stoneskilled

2011! PART ONE

2011-12-30T13:25:00.005Z

some Oh Sees stuff in my flat L>R Total Control split, Castlemania, Singles 2LP, Carrion Crawler/The Dream EP

Hi! The Best Band of 2011 award in my flat must go to Thee Oh Sees, for releasing a whopping ten sides of vinyl that were all excellent. John Dwyer has much past excellence form with Pink & Brown & Yikes & Coachwhips & MANY MANY MORE but I think he outdid himself this year, especially with probably the best three sides of vinyl that he pretty much produced on his own! Those three sides are called 'Castlemania'.

Castlemania has this mad exciting multicoloured dayglo art with a strange demon hand answering a toy phone and it fits with the music nicely! John Dwyer is playing all kinds of instruments from the guitar to all of the drum kit to a flute and then sometimes a trumpet. Pretty much any instrument that's been thrown at him. And it makes the thing so technicoloured! You can maybe hear the influence of people like Skip Spence and the 60s in general on the album but the wildness of the flute and noise of his guitar playing brings it right up to 'timeless'. As do the lyrics which contrast a lot with the jaunty music and melodies. It's all about blood and tedium and death but if you weren't listening to the words you'd have no idea.

The other thing that could sort of be called an LP that they released was the Carrion Crawler/The Dream EP which is two EPs smooshed together into an LP. This shows the full band of five people playing together which is a different thing entirely. On this LP the Can side of the band shines (a semi-cover of a Can song is half-included even!). They go very groovy and repetitive and there are a few songs that stretch out nice and long without getting samey or boring. Some of them are reworks of very old songs that have been improved immeasurably. If you listen to the old version of 'Crushed Grass' from the past and then put on the high octane exciting version from this LP your head will probably fall off. I saw them live this year on my birthday and I was dancing like an idiot to that song. I know this because people were making weird faces at me while I was doing the dancing.

There were two other major Oh Sees releases this year also, the singles collection including nice Ty Segall covers and the Oh Sees Massive Hit 'Tidal Wave'. The cover is excellent too if you're a fan, two eejits with old Oh Sees album covers felt-tipped onto their chests. If you're a fan of the band they are more rewarding in that way. See on the split with Total Control there are two full band versions of Castlemania songs so anyone a bit disturbed by the one man Oh Sees can hear what the same songs sound like played by the entire band. Again the songs sound very good indeed. Total Control are a fine band too, moodier punk stuff feat. a member of Eddy Current Suppression Ring. I love ECSR too much to be totally wowed by a related band sadly but their side of the split is very much worth a listen.

David Shrigley who is a fine artist and a big fan of the band also created some artwork for a 7" which is stupidly expensive. The music is available on the MUSIC SITE OF 2011 Soundcloud and the song 'Girls Who Smile' is particularly great. So here it is

Thee Oh Sees – "Girls Who Smile"

If you would like to buy four different excellent 2011 releases from a single band there's nowhere else to look. OR IS THERE PLEASE COMMENT BELOW IF THERE IS

ROUND-UP. Far too much time has passed

2010-09-02T19:36:00.005+01:00

Blink and you miss five months on this blog. Needles to say music has been so much fun I haven't wanted to stop listening & waste valuable time writing about it.

UNTIL NOWWWWWWThe Chris Corsano Band put out its first cdr a while ago! A cdr on thee Hot Cars Warp label is always welcome, possibly because there is a perfectly reasonable amount of time between releases. You can fully digest them before something else appears on the horizon. Once again Chris Corsano (with the help of his completely anonymous guitarist and bassist [and The Wizard on occasional bongo{s}]) - has unleashed a right one. Vishnu on drums is flanked by some other guys & they are so telepathically linked they might as well be Extra Arms Four Through Eight. Free rock transcendence gives way to funky (!) noise beats yields to space likembe leads to ripping Sun City Girls cover. 100% Corsano. Now his solo LP 'Another Dull Dawn' needs to be repressed so the slow folk (no post for FIVE MONTHS) can pick it up.

Eric Copeland has/had a fine 7" on PPM which might have his poppiest ever thing on the b-side. It still has the skewed samples and vocal mulch of his last 'Alien In A Garbage Dump' album but this isn't going to get on anyone's wick. It's like there's an aerobics class at the other end of your five star hotel and the sound of a veritable pop hit is wafting across the pool but your brain is too fried to make sense of it.

One of the (so far) two Moon Unit LPs for 2010 is 'New Sky Dragon' on Krayon Recordings and it is a whopper. Starts off with your usual 'uh-oh' tamboura drone type thing then proceeds to levitate so high and rain so much amazing down on you that you will be thoroughly embarrassed that you doubted them after only thirty seconds (I blame the fucking internet and BLOGS). They rocket towards the sun & directly into it so you don't have to. You'll definitely want to after you've heard this. Incredible cover art from Zeloot. Listen to em. And enjoy a bit of the set I was privileged to witness on Record Store Day!

BIG STICK - DRAG RACING

2010-04-25T00:09:00.004+01:00

This record (that I acquired for the bargain price of £2.99 "this might have a bit of surface noise but you won't notice it") was in the small box of records that John Peel would've grabbed had there been a fire in his house. A fire in his house! That means he liked it a lot I would guess. It's funny cos it's a record that you could describe as a bit damaged. If I may link it to all the tape type stuff on the go now it sort of reminds me of a James Ferraro 'KFC as energy temple' huuuuge double cdr release but with everything compressed into two minutes. Something like two minutes. A short time.

It's like a rock record that has been smashed into little chunks that are then sliced up a bit more and put back together again. By some guy with very poor manual dexterity. Or like a six year old. Their manual dexterity sucks. Don't force your six year old to start playing piano, he will be rubbish and it will sound awful. She could be the next Tony Royster Jnr and play the drums instead! Drumming in the Timberlake band, imagine that. All your childhood dreams successfully projected onto your own child!

There may be some places in North America where parents are forcing their children into taking up Drag Racing, I don't know. This is a song about and involving the sounds of Drag Racing. It's like a documentary that someone has edited down into a sound collage. But it's still a rock song. The girl sounds like she's being interviewed and the bloke is the tannoy announcer. Then there's this muppet sounding bloke saying 'hello baby hello baby'. The rhythms are all broken and the guitar is absolutely mangled until there's only the slightest hint of a riff left. The drag racers rev, threatening to drown out everything else. It was a hit! Which I can totally understand because it's brilliant.

http://www.big-stick.org/

Alan Moore/Stephen O'Malley: Simultaneous Conjugation of Four Spirits in a Room (AV10 Newcastle)

2010-03-13T19:05:00.006Z

Today I went to another AV10 festival event pairing legendary graphic novelist Alan Moore with Stephen O'Malley from Sunn O))), Thorr's Hammer, Burning Witch, The Lotus Eaters, KTL, Khanate, Stephen O'Malley (solo), Gravetemple, Ginnungagap, Aethenor, Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine and Fungal Hex. Among other things.

"Alan Moore will write and perform a new text responding to the energy of the two paintings: John Martin’s infamous The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (1852) and a key painting by JMW Turner from the Tate Collection. Stephen O’Malley will create a new ambient soundscape, sonically melting in the radiance of the paintings."

It was heavy stuff and compared the paintings with the Romans coming to the North East among other things. Looking at the paintings it's easy to see similarities but Moore really linked them together. He was leaning over a lectern and spitting the words out with much gravitas. He sounded like he was at least 500 years old. He also looked like he was at least 500 years old. I was too scared to ask him to sign my League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen DVD*. I could have been killed.

