(LOTS OF)
RECORD REVIEWS
by Larry "Fuzz-O" Dolman

396 MOUNTAINS CS (RAMPART)
Heads up: lots of real nice looking and sounding cassette mystery coming from the Rampart Tapes label of Lexington, Kentucky. Side one is an ominous low tone or two that sort of creeps around, up and down, for a long time (10 or 15 minutes) with a small band of demons quietly joining in towards the end. Nice, but it's like a warmup for side two, which is a supremely ruling super-thick & mean low-down tone that is just constantly boring into my mind! It's starting to hurt a little bit! Hurt so good! Mongo like when brain hurt! The Rampart label is run by a member of The Hair Police and it wouldn't surprise me if 396 Mountains consists of one or more members of The Hair Police, because that band has been going in a more 'controlled' 'soundtracky' direction, for sure -- their amazing Drawn Dead album is almost like the much denser/louder/"fully formed" version of side one of this cassette. Drawn Dead, damn, that's a good album . . . . likin' this 396 Mountains cassette too.

ALVARIUS B: Blood Operatives of the Barium Sunset LP (ABDUCTION)
I would like more people than just the Sun City Girls freaks to hear this album. It's by the solo guise of SCG member Alan Bishop, and it's his third release as such. The first two were more cultish -- his first, from 1994, untitled and mysterious, was raw solo acoustic guitar instrumentals, and the second, from 1998, also untitled and mysterious, was a double LP of raw solo acoustic guitar songs that were ugly, mean, funny, and really weird -- but this third one is an album of beautifully recorded and fully arranged songs that could appeal to a lot of people. Don't get me wrong, the songs are still weird and mean and Alvarius still throws around about as many f-words as you'd find on an Eazy E album, but the arrangements, orchestrations, and melodies spread on so much film composer love that it becomes something completely new. It's not like he hired a few orchestras and super-producers either -- it's mostly just guitars, bass, and drums, with a pinch of viola and organ here and there, and a whole lot of craft, economy, and savvy. For example, there's a gloriously cinematic Morricone cover ("Dirty Angels") created entirely by Bishop overdubbing several voice and acoustic guitar tracks. The first time I heard it, I had no idea the instrumentation was so simple. Most of the tunes feature Alvarius playing with a small back-up band that includes Eyvind Kang, drummer Randall Dunn, and on some tracks guitarist Tim Young and percussionist Andrew McGinnis. (A certain Richard Bishop plays guitar on one track as well.) On a creepy number called "The Feel," Kang plays drums, and then overdubs not only viola but a rather funky mutron-filtered bass line! But it's not so much about the band as it is the lyrics, the melodies, and the cinematic overdubs. And for those who want the hardcore real old west evil shit that SCG have long since addicted you to, it's here too, like on "Mr. 786": "I'm doin' business with a black and tan / between a foggy mirror and a swollen gland / He'd love to move some ivory or tiger whiskers / Cuz that dope's been rottin' in the sun / He'd like to move some guns / But I needed a half-ton of Persian pistachios / and some imitation shark fins cuz I gotta score to / settle with Chinese Dick who specializes in bird drool / and he killed a queer buddy of mine in Yunnan / last year over two-dozen Toyotas meant for Lashio / found his carcass in a freight container bound for Medan / carved jack-o-lantern-style wrapped-up in some Teak / furniture I order once-in-a-while."

APOTHECARY HYMNS: Trowel and Era CD (LOCUST)
Speaking of which, the thing they call orch-pop has been around forever and is still going strong through thick and thin among multiple generations. Take this recording artist Apothecary Hymns, no particular marketing/scene affiliation. First couple listens I thought it was played and recorded real nice but wasn't immediately impressed by the songs -- but now they're starting to creep up on me, with the hooky slow-developing minor-key-verse/major-key-chorus "A Sailor Song" in the lead right now. Apothecary Hymns is a guy named Alex Stimmel who lives in Brooklyn, New York, doing some kind of full-band retro-psych Americana all by himself at home. But don't expect some loner-guy lower-fi bedroom sketchbook trip -- these are very well recorded songs that are fully written and carefully orchestrated (via lots of overdubs -- electric guitar sounds, fuzz bass, banjo, drumkit, and seemingly much more). Other reviews of this album seem to always mention Syd Barrett, but it sounds to me like Lee Ranaldo singing lead for The Band!

ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB: Astral Social Club #4 (ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB)
This just in, "hot offa the burner," the fourth release by Vibacathedral Neil Campbell's new solo moniker. Like the first three, still very electronic, very solo, and very zoned-out loopage, though this one strikes me as being a little more 'noisy' than the first three. Track one (no titles) sounds like mid-period Kevin Drumm, and the 12-minute track two sounds like current Kevin Drumm, at least until the microhouse pulse starts emerging. Track five might sound kinda nice from the other room, but get up close and it's absolutely hellish! It even has 'people being tortured' screams going on. My dark-horse favorite is probably track six, a chilled-out workout for ghosted-out rinkydink drum machine. Chilled-out . . . . but creepy.

