jandek? At
least the Japanese Dead Raven Choir.
KING
DARVES: I Can Almost Hum This Drug CDR (KING DARVES)
 Who
the hell is this guy? I don't know, but put in this disc and
go to his website at geocities.com/kingdarves
and watch the weirdo graphics accumulate while the electronics
bleat and fart, and you've got a fairly weird night on your
hands. I'd call this a noise album, that in some ways reminds
me of the Forcefield Lord of the Rings album or the
Rubber O Cement CD on Toyo, except I can't tell if it's any
good or not. Actually, I do like the way it just sounds like
ONE GUY MESSING AROUND, no overdubs, no walls of effect pedals
to hide behind. Then halfway through the album the noise gets
even sparser, like he's just plunking on twine and smashing
a trash can lid, and he starts moaning along -- reminds me
of Dark Inside The Sun a little bit. And then, the last track
is really pretty damn good -- a twelve-minute-odd solo tabletop
guitar excursion that is rooted in languid low-end-feedback
New Zealand territory but gets into some really bizarro hell-sheets
of digi-sound that, if you ask me, are totally American. I
think he's from somewhere in New Jersey, but good luck figuring
it out from the website.
REYNOLS:
The Bolomo Mogal F Hits CD (AUDIOBOT)
 The
reports of Reynols' recent 'break-up' have been a bit exaggerated.
Maybe it's an American thing, or maybe just a bored-people-worldwide-with-internet-access
thing, but people just go into a tizzy when bands break up,
expressing their condolences, spreading gossip, whining about
how they're gonna miss 'em, etc. I've never understood it
myself, because last time I checked there were something like
8,000 more records, with release dates varying from sometime
in the late 19th Century to approximately five seconds ago,
that I've 'totally' 'gotta' hear, so when a band breaks up
I think they're doing me a favor! Lightening the load a little
bit!
Anyway, I think the reaction
kinda freaked Reynols out because they quickly sent out a
follow-up announcement saying that it wasn't a 'break-up,'
it was a 'holiday,' and that they were still going to keep
putting out the occasional releases. I mean, here's a band
that's already put out, what, 200 or so releases? What, are
people worried they're not gonna get 7 (or 70) more?
See, here's a brand new full-length
CD (not CDR) by 'em already. Now, as for the music, we all
know that Reynols are a pretty odd one. I've listened to at
least 10 different releases by them extensively, and I'm just
now starting to realize that they usually do more or less
the same thing. I mean, sure, there's the conceptual stuff,
like the dematerialized chickens and the melting ice and the
singing cacti and all that stuff, and the fact that they are
more famous than a frozen glass of wool, but when it comes
to actually putting sound on tape I'd say 90% of the time
they're a psych-rock trio, playing a certain dirge of their
own creation over and over again; Tomasín plays the
perfect slow-plod drums and moans out lost vocals, while the
tinny alien processed guitars of Courtis and Conlazo grind
out endlessly unhurried post-punk psych moves. Sometimes there's
no drums, and the effects on the guitars vary from track to
track, but . . . . but . . . . see, as I listen to this I'm
starting to wonder, all over again. Maybe it's NOT usually
the same . . . . . Indeed, this Belgium-released CD features
a 'grab bag' of Reynols approaches, and as such is almost
as good of an introduction to the band as the Reynols/No
Reynols 2CD (2001) on Freedom From was. It's got stuff
from the Argentinian daytime TV show, watched by millions
of viewers, that they infamously served as the house band
for (1998), and it's got outtakes from their Pauline Oliveros
collab (1999) and from their Blank Tapes concept
/ release (2001). And, it's got plenty of the good ol' psych-trio
moan & drone that I'm talking about. So really, if you're
curious, and you can't find any of their Freedom From releases,
why not start here?
REYNOLS:
Clearly one of the best band photos ever. (There's a dog inside
the floor tom.)
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