Stephen O'Malley expertly soundtracked the proceedings with two half stacks and a lot of pedals. What looked like him stretching his guitar strap produced some ominous creaking noises. The poem was broken up by some loud heavy riffing which did a lot to justify the large amps. We were about two metres away from him sitting on the floor having come in just about last. On the conclusion of the spoken word O'Malley leaned his guitar against a speaker cab and went over towards the door, letting long loops (seemingly created earlier while he was doing everything else) ring out. It was like the instrument was playing itself. Everyone was left staring at the amps and you could feel that a connection between the paintings and the living artists in the room had been made. Awe inspiring stuff!

*I would never do such a thing

Cluster & zoviet*france: Big Water

2010-03-11T20:59:00.004Z

Yesterday I went to a gig in a swimming pool with a special underwater mix - something I may never get to do again! There were loads of people in the pool, including a little toddler who threw a balloon off me and laughed as I swum about. I did a few lengths while the DJ played Ashra and Klaus Schulze etc. This was playing when I went in:

The DJ/Bands were set up on the three diving platforms at the end of the room and there were video screens and speakers above and below the water. Weirdly the music wasn't really any louder right next to the underwater speakers. I did use to know why that when I was doing A-Levels. Physics and that. As soon as you went beneath the surface the above ground music was swamped by what sounded like zoviet*france's best attempt at emulating a rainforest with electronics. All scraping, birds and insect noise. Listening to music underwater is really strange. You can't tell where the sound is coming from at all or where it's originating from, it's just everywhere. If that makes sense. z*f sounded muddy at the start until you went underwater and found all the chirrupy trebly stuff. The rhythm was under there too. I really enjoyed the zoviet*france set which lasted over an hour. Mind you, by this time I was knackered and freezing.

Unlike the sensible people I stayed in the water pretty much the whole time which meant I was absolutely freezing about two and a half hours in. Near the beginning of Cluster I had to flop around like a dying whale for a bit cos I got cramp in both calves simultaneously. So I ended up not enjoying Cluster quite as much due to my own stupidity really, sitting on the edge of the water frozen solid and unable to hear the underwater mix of their last half an hour. Although they sounded great even outside the water and dredged up loads of beats with that primitive drum sound made famous on 'Zuckerzeit'. They didn't stick to one idea for more than a few minutes at a time, hitting us with different synth burbles and some classic toytown psychedelia ( (c) Volcanic Tongue website). Listen to this and think swimming pool:

Rodelius was tinkling away on his synth above us and looking very happy indeed. Lots of people were retreating to the seats. Three hours is a long time to be in a swimming pool. The only beef I had was with the lighting, it would've been even better in dim light but I guess they had to keep the lights on for security and possible drowning reasons.

I highly recommend going to gigs with a separate underwater mix if you ever get the chance. Massive 'well done' to the AV10 people for making something that unique happen!

http://www.avfestival.co.uk/

SNOW

2010-01-10T02:15:00.003Z

Here is a video what I made about snow and the interesting music is therein. Mixed in with liiiiive cars and buses swishing past just like in that Color Dream tape. It's one of the most spacy kosmischy Can tracks from the Peel Sessions CD. Which should be rereleased because it is awesome. When the weather is like this outside proper blog entries go by the wayside.

Snow from Andrew Taylor on Vimeo.

There's a new Major Stars album out soon

2010-01-04T20:55:00.006Z

No really, there is. It's on Drag City. There are little samples of it here which unfortunately don't feature any of the inevitable mad soloing that will be contained therein. I know not every person is a fan of mad soloing, but Wayne Rogers & Co know what they are doing. They can stamp on their pedals, dissolve the whole song into a big noisy cymbal rolling white-out and then reign it back like Moses parting the sea, yesiree. That was good wasn't it?

I'm going to post a thirteen minute instrumental now which I can't adequately sum up in words. I tried and it sounded fucking stupid. It got deep emotional peaks and troughs but is always fist in the air rocking just like lyfe. But anyway please give it a listen and see if it slays you as much as it does me. And report back please thanks.

Song For Turner (off Major Stars 4)
I wrote about Major Stars before one time

JK Tapes 1 double cassette

2010-01-02T21:11:00.007Z

The planets have aligned and driven me to write about a 2007 release in 2010. I dug it out again TODAY and it still proves to be hugely inspirational musicwise/packagewise/the whole thing. 'Various artists compilations' are a fairly useful thing in my book. The internet allows us to steal anything we want for a preview but that just makes sifting out the good stuff even more difficult. I absolutely love the 'Best Of Ethiopiques' comp and it's led me to tons of amazing stuff, but the JK tapes comp stands alone. Most because I can't even read the tracklisting to work out which artist is which most of the time.

The beauty of it is that although I don't have a clue who most of these bands/artists are every song/piece (?) has something amazing about it. This thing covers so many bases and it all fits together. Whether it's some guy singing about how strange his voice is or a torrent of free rock bilge everything is right on the money. Most of it is pretty lo-fi and even when i'm not a fan of the song there's always some distorted drumbeat or funny noise that's totally new and gets me thinking about some new noises I could make myself using my own crap equipment.

The artwork on this thing is mindblowing too. You have to stare at the tracklist for about ten minutes before it starts to appear in front of you and only then can you try and connect it to the coloured/spraypainted tapes. When you do finally work it out and try and find information on different artists a lot of them are already long gone.

The massive effort that's gone into the whole package is staggering and makes me want to give it a go myself. I suppose painfully average stuff and terrible stuff can have a similar effect but this is a release on which other releases should be modelled. So good work JK Tapes. I'm going to take the inspiration and run straight into 2010. Hopefully like Rocky Balboa running up some steps as opposed to a headless chicken running straight into a wall. Time will tell!

Miraculously some still available here

END OF YEAR LISTS (Post yours below!)

2009-12-31T20:17:00.011Z

My favourite album of 2009 is by Shogun Kunitoki & features this track

Other recorded musical greatness came from

Spare Death Icon/Pulse Emitter amongst other awesome on Gift Tapes
The 6OOA/Azul split record on PSF
Bong "Bethmoora" double cdr on Infinite Exchange
Extra Golden "Thank You Very Quickly" on Thrill Jockey
Death "...for the whole world to see" cd on Drag City
Ducktails "Landscapes" record on Olde English Spelling Bee especially 'Deck Observatory'
Flower Man "Peppermint Steamroom" on Young Tapes
Thomas Function "Celebration" record from the extremely friendly/helpful people at Bomp/Alive
Nackt Insecten "Quantum Odyssey II: Corridor Voyager" cd on Memoirs Of An Aesthete
Blues Control "Local Flavor" cd on Siltbreeze
Emeralds self titled LP on Wagon/Gneiss Things
Outer Space "Faucet Plains" tape on Wagon
Skyramps "Days of Thunder" cdr on Wagon again, that's some good work Wagon
Lightning Bolt "Earthly Delights" records on Load
Pacific City Club Band tape probably on Pacific City I dunno

Soundtrack Madness

"Blood Sabbath" edit on Funeral Folk and its more creepy and more bloated cousin "Oasis Of The Zombies" on Cult Cassettes

Radio Madness

"Pacific City Sound Visions" with Charles Berlitz. Really happy to have had my dreams read out on the show and hope it returns someday
"Airborne Event" with Dan Bodah on WFMU especially when heavy on the echo effects
Hatch's show on WFMU making me like disco, never thought it would happen but it did
"The Best Show on WFMU" on WFMU
WFMU WFMU WFMU
Adam & Joe on BBC 6Music
Drama featuring man slicing off fingers on Radio 4

Best songs to be played at 33rpm instead of the usual 45 (seriously try these)

Michael McDonald - Shine Sweet Freedom
Roy Orbison - I Drove All Night

Best Live

King Khan & The Shrines putting on possibly the best show ever seen (I know the internet is full of bluster but I actually mean it)
Skullflower made my jaw drop and Sunn seem doughy at the Sage
Omar Souleyman in the hottest venue of all time, Glasgow
The Magic Band when they got going. Rockette Morton!
Melvins with 4 drummers
Lightning Bolt playing like hyperspeed aliens
Jeff Lewis winning over a load of drunk mackems
Eyeballs live at the Head Of Steam
Deerhoof playing "Pinhead" in Leeds

Other Highlights

Real mountain biking for the first time and the subsequent victory carrot cake
Real 10k racing for the first time and doing it quite fast
Climbing up Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh as the sun went down
Everything getting back on track
Meeting & drinking with some good dudes in Glasgow/Edinburger

A Happy New Year/Decade to everyone.