CAN'T: New Secret (by Jessica Rylan) 12" Picture Disc (RRR)
Loved my first Can't album, now here's my second, truly a thing of beauty. (Prettiest picture disc of the year? Definitely. Of the century? Probably!) As on the previous Final Performance, she (Can't, a/k/a Jessica Rylan) is still playing "home-made synthesizer," creating weird instrumentals, and singing intense love songs, but my, she has really upped the ante with this release. Final Performance was 5 little blasts in just 11 minutes, where New Secret has 6 tracks but is three times as long. Some of its tracks are shorter instrumental things, but three of them are long, patient, and powerful songs, precise and rhythmic and melodic, and they are all classics. But then, so is "Driving in the Rain," in which she gets out the tenor recorder flute and plays a lovely short and sweet solo piece that is about as "free folk" as it gets. I love track five, "Messy Mystery," too -- it's this sparse bubbly instrumental that my 2-year-old is convinced is the sound of (his words) "fish swimming" and "going down underwater." The sounds make him laugh and he says "fish!" constantly. Late in the track when Ms. Rylan hits a real deep bending tone, he gets excited and says "FISH FART!!" I say all this not to tell you how hilarious my kid is, but to demonstrate that this is some pretty deep music that is much more than just Noise. And then track six "Casting A Spell" is definitely the one for the annals, a 15-minute epic that lives up to its title with one of the most fragile sweet witchy melancholy melodies ever on a "Noise" record! Throw in that gorgeous painting on the B side and, well, you've got a masterpiece.

The lovely 'back cover', side two.

CAN'T aka JESSICA RYLAN: Casting a spell.

CLAY'S FESTERING LUNGS: Pasture Music CS (CHOCOLATE MONK)
With special guests E and F! And all due respect to Arthur magazine! E: Look at this, this is insane. This blue electrical tape goes all the way around the tape, so you have to peel some of it off in order to listen to it. F: Looks cool. E: Yeah, it does, and thing is, you can mostly preserve it, you only have to cut through the tape on one side. [Gets out exacto knife.] F: Yeah. E: I think this is the first actual Chocolate Monk I've ever owned. F: Really? E: Yeah, I hear about almost all of 'em but I never see 'em. F: You gotta do mailorder, dude. E: I know, but I've got this weird thing about ordering from the UK. Like this mental block about their exchange rate or something. It's weird. I swear they don't accept US currency over there or something. F: Actually I've never ordered anything from the UK. E: Poser. [Laughter.] Wait, actually I have the Harry Pussy Vigilance! cassette, somewhere. F: Oh yeah? Where'd you get that? E: I don't know, some U.S. mailorder . . . I think Little Brother Records. F: I remember them. Fahey's Mill Pond? E: Yep. F: Double 7-inch. E: But yeah, that Harry Pussy tape is insane. It's just like one 10-second-long passage of music, edited over and over again, like 500 times, to fill out an entire 90 minute cassette. F: Wha....? E: Seriously. At least that's what it feels like. [Cassette by Clay's Festering Lung, finally unwrapped, starts playing.] We'll have to listen to it after this, if I can dig it out. Which won't be easy. F: Chocolate Monk night! E: Chocolate Monk in the DJ tent! Can't believe I only have two Chocolate Monk releases, how lame. [More listening.] This is great! Fuckin' noise-folk! F: Yeah, and it's more noise than folk. E: Boom-box tin-drone tape-scuzz! F: Pasture noise! E: Totally, this is great. Very Chocolate Monk. F: Very Shield That Pierces The Earth. E: Oh yeah, it's piercin'. But appropriate you should say that, because Clay's Festering Lungs takes their name from a track from that album. F: Okay, so is Nyoukis on this? Or . . . E: I don't think so, I believe this is a solo project by Clay Ruby from 23 Productions, Skullfucking Tapes, the Davenport Family, Pasture Music fest, the whole Madison, Wisconsin shebang. F: Oh yeah, the Metrocide and all that. E: Yeah, that's an older project, I don't think he does that anymore. F: One of the 93 projects involving Clay Ruby. E: No, he's only involved in . . . . 23 projects. F: Ha ha. [Later, start of side two.] E: Okay, here on side two we have a far-away drone that is more of a soft hum, and we have a couple dudes having a conversation, probably Wisconsin dudes. This sounds like a Madison-type conversation. F: Yeah, so like you and I are recording this conversation, about what's on this tape, and we're two more dudes, Illinois dudes, so when we're done with our tape it'll have four dudes on it, having two different conversations at two different times in two different states. E: Of mind. F: I don't know, I think our states of mind are pretty fuckin' similar . . . and our states are actually bordering, Illinois and Wisconsin . . . that's pretty similar . . . they're only like a two-and-a-half-hour drive away. It's almost like one big state. E: Totally, you should get Sufjan Stevens to write an album about it!

AL DUVALL: Rabbit Foot's Factory CD (LITTLE MAFIA / SUN SHIP)
This guy is a singer/songwriter who lives in Brooklyn, New York. At first I thought his music was a little too old-timey, with the overt banjo and comedy/vaudeville stylings, and the certainty I felt that he wears a fedora hat and probably even suspenders when he plays shows. But the more I listen, it's starting to sound LEGITIMATELY old-timey, like that modern master of sick time-warp vaudeville Charlie Gocher (of the Sun City Girls) is old-timey, like Wisconsin Death Trip is old-timey. Not a bad one, this Al Duvall. "Dagger D" is a weird one, with the lyrics "His name is Dagger D / A dagger does have he / And a hearing aid he made from someone's ear." In fact, all of these songs have an underlying twistedness to them, as if not a lyric goes by that couldn't be sung by some personable and charming serial killer, somewhere.

ENDLESS BOOGIE: Siberia Live CS (DOLOR DEL ESTAMAGO)
What the hell, the Mexico-based imprint Stomach Ache (Dolor Del Estamago) has been defunct for about five years now, right? Why would their Comeback Release be a cassette of a live show by Endless Boogie? Did Endless Boogie even approve this release? Is this even the REAL Dolor Del Estomago? Actually, who are Endless Boogie? I'm not quite sure, but they have been mentioned in Blastitude before by Daniel DiMaggio, so they do exist, and I'm pretty sure they're a New York City band, and . . . . maybe . . . . . someone in the band is a member of a more famous band like the Double Leopards or something?? Regardless, whoever this particular Endless Boogie and Dolor Del Estomago are, the results are pretty damn sweet. Nice looking tape that offers real-time documentary evidence of a big chunk of a rockin' live bar show, whatever fits (could be a C30?). Tranced-out good-time rock groovin', and I do NOT mean 'Trance', these guys aren't near that generic. Just driving psyched-out boogie-rock of a stripe that simply is not heard much anymore (but those left-field Trad Gras Och Stenar comparisons are appropriate). Word is there are currently TWO debut vinyl LPs by this band out on a rather subterranean barter-and-exchange market, so keep your ears to the ground.

EYES AND ARMS OF SMOKE: Moon Burn CS (RAMPART)
This is a group that consists of Robert Beatty and Trevor Tremaine of the Hair Police and their significant others, so it's two pairs of lovers making some weird lovely psychedelic music (for lovers). If this music was being made in, say, 1996, it would be a prime candidate for side 2 and 3 of a double LP on Siltbreeze . . . I mean this is some totally strange huff . . . you can tell it comes from somewhere in America deep down but you can just barely tell . . . I hear this band plays songs and has even revealed themselves to be some kind of an orchestral psych folk thing, but this tape is just 30 minutes excerpted from some lost bell-chime symphony, sounding like it's happening in an extremely abandoned and haunted cathedral . . . . spooky and weird but also very pretty white magic . . . . now bring on the songs!

EYES AND ARMS OF SMOKE: A Religion of Broken Bones LP (CENOTAPH)
Well, I said bring on the songs, and with this, their first full-length, Eyes and Arms of Smoke have indeed -- but I didn't think they'd sound quite like this! This one of the proggiest new bands I've heard in years, in many senses of that overused word: helium prog, Canterbury prog, chamber prog, free prog, twee prog, prog-folk, prog-psych, and even prog lite, to name a few. They play lots of intricate parts and there are a couple moments that really remind me of Gentle Giant -- there will be Hair Police fans who will hate this! I'm still pretty taken aback myself, but I'm pretty sure I love it. I know I love the way the synthesizer and clarinet don't quite harmonize on songs like "Black Hoists of Dawn." And I love the terrific lyrics and singing. And right now I'm listening to, and loving, the album closer "Nemesis," 14 minutes long and all-ethereal with a constantly busy undertow, and a gorgeous intensity-build towards the lingering end. Sweet album cover (lovely drawing on nice paper) housing songwriting, arrangement, orchestration, and true psychedelia, all fully formed.

FRICARA PACCHU: Waydom CS (LAL LAL LAL)
Another killer hit from the Pfinland psych pscene. A lot of the music coming from this camp sounds like a bunch of people shaking things and blowing other things like crazy, which is usually pretty cool, but I like it even better when they use an electric guitar or two, lock in on some circular riffs, fall into a heavy backbeat, and make the whole thing shine like glowing embers. That's exactly what's going on here with Fricara Pacchu's Waydom cassette. We're talking LOCKED in -- hell yeah, these are grooves. Like all the best Finland stuff, it sounds like droned-out Sun Ra-meets-Dead C ethnic music that you can worship pagan concepts to with no persecution complex whatsoever. Apparently Fricara Pacchu is just one person, from the band Maniacs Dream, but he or she sounds like a band to me -- one of the best in Finland!

GARLIC YARG: Somewhere Over The Rainbow Blue Wolves CDR (NOKAHOMA)
I keep coming back to this under-the-radar CDR of occult free-form psych-noise improvisations that I'm pretty sure involve Smolken of Dead Raven Choir and I don't know who else. It's not like it's some "great album," it's more just like a "strange missive" with a cool occult cover and just the right kind of blasted late-night zone-sound to go with it. It's weird and it seems confident with where it's sitting. Like an old-time band of gypsies with banjos and whiskey that keeps getting interrupted by UFO landings, or at least the Rowe/Cardew/Prevost/Gare lineup of AMM.