Feel free to post your own year highlights of any kind below!

Pulse Emitter - Grass

2009-11-18T19:12:00.010Z

I hadn't heard one bit of Pulse Emitter until fairly recently on WFMU/thanks to the honourable Gift Tapes blog and now GT have followed through with the blog praise and put out a fantastic cassette with artwork that fits the music perfectly.

The first side contains some beautiful synth drift that ebbs/flows/waxes/wanes beautifully before gently moving off into the distance. It's seriously relaxing stuff and some high end flutter appears towards the end, possibly to mark your move into a deep meditative state. Many of the synth fiends in my collection often seem to merely hang the sounds out there and allow them to billow in the wind but Daryl Groetsch is a master craftsman, introducing the tones methodically and letting them breathe and melt into each other to weirdly soothing effect. Side B brings recognisable melodies to the fore and more twittering/bassy rumbles without sacrificing any of the atmosphere. Pulse Emitter brings you the sounds of intensive isolation tank therapy triple distilled for maximum...effect? Taste? Something like that.

Buy stuff from PE direct
Gift Tapes
Listen to Pulse Emitter@Free Music Archive

The Radiation Line - EP3

2009-11-14T00:49:00.009Z

The Radiation Line are an experimental collective based in Central Scotland. I think that might contain Glasgow but I don't exactly know. What I do know is that this is a bit of a mind-boggler.

Skulls on any record cover usually suggest that evil is afoot but these guys seem more concerned with beauty, albeit a noisy sort of beauty rising out of the darkness scarred. Thirty seconds in I was ready for another drone-out but then whispered vocals and guitar appear. Hugely surprising stuff continually emerges from the murk throughout the whole thing including a full on four-to-the-floor banger (!) which dredges up memories of the heaviest nights out - when everything's an overpowering blur underpinned by thudding, there's a police siren screaming in one of your ears while someone's trying to speak into the other...it's massively disorienting. Before long it seems as if you're flying up and out of the town centre at speed. This is a consistently confounding release which still has its fair share of heavy drone, ambience and impending doom to please fans of impending doom, ambience and heavy drone but also squeezes loads of different sounds/rhythms into every available space.

Head over to the myspace and have a listen. One track on there suggests a more Earth/metal influence which wasn't immediately apparent. Who knows what the upcoming full-length will sound like? Not I. If it's as much of a trip as this EP it should be a winner.

myspace
get stuff from wise blood industries

BONG - BETHMOORA

2009-08-30T14:39:00.006+01:00

Bong are one of those bands that totally fill the room, whether listening to them live or on record. Or on cd, ye know. Probably on tape too. You get the idea. I will always remember walking into a gig late and being hit with the heaviest opening band i'd ever seen. The following acts (with far bigger and more expensive amps) sounded tame in comparison, as if Bong had ploughed through the musical landscape and crushed them under their mighty weight. Or as if they had broken the PA.

They are all about uneasy crawl and riff worship, finding the essence and repeating it over and over again with drums and sitar punctuating. Once you hear the sitar in this band it makes you wonder why every other band doesn't have one. Like the 13th Floor Elevators electric jug. They are altogether more ominous and evil than Sleep (who the internet says they worship) and possibly even more monolithic. This stuff practically commands you to lie down and let yourself be flattened.

Everything i've heard has been fantastic but the 25+ minute cover of Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" on the second cd of "Bethmoora" bowled me over all over again.

Bongspace

BLOOD SABBATH

2009-07-20T23:56:00.006+01:00

I'm sure you're all familiar with the old & low budget sexy cult horror movie known as Blood Sabbath. I certainly am! Not. An imdb user has this to say:

"Delerious [sic] mess of a witchcraft tale is interesting only as a showcase for the female bust. One of the strangest B-grade ensemble casts of the 70s cannot save this film, a tale of love, lust and the supernatural set in the deep forest. Skip it unless you are completist of 70s Z horror trash. 2/10"

Funeral Folk have put out a 20 minute edit of the soundtrack music from it which runs what I assume to be the whole sexy cult horror gamut - from disorientating tribal weirdness with squiggly synth to seedy psych funk (with squiggly synth) to creepy clanking ambience featuring squiggly synth. There's a pop tune at the end about the wise and the not-so-wise that presumably runs over the credits. Some dialogue/monologue from the film pops up every so often to tie it all together. Here's a preview snippet:

"TAKE MY SOUL DAMN YOU!!!!!"

Sounds good doesn't it? It is! You can find the cd(r) at thee Boa Melody Bar and the whole film is actually available to watch online if you search for it on google. Soon I will find out if it lives up to the excellent twenty minutes of music, which at points is very bizarre and Angus Maclise/Skatersesque for all you Angus Maclise and Skaters fans. Here's a very small clip featuring some squiggly synth to whet your appetite.

Nackt Insecten - Quantum Odyssey II: Corridor Voyager

2009-07-11T16:01:00.009+01:00

Long time no typey. I think this is the first 'real' (ie not a cd-r) cd release by Glasgow's finest and it is included with a 7" of a gig he played on the subway. During my short time in Glasgow I managed to see NI live a couple of times and was totally hypnotised. This release is similarly hypnotic, the first track pairing shrieking feedback with shimmering keyboard, seemingly soundtracking some kind of rebirthing ceremony and conjuring a bizarrely cleansing, serene atmosphere despite being the noisiest section of the album.

Elsewhere drum machines underpin some mesmeric, weaving casio drones and wordless vocals battle to emerge from underneath a gargantuan electronic sruti box. It reminds me of Skullflower circa 'Orange Canyon Mind' but with a more eastern feel. I had this on while running along the beach and I felt as if I would start floating up towards the sun at any moment. Exercise and epic sounds do funny things to you.

Harvey Milk bonus 3" CD (2006)

2009-06-07T17:20:00.003+01:00

Good afternoon everyone, it's OOP Gem time. If you like Rock and Roll music with guitars playing great riffs you'll simply LOVE this short EP from Athens, Georgia's Harvey Milk band. You may have heard them playing very slowly on seminal releases like 'Courtesy & Goodwill Toward Men' and 'My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be'. But this EP presents Harvey Milk as you've NEVER heard them before! Unless you've heard their singles or their straight up RnR album 'The Pleaser'. These cuts sound a bit like those - GREAT songs with amazing riffs! And an REM cover, live and direct with that slightly iffy/still quite good recording quality.

So download this, take six Coors Light beers out of your refrigerator and put them in the freezer so they're really cold (careful they don't freeze), take off your shoes, take off your shirt, put your shirt back on again, go and get the cold beers, open them, sit back, stand up and ROCK OUT to the rockalicious sounds of Harvey Milk - Athens, Georgia's six legged rock machine of rock.

download

The excellent "Anthem" dvd that this cd originally came with is available again with a bonus disc (no 3" CD this time hence the upload)

BUY IT NOW

Oneohtrix Point Never / Slow Listener split tape

2009-06-04T00:37:00.007+01:00

Daniel Lopatin recently appeared on the ol' radar with his Young Tapes release 'Ruined Lives' but this is an entirely different animal. It's as if aliens are trying to relay distress signals through a thick haze of static. High pitched buzzing and chirrups seem to be the only sounds able to rise above the din. Giant space insects with killer mandibles ahoy. Eventually a bit of tweaked modem bursts through and creates a pathway for some lower synth notes and the unwanted guests are in the room, coming closer & baring big sharp pointy teeth.