HAMMOCK: Kenotic CD (HAMMOCK MUSIC)
Did I read in this CD's press materials that the band spend $50,000 on the marketing of this CD? Yes. Can I believe that shit? No. Am I a fairly jaded and burnt-out hack record reviewer? Yeah, pretty much. That would explain this ridiculous Q&A style 'concept review', wouldn't it? Yep. Does the extremely well-made (and -budgeted) generica of Hammock deserve better than this hack review style? Yeah, it does. A whole lot better? A little better. Would I recommend Hammock to a Cocteau Twins fan? Yes. Would even the most hardy Eno freak find a satisfying bubble-bath ambient new age mellow-rock fix from this CD? Yes. How long would the fix last? About as long as the bubbles in my evening bubble bath. So what's that, about 15 minutes? Yeah, about that. But are there any standout tracks? There is one early in the disc (I can't tell you which because the CD got lost somewhere at work) with breathy female vocals and I simply cannot deny it's beauty. It's gorgeous, but after a couple more tracks go by I'm barely noticing the album anymore.

LAZY SMOKE: Corridor of Faces CD (ARF ARF)
A man I truly respect dismissed this disc about 20 seconds in with the comment "Beatles much?" Now, I think that's a pretty funny little retort and a lot of Beatle-posers deserve it, but jeez, my man, not the Lazy Smoke! I mean, I understand why this guy said it, because he's the music director for a really busy up-to-the-minute college radio station and every day he has to listen to about 60 totally shitty CDs, and then about 40 more CDs that are "pretty good but not his thing," and somewhere in all that are about 10 CDs that he actually really likes or outright loves, so in order to get to those great ones and give them the attention they deserve, he's always in "dismiss mode." A lot of music freaks always are, because if they can dismiss an album, band, and/or show within 20 seconds of hearing it, a whole lot of time is freed up for them to think about all the undismissable music out there that they're already thinking about every second anyway. I do it myself all the time, and I'm sure anyone who reads my review column has noticed. But man, NOT THE LAZY SMOKE!
      I'll admit it, I too thought of the Beatles for at least the first 20 seconds, the way the opening song "All These Years" was chugging along, but it was also throwing off all kinds of sparks that were making it quite new. First spark: the way the lead guitarist responds to each of the singer's first-verse lines, tearing through the British Invasion veneer with splintery spiky leads, just reckless enough to poke holes into the tune itself so that (psychedelic) air currents can form and get the whole thing shimmering. Second spark: in the same first verse the smooth lead singer-songwriter Joe Pollano drops a line about "She's been dead for years and years and years...." Wow, talking about death already, and it gets discussed a lot more as the album continues -- it's no Berlin but it's closer than you'd think. And then comes the biggest spark of all, an explosively sweet chorus in which the British Invasion chug drops into sky-opening heavy-yearning half-time as the voice kills softly over the top: "Save yourself some misery / And get away from here / I'll help you disappear," that last line changing the tone just right, from rejection to sympathy. There's plenty more fine songs of this caliber, not to mention that this CD reissue comes with like 13 bonus tracks, which are a lot of the same songs, but played and sung by Joe Pollano solo as he lays down a one-night reverb-heaven demo session that rivals some of the Chris Bell demos on I Am The Cosmos.

MT. GIGANTIC: Old Smiler CD (FRIENDS & RELATIVES RECORDS / HARLAN RECORDS)
For the record, this is not the band Mt. Eerie, which features ex-Microphones guy Phil Elvrum. I've never heard any of that guy's stuff, but I thought this CD was by him for a couple weeks. It's not, this is an unrelated band from Bloomington, Indiana called Mt. Gigantic. I keep trying to get into this CD but I just can't seem to make it happen. It's certainly creative, filled with these sorta complicated, sorta quirky, weirdly anthemic rock songs that are sung in yowling strange elf-voices. I'd like to recommend it to fans of Caroliner, and to fans of more poppy Caroliner influencees like the Thinking Fellers, but it's not quite there, though it might be a good follow-up for people who have just discovered the Animal Collective. Last track "Making Time For/It Is Time For" is pretty cool and wistful, but overall, the would-be animalistic vocals and the big swarming rock-anthem arrangements just kind of crowd me out of the picture.

THE NEW FLESH: Parasite CD (MAELSTROM)
These Baltimore-area thrashers floored me a year or two ago with a really heavy, fast, and mean self-released cassette that placed them pretty high in the youth hate/horror sweepstakes. Now they've put together a nice pro CD and their sound is changing. Still lots of hate and horror, but they do sound like they're growing up a bit, with tempos that are starting to slow and a weird burnished tin-metal kind of sound that reminds me of professional 1980s treble-hate merchants like Big Black and Scratch Acid. As for the slower numbers, they are monster jams that I can hardly believe, particularly the 9-minute mid-album pulverizer called "Friend of Mine." It gets my head banging and shaking in big circles just like the Om CD does, except New Flesh play it much looser -- as the monstrous bass riff carries on and on, the drums start to lose their way on purpose and the guitar mess melts into everything else, and unlike Om the singer doesn't sound like a Buddhist stoner -- he sounds like he hates all Buddhists, and he doesn't like you much either, and besides that he's about to explode from all sorts of other related and unrelated internal tensions. It's a good 'un, that "Friend of Mine," and there's some other slower pulverizers on here that are certainly worth your attention.

ORTHRELM: Ov CD (IPECAC)
It makes sense that Orthrelm would sign up with the Ipecac label, and this potential for wider exposure has coincided with a challenging new aesthetic move on their part towards extreme length and minimalism. The album consists of one 45-minute track in which short frantic patterns are repeated for unheard-of lengths (minutes at a time?), sometimes evolving slowly as they repeat, sometimes remaining quite static. Eventually there is some pretty wild payoff and some serious changes of riff, etc., but for those who aren't already Mick Barr enthusiasts it's gonna take some pretty hardy souls to get there. A metalhead co-worker was impressed by the skills but gave up after 10 minutes or so -- "I just don't think it's going to go anywhere." It does go somewhere, many places in fact, even when it's apparently standing still, but even I didn't learn how to truly 'hear' such things until after spending 7 years living alone and rigorously meditating on a mountaintop retreat. Anyway, Barr's guitar skills have already been well-noted in these pages and others, but it's the drummer Josh Blair who really impresses me on here, maintaining a precise rolling and tumbling energy that never lags in the slightest underneath the guitar's double-picking frenzy.

PSI: Artifically Retarded Soul Care Operators CD (EVOLVING EAR)
Surprisingly sick noisy improv album. I say "surprisingly" because I thought Psi were gonna be, you know, another 'dry improvised music' trio. Put it this way, I just assumed that the letters P, S, and I were gonna be the first initial of each member's last name! (Hotcha! Improv joke! That one gets a Gregg Bendian rim shot!) I say "sick" partly because the awesome wraparound gatefold cover by Stephen O'Malley really sets a tone -- I mean, there's Satan, right there on the cover, and the artist is in sick bands like Khanate and SunnO))). But Psi really do play genuinely sick sounds that do plenty of justice to the cover art: severe dog-whistle electronics and blatantly ill low-end stumbling and fumbling. This may indeed be dry improv, but it's dry in the way a hellish day in the desert is, or a virus creeping out of a clinic.

QUEM QUAERITIS: TV TV Happy CDR (NIGHTPASS HANDMADE RECORDS)
As I suspected, ANYTHING can happen in the post-Smell L.A. "punk" scene. Quem Quaeritis are final proof. First of all, they named their band Quem Quaeritis. Say what? Second, they put their CDR in a jewel case and spray-painted it like that. (It's beautiful and it feels nice too.) Third, they perform such an absurdist melange of funky styles on their album, such as dark ambient, gabber techno, art-damaged free jazz, improvised musique concrete, spoken word, Venusian hillbilly Godz stomp, 'funny rap' (with the good sense to do it for only a minute), and whatever kind of music track 2 "Samurai Scientologist" is. (Futuristic jazz-fusion flute-funk a la The Cosmic Jokers under the direction of Tom Ze?) It's grooves like this track 2 business that are the deal-breaker for me -- if they're willing and able to do something this sexy, they win automatically. The second half of the album does kind of bog down into some toyish free jazz endlessness, but by the time it does, I've already been shook up pretty good and the devolution is kind of charming. One to watch! (Oh damn, I just learned that they aren't a band anymore, and that their whole concept was to make music without using guitars "because geetars are geetarded." I didn't even notice there weren't any guitars!)

THE SB LP (WHITE TAPES)
I'm a little slow on the draw, and this album's edition of 200 is already sold out at source, but damn, it's good. The SB are a long-running improvised sound/noise group from New York City. They have been doing basically the same thing for a long time, a particularly bleak void of electronic improvisation that is very easy to fall asleep to, not because it is boring, but because it is enveloping, like a blanket. And friends, I do not use hyperbole in the slightest when I say that The SB, for this, their very first 12" vinyl release, have used some of their very best performances I have ever heard. This is great cold-electronic free-stuff that chills to the bone at the same time that it heavily relaxes. Black and white marble vinyl record comes as a "white label" in a nice anonymous chip-board disco sleeve (unfortunately not pictured here), except yours might also come with the sleeve of a 'dummy album' (mine unfortunately IS pictured here).

THE SB: "...the great cold-electronic free-stuff..."

SHY RIGHTS MOVEMENT: Trauma Peepshow CS (KAW TAPES)
Whoah, this is from the guy in England who does the Sniper Glue zine and, I dunno, I guess I figured this would be noisier. Why? Because the zine is B&W cut-and-paste and has features on Naturaliste and, uh, Sonic Youth? I guess that's why. But Shy Rights Movement are rather mellow non-noise singer/songwriter pop. Once I accepted this mild style shock, I noticed some pretty good twee-gaze dust-ballads on here, like the "Looking out the dirty windows" song. Good psychedelic feel on that one, makes the earnest AM Radio pop melodies really mean something. The more upbeat rock songs sound a little more generic -- the ballads are Shy Right Movement's strong suit.