The Slow Listener side is a blurry, zoned out affair in comparison - organ drones pushing against each other for supremacy and creating gently shifting fuzz and crackle along the way. The sound gradually expands outwards to fill the room, bouncing off the walls and sucking in the ambient noise until only the tape's mournful tones remain, dizzying and gloomy. Then, some applause.

clip from the Slow Listener side here ("Undiagnosed Sleep Disorder")
clip from the Oneohtrix Point Never side / link to buy
Archivo de Sangre de Dios blog (looks a bit dead)

Spare Death Icon - Northwind

2009-05-08T00:33:00.010+01:00

Man, so much work to do, so little time to think about getting words down on here. SNOWED UNDER! The updates will become more regular in a few weeks once exams are done.

Without further ado...this is the debut release from new label Gift Tapes (complete with nifty present logo, natch) and sounds to me like a portrait of a region (land, sea, space, probably all/none of em) beamed through the lens of a 70s public information film. Lush analogue synth sounds bubble up toward the surface, lit by the overhead sun. I hear field recorded stuff, maybe a bit of guitar, some heavy drum machine beats accentuating the forward motion of the tape - a rapid trip covering acres of ground in a short space of time. Everything sounds really meticulously arranged, which isn't something I can say about many of the tapes in my collection.

It pans out so you can visualise the entire landscape and then zeros in on the bizarre stuff you'd only ever see by overturning stones or using the most powerful microscope. As you would expect the results can be surprising and even a bit unsettling sometimes. But that's life innit. And this tape takes you to places you wouldn't have even thought of going to otherwise.

mp3 sample
Still available @ Tomentosa
Gift Tapes label (& excellent blog)

Extra Golden - Thank You Very Quickly

2009-03-24T19:41:00.003Z

Photo actually taken by me for once

The right side of my headphones died last week and i'm still waiting for the replacements to arrive. I've been listening to comedy all week while out running. People look at you funny when you burst out laughing seemingly randomly. I can't wait to get back to the music again.

The new Extra Golden album is out now! I've only had it a week but it could be their best yet. Try listening to this and without dancing around your smelly student flat/wherever you are living at this point. The drummer plays so many different rhythms at once it sounds like he's an entire percussion troupe and when the three guitarists break out the amazing overlapping cyclical riff things simultaneously that's when the magic happens. Yessir. The rhythm section and the melodic section (?) are one and the same. They are a benga/rock machine and this is their hardest rocking release yet - all electric chitarra, few more chitarra effects brought to the fore, heavier sound and rhythms.

If you want to read about the journey the band went on to get to this point there's a nice article which I read in my Dad's paper that you can have a look at. When I say 'my Dad's paper' I mean the paper that my Dad reads. My Dad isn't Rupert Murdoch.

Listen to 'Fantasies of the Orient'
The Extra Golden site

Gender Wayang Pemarwan - Mahabharata

2009-03-07T11:55:00.007Z

This is WF MU post #2. I stuck on this show one Sunday morning (thankfully it's on at 11am GMT) and was treated to half an hour of amazing Balinese gamelan music. It was really easy for me to get swept up into the beautiful sounds. This particular ensemble is only four musicians strong, but you wouldn't believe it on first listen. There are so many overlapping parts all perfectly in sync, changing pace and mood on a sixpence. Most of the time each person is playing a basic melody with their left hand and the interlocking parts with their right hand. I had trouble playing two different things at once on the piano so to me that fact alone is really impressive. Not that you need to know any of this stuff to appreciate the music. It speaks for itself. Sings for itself? Whatever. The way it's recorded means the notes seem to dance between the speakers too.

I listen to the 'Airborne Event' show every week now and hear at least one piece of fantastic music I would never have heard otherwise. Like I said in the previous post WFMU are entirely listener-funded so use the donation box to the right if you like em.

Listen to Gending Rebong
Buy the cd
Good ol' Wikipedia has Gamelan info

Leland - This Is My World

2009-03-03T23:47:00.008Z

I've been listening to WFMU for the last few months and my mind is blown fairly regularly by the stuff they play. For the next two weeks they're doing their annual marathon which raises the cash for them to keep going as an entirely listener-funded station, so I thought I would post a few mp3s of the aforementioned mindblowing stuff.

We begin with a lil' hard rock number from the guy above. He could be spotted at gigs in San Francisco in the 70s wearing tights and a cape. He took out adverts in local publications that consisted of a photo and the word LELAND in big letters. No more info required presumably. The lyrical content of this tune reminds me a bit of Black Flag Henry Rollins. To paraphrase - "this is my world, geddadavit!" (stay out of it). As soon as the unhinged speed synth kicked in I was sold. The band (if it isn't just all Leland) sound jittery and paranoid most of the time. The chord changes are for the most part really ugly but they fit the mood. A heavy listen.

Listen to 'This Is My World'
Read a bit about the WFMU marathon

I've also plopped a WFMU pledge box over on the right there and that'll remain for a bit.

Mark McGuire - Dream Team

2009-02-27T11:41:00.006Z

I hope you like the new layout thing. Admittedly 50% of it is filled with extraneous stuff but that's better than just blackness. Isn't it?

Anyway, today we have yet another slab of mint from McGuire/Wagon. This time it's all enveloping layers of guitar smeared over the top of each other and a bit of propulsive riddim. Chords change and voices aaahhh and we're taken on another hyperspeed journey through the night and into the morning. "Dream Team 1" reminds me a bit of that famous My Bloody Valentine 'Loveless' album with the vocals glossed over with blissed out fuzz and all that. I imagine this is the stuff pilots listen to as they fly their 747s toward the sunrise.

Listen to Dream Team 1
Buy it (while you can) from Second Layer

Birth Bath - Carbon Offsetting With Company Money

2009-02-19T23:50:00.008Z

Just before xmas this year I received what looked like a Christmas card. But lo (people say 'lo' at Christmas)! There was a small three track Birth Bath (when I say it out loud it sounds like bus pass) cd-r inside it. And lo, it is good.

It begins with a rhythmic drone piece that starts flat then gradually takes a fully three dimensional shape. Very cool. "Oidecha Insula" then proceeds to freak me out. It sounds an awful lot like it could be the soundtrack to a recurring dream i've had for a few years involving bombs that never land. Every time the dream begins with my family and I trying to dive for cover as dozens of bombs fall onto the humble suburb of Seaburn. I say bombs, they're more like giant rubber wrecking balls, hurtling down through the sky, levelling anything in their path before disappearing back up into the clouds again. Debris flies everywhere and comes crashing down what seems like inches away from us and we are all terrified.

I'm not sure it counts as a nightmare because nobody ever gets hurt. It's just the fear of being crushed by huge bits of rock that's scary. This particular dream is always silent but as soon as I heard the track it popped straight into my head. Fittingly the final track sounds like an air raid siren that's trying to say "OH CRAP EVERYONE, IT'S GETTING WORSE".

Have a listen (myspace) and see what you think. I can hear lurking fear and rubber wrecking balls.

Also if you have an interpretation of the above dream please leave a comment. Aye, we're doing dream interpretation now too.

Defibrillators - Live at Colour Ride Club

2009-02-15T10:38:00.007Z

Defibrillators are two guys playing drums etc and various items including a Wii controller. My friend is currently developing a surround sound instrument based on a Wii controller and I can't even begin to understand how he's ever going to do that. I would like a go when it's finished though. But that is a story for another day.