SIGHTINGS: Arrived in Gold CD (LOAD)
I'll be damned -- Sightings went into a studio! On previous releases the band has recorded themselves in what sounds like an underground concrete bunker, where the sheer street-rock volume of the band has immolated itself in recording-level red -- extremely impressive in a totally blasting way, especially for new listeners (all releases have been killer, my favorite is Michigan Haters with Absolutes second), but when it's the third or fourth album recorded that way, you start to get a little frustrated, because you know there are songs and excellent rhythms going on under there, and you kinda wish you could hear them as intensely as you can the blasting. And now, with Arrived in Gold, you can! The studio is Brooklyn, NY's Rare Book Room, the outside engineer is Samara Lubelski, and together they have brought the Sightings sound away from the blast and toward the void with all the brilliant sharp shards intact and rendered in detail -- arrived in gold indeed! You can hear better than ever that Sightings are much more than a mere 'noise-rock' band; in fact, they turn noise into a full-fledged free-form psychedelic compositional approach, well-spiced with weird insect dance rhythms, ghost-memories of fucked-up hip-hop, and liberally bad vibes.

SILVER DAGGERS: Pasado De Verga CS (NOT NOT FUN)
Spray-painted tape that comes with an actual silver dagger attached to it (one of those toy ones that retract so you can play like you're actually stabbing someone or something, with a cassette, in this case, pun intended despite being terrible), but don't let the striking Not Not Fun aesthetic distract you, the music is quite good too. Silver Daggers stand out by NOT being a spazz dance punk w/masks act -- their rock action is more laid back and spaced-out, krauty and dubby. Occasional wacked female vocals really take it to another tweaked level. Great sounds, great vibe, though not exactly a great album -- hey, some cassettes are, but this one sounds more like a practice tape of song ideas, rough sketches, fine parts and grooves to remember and do something fully-formed with later, etc. I'd really like to see what they do next, but this is still a fine listen while we're waiting, and it does come painted with a dagger attached to it!

THE SKATERS: Crowned Purple Gowns CS (LAL LAL LAL)
Man, these guys really do never cease to amaze. I've heard about three of their releases now and Crowned Purple Gowns has gotta be the queasiest dive through the omniverse, our favorite San Diegans-who-do-not-skate cooking up something that sounds like a huge wobbly funhouse mirror refracting satellite drones and space tones from a backwards space-station carousel floating upside- down somewhere to the left of South Venus, and it's all being picked up and broadcast directly through our collective brains by that tiny weird metal cavity filling in our collective upper left molar. The second piece on side one is the more unbelievable of the two, powered by ultra-high space-seer vocals as alien as any prime Sun City Girls zone-out. Side two continues in the vein of the first piece, except this time a small tribe of highly intelligent sub-verbal cat-people are thrown into the mix and doused with cold water. And I'm not even trying to write one of those "surrealistic noise reviews," that's just what it sounds like. Also while listening to this tape, I was thinking about the rather invigorating statements one of these Skaters made about slavery (as quoted in Matthew Bower's column on the Volcanic Tongue website, click here and scroll down to get to it), which made me think of Sun Ra (duh) and how he used ecstatic and violent free jazz and space-travel noise to combat and escape the slavery of Planet Earth, and how The Skaters are doing the same thing again now, just as effectively, and in fact in a more updated style, because Ra tried to get it to the people by couching it in big band jazz, and even that concession to popular taste didn't get it to most of the enslaved masses who needed to hear it, so the Skaters are past the point of couching it in anything, not even "rock": this is the uncut slavery-escape mind-travel music of today.

SUN CITY GIRLS: Dawn of the Devi LP (MAJORA)
At first this short (less than 30 minutes) 1991 all-improv 12-inch was one of my least favorite Sun City Girls releases -- I know, I know, they record and release whatever they want, and I love 'em for it, but I do like to have at least a song or two, and these particular five medium-length jams with no vocals seemed very improvised. But here it is a couple years down the road, and it's practically become one of my favorites. There's tons of SCG improv to be had out there, but the recording aesthetic on this is kinda unique -- trebly and raw, but also somewhat professional, which yields a nice crisp quality -- and once you get used to the idea of extra-crispy totally uncompromised improv jams, and learn to follow their inner logic, the music becomes endlessly suggestive. For example, on the first track "The Kissy Sting" the bass and drums mime a churning river of mud that occasionally gets stuck on a boulder or a big tree branch before taking that along with it too. Meanwhile, the guitar becomes everything else on top: the sky, the birds, the outside world, the synthetic world, humans moving around, and human culture in general, such as language, conversation, arguments, and/or half-remembered totally-felt universal human songs and melodies. Or, maybe the guitar is just playing its ass off trying to keep up with with the bassist and drummer who are freaking out, playing a freaking river of mud -- and succeeding.

TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN L.A.: God And Country
Rally! CD (THE SMACK SHIRE)
The basic tracks for this 47-minute album were mostly recorded in 1996, the year after the basic tracks for the massive 2-CD Wigmaker were mostly recorded, and it does feel like the coda, the afterword, the wind-down, the glowing and smoky embers remaining after the house-on-fire that was its predecessor. It's still wild and thunderous in classic Shave fashion, but there's something quieter about it, something more introspective. Maybe this is because of the amazing guitar performance turned in by Bill Orcutt of Harry Pussy, who pecks and whittles throughout with such strange and calm power that he seems to pull the entire mix down to his level. Meanwhile, Nandor Nevai works away at a drum-kit, another jaw-dropping performance that, like Orcutt's, seems informed by the free improv/fire music legacy of the late 1960s, but also by the industrial punk of the 1980s, while standing well outside of both. He sounds like he's in another room, or another house entirely, dislocated and lonely. Tom Smith's vocals sound that way too, still a constant presence, but more cracked, more human, weary and even humble after the world-class struggle of The Wigmaker's epic plunge. It works on many levels; Orcutt and Nevai add so much extra sonic intrigue and counterpoint to the dependably powerful and wildly fractured core trio (Smith on shortwave radio and prepared cassette deck; Rat Bastard on bass guitar; Ben Wolcott on oscillators) that I keep coming back to the album just to tease out the frequencies. During these investigations, I stumble across sensitive emotional vocal/lyric centers that I can't help but poke at as well. They bite back, and I leave the room scratching my head, feeling somewhat hurt myself. Maybe it can be explained by this quote from "Richard Wright's Blues" by Ralph Ellison: "The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism." Maybe that's a bit much, but the point is that the album is suggestive and layered enough that it even made me think of Ralph Ellison in the first place. Though the bulk was recorded 8 or 9 years ago, as usual for an Om Myth production, it has been tweaked and remanipulated and overdubbed (in this case all the way up to 2003), and now presented in a very nice color digipak (dig the painting), as if the release date wasn't a single day late.

TUMBLE CAT POOF POOFY POOF: Werewolf Story (Plus Five More) CS (YEAY! CASSETTES)
Man, people are putting out nice-looking cassettes these days....this one comes from our beloved Yeay! label in a double-size case and features not just a cassette, but an entire deck of handsome cards, each with their own unique delicate understated surrealistic animals-and-objects pen-and-ink drawings. It's like the noise/tape scene was suddenly invaded by a Paul Klee/Chris Ware collaboration. At first this construction overwhelms the music, which starts as a guy randomly hitting things while some kind of noise randomly goes on. But then it gets deeper and more interesting, partly by pulling a midway 'free folk' move not unlike the one on the Can't picture disc. You know, the tenor flute thing by Can't? Tumble Cat's similar folk move consists of lonely voice and accordion. And then the tape closes out with a long blown out psychedelic improvisation-jam in front of a live audience that is really nice and rippling. And then side two is blank -- perfect!

VARIOUS ARTISTS CS (A VERITABLE WHIRLWIND OF...)
"It's not a compilation, it's a mix tape!" says the Veritable Whirlwind Of... website, and the presentation bears it out, a mysterious and confounding group of songs and spoken passages and pieces of sound that beg for an easily discernable track listing (which would make it more of a compilation) but refute it handily, the only concession being a ratty little handmade art booklet where each artist/song/event on the tape gets a page, some with credits and titles, most without, and not even close to being in the order they appear on the tape. So, without knowing at any point who in the hell I was specifically listening to, my first thought was that I felt like I was hearing the first Sublime Frequencies release focusing on America. Then I began to realize that a lot of this stuff isn't even American. Lots of disorienting and fascinating stuff on here, even if the thrift-scored self-released Christian fundamentalist family singalong stuff is becoming sort of cliche. (I mean, Mark McKinney did his "every comedian has a preacher character" bit on Kids in the Hall way back in 1989.) As usual, the answering machine messages (these all jacked from Chicago thrift stores) seem to take the cake for sheer everyday human pathos. I know it's lame but I wish it was a CDR so I could easily sample all these nutso tracks, but one-sided cassette it is, and believe me, it's still worth it. Do check out this new label, originated in Chicago, now based in Olympia -- I can't wait to see what they do next.