This cd is a recording of a live set (hence the title) and it allows us to hear a few different sides of this duo. I have a fondness for innerestin percussion and there seems to be a fair bit of it here, lots of tuneful chimy things and what sounds like abused/broken cymbals. Of course you don't hear all this stuff at the same time. At the peak of the duo's mayhem it's all thud and clatter while electronics joyously scream away, then from nowhere you get some almost celtic sounding droning with tinkling bell-like sounds. They get some great rhythms going too in the more relaxed parts but before too long it's back to aggressive twatting. It's all cool stuff and i'd really like to hear stretched out versions of each different section. Maybe they do that when not constrained to the usual gig format.

Also kudos to whoever designed the cover because it reflects the sounds really well. If you threw the music up against a canvas that's what it would look like. With a bit of added technicolour.

myspacé pagé
colour ride

Sloppy Seconds - Spit or Swallow?

2009-01-31T11:37:00.005Z

It begins with some massive bell tolling like Black Sabbath and gets even heavier from there. This is pure evil! The stuff of nightmares. It's like the oppressive cloud of noise is chasing the drum kit through endless corridors with a view to biting its cymbals off. I don't know of too many horror films with full on aggressive biting-cymbals-off noise as the soundtrack, but a whole film pops up in my head when I hear this stuff - a beast that cannot be named and the very real fear of my own demise. When we're finally granted a tiny bit of release from the racket around 'Whalebone Whispers' it just increases the feeling of dread. You just know they're going to come back hungrier than ever.

The dead rabbit costumes these guys wear are cool and everything, but I think they would have to turn up to gigs as fifty foot wraith demons to do this cdr justice.

Listen to some of it on the myspace page
CDR available from colour ride

Skyramps - Days of Thunder

2009-01-25T21:31:00.007Z

Everything an Emerald touches seems to turn to gold and the stuff that I picked up on their (first ever!) UK tour is immense. First of all, this Skyramps CD via the pooled awesome of Emeralds guitar fella Mark McGuire and one time Young Taper Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never. According to Mr McGuire himself if you enjoy the film 'Top Gun' you'll enjoy this one. I don't know how serious he was being but I can hear it. Moreso than the film 'Days of Thunder' strangely enough.

My uncultured mind still immediately ties even the idea of a synth to the 80s and cheese, which is a bit wrong. Mr Lopatin pushes his all the way from repetitive melodies to birds twittering and masterfully conjures the past (incorporating the 80s) and the future all at once. The delayed guitar constructs (I guess?) mesh with it perfectly on each track as if they were one and the same. This stuff builds and builds! I think my favourite thing about Mark McGuire's guitar playing is how he gets that propulsive rhythm thing going without a drum machine in sight. 'Skyramping' soars above the clouds, jet engines roaring onward toward the horizon. Sounds good to me.

With just a little luck
A little cold blue steel
I cut the night like a razor blade
Till I feel the way I want to feel

Listen to "Sky Ramping"
oneohtrix point never myspace
WAGON (label with this and related stuff on it)

Ducktails - II

2009-01-06T02:09:00.010Z

Ducktails is Matthew Mondanile and sometimes some other people. He makes really cool summery music that makes me think of the school holidays. Every day without fail we'd get up really early to watch some cartoons and the occasional Live-Action Sitcom With an Important Message. Before long we'd have people knocking at the door and that was the cue to go out and play cricket and/or football. A lot of time there wasn't a single cloud above us. Some days we'd all go down to the beach and play cricket and/or football there and generally act like we were in some tropical paradise despite the temperature, the wind and the murky North Sea. It was still bright enough to test out my cheap papershop sunglasses by staring directly at the sun. It's a wonder i'm not blind actually.

The cover of II has a photo of some really tall trees on it. If you try to look at it objectively there aren't any specific triggers pointing at 'summer' but I guess the music and my mind fills in all that info. Without fail there's always a catchy melody or two to be found on each track, be it skewed pop with singing or moving towards dronier places. It doesn't at all sound like it was recorded in 2007/2008. Some of the haziest tracks could've been beamed from a different dimension entirely! You get guitar that wouldn't sound out of place in Kenya mixing with fast bongos and wispy keyboard straight off a t'ai chi meditation tape to wonderful effect. Again, words truly fail to do justice to the world conjured up on this one.

Ducktails played live on WFMU just before Christmas and played a couple of tracks from "II" along with some other stuff. Here's a link to that. There are some free downloads from the session available on last.fm too.

Ducktails website (new stuff coming soon on Not Not Fun & Holy Mountain amongst others!)
Ducktails myspache

Hanadensha - Acid River

2008-12-23T22:28:00.007Z

I'm recycling an old last.fm post from 2005 because this track has lost none of its power since then.

Hanadensha is a band featuring the bassist of (the) Boredoms, Hira. Apparently he's the vocalist so you won't hear him at all in this song. When I say 'song', I mean two chords, one riff, no drums and lots of spacey noises.

The guitar* in this song is absolutely HUGE. It happily sits all the way across bass, mid-range and treble and is obscenely loud. It is the fattest guitar I have ever heard. Before you even begin to understand how massive the main guitar is, other sounds are piling up on top of it. Some higher guitar, oscillations and what sounds a lot like the world's biggest engine revving up.

Three and a bit minutes in the Biggest Guitar Ever (tm) suddenly drops out and we have exited the earth's atmosphere and are in space. All too coincidentally there is suddenly space in the sound spectrum and some tripping looped electronic noises sit a lot further away from your face than that guitar. It's positively floaty. Six minutes in? Percussive egg percussion! Whoops, it's gone again. A wobbly drone later it's all over and has tired me out.

Listen to "Acid River"
More on Hanadensha

*This guitar might be an organ actually sorry guys

Gareth Hardwick/Eyeballs split tape

2008-12-22T10:41:00.013Z

This is an ace tape from the mighty Blackest Rainbow, who rarely deviate from arse-kickingly good as far as I can tell. You get a full twenty minute side from each artist. Mr Hardwick kicks it off with 'Dissolve part 1' and takes us on a wintry trip with long, languid overlapping tones making me think of an empty city, the streetlights lighting up nowt but pavement and snow. In part two we're passing through the woods (beautifully captured by the Blackest Rainbow boss) on the front cover and things are altogether more ominous. Who knows what lies beyond the trees? By the time part three comes around we're acting far more relaxed, out of there anyway and on the way home for mince pies.

The Eyeballs side ploughs a bleaker furrow. Maybe this is where the music would have gone if we'd ran out of petrol in the middle of side A and had to spend the night in the car. It's slow and brooding as before, but sounds seem to come from every direction. Aeroplane engines hum miles overhead and only make the atmosphere more oppressive. After a reasonably rapid descent into scarytown some beauty is finally found after ten minutes of confusion. Even so this stuff is like quicksand. Too much movement and you're stuck there forever! Interestingly the samples on the Eyeballs myspace page don't really hint at the murkier depths that this tape reaches. It seems like great stuff but altogether more blissful. Regardless, this tape is just the thing for the bitterly cold NE winter.

Blackest Rainbow/Gareth Hardwick/Eyeballs

Merrrrry Everyone!

2008-12-18T12:08:00.007Z

I hope everyone reading this has/had a great Christmas/Non-Denominational Holiday Period. Wooden Shjips put out a charity single with a couple of shjipsified festive tunes on it:

Our holiday cassingle is sold out, so we’ve made the songs available here as free downloads. All money from sales of the cassingle went to the SF Food Bank. If you enjoy these songs and have the means, please consider making a donation to your local food bank. Happy holidays!

"Auld Lang Syne" is classic swirly WS but it's very different to the traditional version. You can just about hear the lyrics through the usual mountain of echo. As a fan of loud guitar I don't enjoy "O Tannenbaum" quite as much - the guitar is just fuzzing away quietly in a corner.

Wooden Shjips Xmas Single

Stay tuned for more updates this month! The credit crunch took my job (noooo) and more new tapes etc are on the way.

Chris Corsano & Heather Leigh Murray, Ashtray Navigations, Blood Stereo live in Glasgow

2008-11-26T15:36:00.014Z

On Saturday I went to the above gig. Joshua Burkett didn't play because he had passport issues. I thought he was from Edinburgh so that shows how much I know.

Blood Stereo played first. Dylan Nyoukis started by making all kinds of mouth sounds into a mic travelling all the way from sleeping monster to an overly stressed Grandpa Simpson. It was simultaneously funny and a bit creepy and managed to lighten the atmosphere a bit. The room was big/tall and the duo were so far back it was like we were watching them on tv. This was probably the audience's fault for not standing close enough. Either that or the venue's for providing comfy raised seating for tired souls who couldn't be arsed to stand up. Soon enough straining Grandpa Simpson reached some kind of alien jungle and scratching and distant hooting gradually drowned him out. Some scraping followed - the sound of zombies outside the door of an abandoned house. Or maybe even under the floorboards. Blood Stereo could make an ace horror movie soundtrack.

Ashtray Navigations set up afterwards, another duo. It took me a while to get into their set but after a while it was positively trance-inducing. Phil Todd's guitar became progressively more otherworldly and it sounded like what i'd imagine psychedelic rock music would sound having diffused out and filled deep space. Like if we'd pumped 'Free Your Mind & Your Ass Will Follow' out in the direction of Mars instead of Blur or whatever it was. We noticed a guy sitting in front of us that appeared to have literally fallen into a trance upon the conclusion of the set. Either that or he was just asleep.

Chris Corsano & Heather Leigh Murray played last. It was noisy. Chris Corsano is a jaw-droppingly amazing musician. My jaw didn't literally drop this time but I guess I know what to expect to a certain extent. I just smiled this time as he twatted the hell out of his tiny kit in the name of trancendence. HLM was cool too, really wringing distorted squeal out of her pedal steel guitar and singing/shaking her hair about accordingly. There weren't exactly many reflective passages but there was a small lull that was brought crashing back into focus by a massive cymbal crash.

CC myspace
AN myspace
BS myspace

Vibracathedral Orchestra - Resonance Session

2008-11-19T23:20:00.006Z

Here's another out of print (or OOP to yous guys that are familiar with the ebay) cd-r that I don't feel especially guilty about putting up so a few more people can hear it. I read an article in a magazine this month that told tales of people sticking old OOP jazz albums on the internet and it eventually leading to them being re-released. So it's all for the cause, you know. I would like to think that listening to the mp3s from this blog in not-so-glorious 192 would make people want to find hard copies. Similarly i'd like to think that the sort of music covered here is enjoyed by people who aren't just here for the freebies and hoover up album after albumafteralbum like they were Pringles. You bite one of those bastards and there's a split second of intense flavour then you're chewing cardboard. Your brain tells you to eat another one and another unsatisfying binge begins.

If I may stop typing shite for a moment: the music linked to below is a session Vibracathedral Orchestra recorded for London's Resonance FM, which seems to be a mighty station every time I bother to put it on, which is, how you say, "once in a blue moon". The sticker on the front of the slipcase says

"Recorded live to 2-track tape by Mick Flower, Neil Campbell, Julian Bradley, Adam Davenport and Bridget Hayden at home in Leeds one Sunday afternoon in early August 2004."

It's what sounds like the best bits of a long improvisation spliced together into one hour-long track. This is how some people spend their Sundays I guess.

Uncle Wikipedia says that VCO are a 'drone ensemble' but that's bollocks really. Often you can pick out a drone of sorts but there are many, many other things going on at the same time. All kinds of beats, noises and notes from all kinds of instruments. They just choose a key, start playing and that's it. And every so often all the sounds each band member makes coalesce to make transcendent music that's free of borders. Which is cool. It's amazing to me that some of this stuff came from a Sunday afternoon session in Leeds. Parts of the session could be a load of buddhist monks jamming in Tibet (they do that) or a bunch of people trying to flog instruments at a Moroccan market. Who knows.

If you're anything like me listening to this will compel you to buy the stuff that's still available from Vibracathedral Orchestra. Most of it is on VHF records. If you have a last.fm account you can listen to an awful lot of the VHF catalogue for free which might help you choose what to get first. Some Sundays are noisier than others.

Vibracathedral Orchestra - Resonance Session

Mainliner 'live' on Chic-a-Go-Go

2008-11-09T13:24:00.006Z

When you come across a video of someone like Mainliner miming on a cable access kids show among loads of dancing people you have to post it. So here it is. Keep watching until the end if you want to see your favourite psychedelic rock band pretend to play 'Dirty Water' by the Standells.

Tewelde Redda

2008-11-07T14:38:00.009Z

Phew! It's been a very busy week up here. So busy in fact that I had no choice but to be asleep in bed when the world changed and history was made. Important history was made this week, as i'm sure you know. Barack Obama was elected President. Also a man was given the wrong kebab. I'm looking forward to finishing this post then sitting down with a cup of tea and the paper, and if that isn't rock and roll I don't know what is.

Tewelde Redda is from Eritrea, a country just north of Ethiopia and may well have been one of the first people in Africa to start playing an electric guitar back in the 60s. He was one of the more important figures in the modernisation of Ethiopian/Eritrean music in the 60s and 70s. In fact he is still modernising it today, spending some of his time building electric versions of the traditional Ethiopian/Eritrean Krar. Eritreans spent a very long time fighting for independence and Tewelde has actually been living in Holland as a refugee since 1989. You can read a bit about that on the bbc website if you like!

Thanks to the amazing 'Ethiopiques' compilations the rest of the world can hear that musical modernisation happening. This track features some great guitar playing. As someone who's primarily used to guys from the West wailing away in a sub-Hendrix fashion it's a nice breath of fresh air. Non-musicians look away now: he plays choppy stacatto note runs and they're vaguely bluesy which is probably a result of the krar traditionally being tuned to a pentatonic scale. Ghirmay Kidane sings on this track and commits the terrible sin (it gets on my wick at least) of singing the same notes as the guitar plays, but miraculously it works incredibly well. Maybe it's the understated nature of the stuff providing the bed for those sweet melodies to lie on. As far as I can hear the only percussion is some people clapping and banging a table top.

Listen to Milenu
Listen to some more random Ethiopiques clips

Melt-Banana Peel

2008-10-25T23:23:00.009+01:00

John Peel died four years ago today. Here's a live set that I heard on his show that totally blew my mind. I had never heard music as exciting or energetic. It just sounded like screaming and noise at the time. It also sounded like brilliant. I wrote "Melt Banana" down on a piece of paper that evening. I would like to say I wrote it IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS but I can't really remember. The fact remains that John Peel changed my life a fair bit (along with everyone else who ever did blog of course) and pushed school nights right past tolerable and into fun. Thanks man!

Melt Banana live @ Maida Vale 2001
Read what Melt-Banana had to say about JP

Cymande

2008-10-17T22:13:00.008+01:00

Sorry, i've been slacking again w/the updates. How's about some auld UK funk from the 70s? Cymande (it means 'Dove Of Peace') were around for a few years in the 70s and mashed up funk, soul, afrobeat, reggae and calypso. I know this because the inlay told me so. The inlay also told me that the Fugees sampled one of their songs on their million-selling album "The Score". I know fuck all about the Fugees. Actually i've heard on the grapevine that Wyclef from the Fugees is back from wherever he's been at some point next month, so all you girls out there can dry your tears and look forward to his return.