VARIOUS ARTISTS: Tapeworms Eat Bookworms 2CS (NOT NOT FUN)
You gotta love this -- a double cassette compilation that comes inside an actual hardback book, hollowed out just like a prop in a whodunit. Mine is a copy of The Giants: Russia and America by Richard Barnet, but it's been given the lovely NNF silkscreen treatment to read "Tapeworms Eat Bookworms, edited by Not Not Fun", the meaning of the book obliterated by the music of all kinds of today's renegade artists (mostly from California). All the tracks are said to have a literary theme, which isn't always obvious, but in any case the theme and the unforgettable packaging certainly bring a charged atmosphere to what is a very fine comp. First track is by Haunted Castle, who I've never heard of and may never hear of again, but it's a killer free noise jam, squalling electronics and hard-driving congas! Our old friends No Doctors contribute "A Gold Patch for Walt Whitman" which shows new direction for these transplanted Californians -- an epic and haunted dirge, Eastern-inflected, noise-raga guitar, moaning vocals -- powerful. Then someone named Adam Lipman contributes a really serious and DOWN bedroom ballad with piano and pseudo-timpani hits. Then someone named Aum Rifle do a really DOWN bedroom country ballad called "Spring," and then D Yellow Swans bring the noise with a track called "The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon Colored Gloves." (I get that literary reference, I've read the piece it's named after, but I can't remember the writer's name -- does that count?) Then Wives/Cherry Point REALLY bring the noise with "Wives Hate Police." Corcoran Quartet bring "Doong Sa (A Prayer For Owen Meany)" which is a nice rippling oceanic prayer by saxophone quartet, and I'm guessing they're part of the Sacramento/Weird Forest hardcore jazz scene. Barr offers "That That Good" -- this dude has won me over with his motivational speaking, not to mention his stuttering go-go beats. A true emo original! Mika Miko close out side one with some punk-girl-yelp-sass-panic that is really the kind of thing I expected the Not Not Fun label to be all about. They're a very good band, but what I'm really stoked by is how many more facets there are to the NNF aesthetic -- it's like the goddamn geodesic dome of dance-punk-everything. I haven't even gotten to tracks by Watery Graves, Weirdo/Begeirdo, Parker Posey's Parkinsons, Grey Skull, Carrier Pigeonz, Raking Bombs, Quem Quaeritis, My Sexual Dad, Offal....and there's about that many again, and the whole thing is a fine listen.

VERTONEN: Orchid Collider CD (C.I.P.)
On the heels of Vertonen's very strong Return of the Interrobang CD comes another disc, Orchid Collider, that he also made with grant money from the Chicago Arts Council, and once again the money has been well spent. This time the deep-drone approaches that were extensively explored on Interrobang's first track have gotten even deeper and more perfect. Six tracks, almost all in the sweet-spot 7-to-9-minute range, that display a nice variety of sounds that all fit within a broader deep-drone approach. You've got the gorgeous slow-motion laser-beam sounds, as on the first track "extend to decipher," which is practically reminding me of some early Popol Vuh! (And it's not the only track on the disc that does.) You've got the very distant ghost-tones of "stone oceans" that eventually get overtaken by furious jackhammer drones that are somehow still strangely serene. You've got the low subdued grind of "forgiveness precipice," which, before it almost faded away completely, my wife thought was an appliance in our home. You've got more than that, too, but as usual I don't want to describe everything, but I'll just say that the patient, austere, and often surprisingly gorgeous sounds on this album constitute one of the finest drone-based albums I've heard all year (and I've heard quite a few!). Real nice-looking artwork too, by Jason Talbot (who himself just put out a recommended release on C.I.P.).

VIRGIN EYE BLOOD BROTHERS: Monkey Glands in the Skull Orchard CS (BLACK VELVET FUCKERE)
Fuckin' summer. I've got this tape turned up pretty loud, but I can't hear a damn thing because I've got the oscillating fan going, the window air conditioner blaring away in the other room, and my mom is visiting and the baby is sleeping and this might be "weird and noisy" music that will totally freak all of them out so I don't want to turn it up louder . . . . okay, it's been going for about 30 seconds and I can sort of hear something ominous happening somewhere in the room . . . . okay, it's been 60 seconds, and I turned it up louder and can now hear some subtle drone-shift going on, quiet (non-fan) oscillations and misterio-drift -- shit, it's pretty damn good. Very subtle and eerie and stoned-sounding. Now, 10-15 minutes in and it's inevitably getting louder and spookier but the fine degree of control has not been relinquished. The volume is getting louder but the subtlety has not been lost. Hmm, this is hard to describe and it doesn't exactly give a clear picture of what this band does -- in fact, it doesn't give a clear picture of anything at all. Which could be, of course, the BIG picture. Highly recommended.

WARMER MILKS: Penetration Initials CDR (MOUNTAAIN)
This is it, the monster jam. I already reviewed this 30-minute epic when it was part of the not really released Family Corpse of God CDR, but now it's been made official as a one-track CDR on Lexington label Mountaain. Sounds remastered too! At least I'm hearing more details than before in the glorious sun-haze fabric of this endless quilt of a psych ballad. Seriously, every time I hear this song with all of its cyclical movements and melodies, I can't believe it was actually written and performed at all, and on top of it, that it was recorded. Which means that we get to listen to it in our homes. The world is filled with wonders.

KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN: Schöner Flußengel LP (KRANKY)
Title is pronounced "shooner floos-engel." It's a heavy drone album with fusion-jazz ornamentation and an acoustic guitar undercurrent. Right now I'm on an unexpected sixth or seventh listen in just a week's time and it's still getting deeper. One-person drone LPs are the shit, a Pure Form. You know they run the gamut from "dark ambient" internet crap to the loner synth classics to the contemporary deeply considered album releases by form-masters like Kevin Drumm, Hive Mind, Vertonen, Ian Nagoski, Maryanne Amacher, and many more. Call it the 'killer drone' LP, and include Schöner Flußengel in this camp. Even if it is (with all the musicianly ornamentation) like the Steely Dan (or Stevie Wonder!) of killer drone LPs, the end result is more than 'bad-ass' enough to live up to its doomy cover imagery.

onward to all the previous record reviews.....