Back to Cymande. I first heard them a few years ago when my brother's hip-hop loving friend sent him a copy of their debut album and I was pretty much instantly hooked. I made the move to Glasgow with a fair bit of music and I pulled this cd out of a cardboard box for the drive up and was promptly blown away all over again. Even my dad was blown away and he likes absolute crap usually (not including the Cream/Neil Young/Canned Heat records he has). "This is some smooth music for driving" he said, speeding along the M4 at 95mph and steering with his knees.

Not knowing anything about afrobeat, calypso etc etc etc I would find it hard to tell you which influence was showing when. Know this: they are different from your bog standard funk guys because they have a host of extra percussion. Shakers, bongos, congas and many more. Sometimes the congas are the lead instrument too while the drummer taps away on the hi-hat like a madman, seemingly desperate for the opportunity to drop that smooth funk beat that my dad likes to drive to. Sometimes the rest of the band don't even let him and the song finishes! It matters not because you'll be too busy dancing to notice.

Another thing that sets them apart is the atmosphere they create. There are some mean single note - dare I say it - drones from the saxes and sweet cymbal swells that keep everything all relaxed, like. This band really are (they played a few gigs recently) excellent. If you don't like this tune then there's a good chance you'll like at least one Cymande song. They do everything from three minute pop songs to ten minute languid Can-like things brilliantly.

If my dad likes it, so will you. Well hopefully. You should have seen him when I had Meshuggah on. Careening around like he was a bear and i'd just stabbed him with a knitting needle.

Listen to 'Getting It Back'
Buy a load of Cymande stuff
Stream some more tunes @ youtube

Tape Roundup

2008-10-06T22:59:00.009+01:00

I'm not sure if two tapes pushes this post into the realms of roundup, but here goes anyway.

First up is the majestic sound of Drunjus on Skullfucking Tapes. Do you think it's pronounced 'drone-juice'? WELL IT MIGHT AS WELL BE because this is an often cavernous liquid-drone (genre made up to fit in with blog) journey, with field recordings, bowed cymbals and tones that barely modulate at all until you crank up the volume and they transform into shifting tectonic plates OF DRONE. I'm going to have to think up new words for 'drone' if this blog is going to continue. Anyway as far as I can tell there are four separate tracks over the course of the C60. The second side is spectacular and there's some lovely minor key melody on an organ while some uneasy percussion clatters along nervously just behind.

The drone is right up front for the majority of the tape and this makes it seem a bit impenetrable at first but if you play it loud there's an ocean of beauty to be uncovered. It has a bit of a melancholic edge which I wouldn't have expected looking at the cover (see above) but this was perfect music for my train journey back to Scotland as the fields and the coast were slowly swallowed by darkness.
myspace / buy the tape

I picked up a Starving Weirdos/Shearing Pinx split C20 at a recent gig having been impressed by the SW's abilty to build an atmosphere with as much haunting space as music itself. So I slapped the tape it back at the flat and was greeted by lashings and lashings of SOUND and no space whatsoever. (Un)fortunately it's only a minute before a psychedelic nightmare is brought into sharp focus, with various horrors layered on top of each other giving no room to breathe. Pagan ritual, ghost brains unravelling, the terrifying toll of an executioner's bell...it's all in there.

The Shearing Pinx side is less good. It starts out really promisingly with drums rolling down a hill and guitars being scratched and abused but as soon as the regular rhythm is introduced it loses it all for me. Lars Ulrich would be calling it 'stock'. Very very stock. If only they had continued along the crazy path of the first couple of minutes...
Starving Weirdos / Shearing Pinx / Tape probably available here soon

Astral Social Club - Crex Fucking Crex

2008-09-21T00:54:00.014+01:00

This is yet another beautiful piece of music from Neil Campbell, this time joined by John Clyde-Evans. I guess it might have something to do with the Corn Crake?! Both Google and the back of the record it's on ('Model Town In A Field Of Mud') seem to suggest that tapes were swapped between Yorkshire and Punjab which would explain the Indian stamps on the cover. As always I have no fucking clue who is playing/doing what, but in this case it sounds like the instruments are blissfully floating around in the air playing themselves.

There's definitely some guitar and a few chiming things in the mix plus a load of what I can insightfully label 'electronics'. They all come to a crescendo in the second half of the track. Again what's remarkable is how the electronics sound like living things just going about their business, free of human influence - birdsong, chirruping insects, aliens, whatever. I can picture the sun rising over the English countryside in spring, not a cloud in the sky. It's all about levity. I can also picture acoustic guitars with wings but that sounds stupid so I haven't mentioned it.

Give it a listen anyway. This has been an indispensible track for me over the last few months and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. You could maybe even leave a comment about it. Ah go on.

Astral Social Club - Crex Fucking Crex
Buy the 'Model Town in a Field of Mud' LP direct from Textile or purchase superior quality digital files from Boomkat

Monopoly Child Star Searchers

2008-09-17T18:08:00.011+01:00

The Skaters (and the billion other projects from the same two guys) seem to be way off in their own universe. A lot of their artwork consists of images that have been overlaid and photocopied again and again and again. This one has what i'd initially assumed to be planets overlapping but today looks like some kind of surprised weeble. On the back there are ripples which could well be steps up to a temple.

I'm not sure if the 'hermetic' liner notes (keep reading them and you'll think your brain has malfunctioned) are putting images into my head but the music does have a whiff of temple. Or at least some kind of weird ceremony. I saw another Spencer Clark project 'Vodka Soap' last night (my first night in Glasgow!) and many josticks were burning as he played so that could have influenced me too. Some bands drop hints with song titles and he does it with josticks. Okay.

Melodic loops (played on feck knows what) overlap and seem to ignore the many bongos and many rhythms that remain throughout the cd. There are microphones swinging past speakers and hooting like excitable owls. What is it all about, really? I may never know, but it sort of sounds comforting, at least until you hear a finger pressing another play button as if your ear's been pushed up against a boombox all along. It's an unwelcome (but necessary?) jolt back to reality.

Listen to an excerpt of 'Infant Spirituality Rates Coconut Percent'
Buy a copy at the Boa Melody Bar

That's the front cover of the cd in that picture up there

RIP Isaac Hayes

2008-08-13T21:34:00.009+01:00

A true legend passed away this week. Most people only know Chef from South Park or the guy who sung the theme from 'Shaft', but his album "Hot Buttered Soul" is a classic. It features one of the finest cover versions i've heard, made all the more heartbreaking by his untimely death. His voice is amazing on this track and he lets the band groove for what seems like an age until he drops the first line. Hot butter is right. The arrangement and production are out of this world too. Sometimes it's sparse (listen to the first couple of minutes of groove) then there's a loud powerful string swoop which reminds me of the more epic James Bond themes strangely enough. Isaac takes you on a journey. The album ends with the equally epic 'By The Time I Get To Phoenix'. Hayes spends the majority of the eighteen minute duration introducing the song (in a nutshell: he's leaving!) while the band back him up. Again he builds the anticipation brilliantly before it all kicks in.

By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising
She'll find the note I left hangin' on her door
She'll laugh when she reads the part that says I'm leavin'
'Cause I've left that girl so many times before

By the time I make Albuquerque she'll be working
She'll prob'ly stop at lunch and give me a call
But she'll just hear that phone keep on ringin'
Off the wall that's all

By the time I make Oklahoma she'll be sleepin'
She'll turn softly and call my name out loud
And she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her
Tho' time and time I try to tell her so
She just didn't know I would really go

Isaac Hayes - Walk On By

Buy the album

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

2008-08-06T08:32:00.005+01:00

I came across this guy when I downloaded a compilation made for the late Charles Gocher from Sun City Girls and made available to all following his death last year. About halfway through this great comp (which it seems you can still find here if you want a listen) a charismatic guy introduces music he's written for his own funeral to a whooping audience and requests that he be cremated and mixed with hash and pot so his friends can smoke him. That man is Rahsaan Roland Kirk. There's a potted biography at the RRK website that's well worth a read (the guy was blinded soon after birth and played three saxophones at once!).

Let's move on to the music. Why not. I loved the sax and flute playing on the above comp and found a cheap copy of the album 'Blacknuss' in town. It's pop Roland Kirk style and has some really incredible covers, including a version of Bill Withers' 'Ain't No Sunshine' with him growling the lyrics and playing into his flute at the same time as if he and it were one and the same.

I'll be honest, I enjoy some of these covers more than others. In fact I don't really love the one i'm going to post today until the sax solo which pushes it into another place entirely. It's a non stop flurry of ecstatic speaking in tongues and fucking brilliant! It starts 1:30 into the tune. You'll notice it when it turns up.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Take Me Girl, I'm Ready

Monoshock

2008-07-30T22:03:00.006+01:00

If you like your punk & roll with an extra layer of wigged out ming and scuzz you might just like Monoshock. This is currently my preferred listening when headbanging and flailing my arms around like a twat. These guys veer between sounding like a professional rock machine and a total drunken mess. It is all good. The singles compilation 'Running Ape-Like From The Backwards Superman' (what a title!) has a lot of relatively straight tunes so might be a good place to start. You can get it for thee bargain price of five dollars from S-S Records.

Monoshock - Model Citizen (Nitroglycerine)

(VxPxC)

2008-07-29T00:33:00.005+01:00

The place where I live happens to be the same place that they have 'Europe's Largest Free Air Show' one weekend every year. I used to enjoy the free stickers and airfix models but these days I try and avoid it. As it happens most of the planes were grounded due to poor visibilty anyway this year.

I went out for my usual jog on Sunday night and spent forty-five minutes running into thick fog. All I could see was dim beams and headlights as all of the fairground rides and burger vans shut up shop and wound their weary way back to wherever they were coming from. Every couple of minutes I had to wipe the cold dew from my eyebrows and eyelashes. The stuff was just so dense! (VxPxC) was playing through my headphones - a cd-r called 'Struggling With Heavy Clouds'. It was the perfect soundtrack for struggling through the fog.

Listen to 'Troubling The Air'
Peruse the douchespace

Who's Your Favourite Son, God?

2008-06-04T20:59:00.007+01:00

This week I used my little bit of birthday cash to take a random stab at something from the mighty Holy Mountain and ended up with the oddly/badly named Who's Your Favorite Son God, a schizo prog/jazz/beefhearty sort of mix. Every so often there are beautiful moments of pop clarity but then it's back to jerky Trout Masky gloop with high, mostly intelligible vocals. After a few listens it all came together for me. You soon notice just how many cool catchy parts are packed into each tune. It sort of reminds me of Ruins in that way, the intensity and the scatterbrained approach.

Fans of Holy Mountain take note, this is a bit different to the stuff they usually bring you, but no less excellent for it. It could turn out to be one of my favourites this year I think.

Have a listen to Beelzebubble and watch this infuriating video for 'Space Jam', by far the most straightforward thing on the cd.

Til next year,

Flower Travellin' Band - Satori Part 1

2008-05-04T00:59:00.008+01:00

I'm going to try a stick a song up on here more often. I thought, why not start with something Julian Cope has plugged the shit out of already?

So let me introduce to you,
A band that you already knew,
Yuya Uchida's Flower Travellin' Band!
(to the tune of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, sorry)

Yuya Uchida is the guy that brought this band together in 1969 from thee ashes of "The Flowers". Their first album had covers of bands like Black Sabbath and King Crimson and by the second album 'Satori' they were making their own unique heavy rock with what everyone seems to like calling 'progressive bits' (a couple of funny time sigs and some extra notes). If we're only talking rock this has to be one of the most bombastic opening tracks going. It starts quietly with some cymbal tinkling then a piercing scream straight out of Valhalla brings in the pounding evil riffage. Before you know it a catchy slowed down ur-Slayer riff hammers into view along with None More Low bass and the singer promptly follows it, wailing like Tarzan with his balls in a vice. And that's only the first minute and a bit. Enjoy the rest!

Corrupted - El Mundo Frio

2008-04-06T20:28:00.006+01:00

After a couple of years i've finally got around to buying Corrupted's album "El Mundo Frio" and it's like no other. On a base level it has crushing riffs, growling and beautiful instrumental sections (with harp!) but over the course of its seventy-odd minutes it actually seems to slow down time to the deepest crawl. It's really odd. You can listen to the entire thing and it seems to go on forever. It's just a touch faster than the music of Sunroof! or Jazzfinger that manages to capture infinity and put everything around you into a state of blissful suspension. Just a touch faster that that! It's actually moving, but at a lumbering creep. It brings to mind the universe expanding while the world as we know it decays - the environment, society, everything. It's truly all-encompassing. Slow bands like Harvey Milk seem to centre around the individual (one man's torment at times!) but everything is sucked into Corrupted's black hole. It's truly monumental. A very special album indeed.

Lubricated Goat

2008-02-14T21:21:00.005Z

I'm not going to make a habit of posting youtube videos, but this one from Aussie noise rock sleaze titans Lubricated Goat is too good to miss. For the music of course, not for the poorly censored nudity. Happy Valentines Day from your friends at 'Have The Rolling Stones Killed' <3

Panning For Myspace Gold #1

2008-02-10T14:29:00.001Z

These attractive gentlemen are collectively known as White Drugs and are from Texas. They play arsekicking dirty rock and/or roll music with really catchy hooks. The recording is loud and heavy. Check out 'Dig A Hole' and go from there! I would drop loads of names to entice you but really there's no point. Just click and enjoy. I'm going to sleep off a leg of lamb and blueberry pancakes. Happy Sunday.

http://www.myspace.com/whitedrugs

Exciting dub reggae comeback stoneskilled special

2008-02-09T20:44:00.001Z

As regular readers of the blog (there aren't any) may have noticed I have written shite all since before Christmas in the year of someone's lord 2007. I'm now going to try and blog a lot more about various things.

Today it's a simple dub intrumental ruled by some mean rhythm and loud psychedelic guitar. I'm going to pick an mp3 that doesn't feature loud psychedelic guitar next, honestly. The Observer was a record producer and I think that King Tubby has mixed this particular tune. I'm no expert but people like Augustus Pablo aren't helping by putting King Tubby's name in his album titles. King Tubby might have mixed everything ever for all I know.

Anyway, this is heavy on the bass, crisp of beat and has a mean echoing wah-wah riff surfacing, sinking and surfacing again throughout. Lovely. The dub stuff that resonates more with me is often pretty ghostly - the music of someone long since gone dipping back into the land of the living or the past to try and make sense of something or other. One of my favourite examples of this is 'King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown' by Augustus Pablo. Have a listen to that too! Below!

Niney The Observer - Kingsgate Version
Augustus Pablo - King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown

TOTEM

2007-12-15T21:40:00.001Z

Recently i've really been getting into the first Witchcraft album, and soon after on a quest for similar stuff I got a hold of the Totem mini-lp on I Hate Records. Musically this is, how you say, 'top banana', melding fuzzed out guitar and freakouts (a freakout) with 70s style doom. The vocals are something else though. I don't think it's possible for you to sit on the fence with respect to em. I like, but you may not. They are very clean and (this may be the sticking point) very loud in the mix, sitting on top of the awesome music and making it very clear who the boss is in this band. As if to ram this point down our throats the band changed its name to Jex Thoth - the name of the above axe-wielding singer - after the mini-album's release. Other examples of this phenomenon include 'Dio' and 'Billy Joel'.

So, great band, or great band brutally oppressed by their lead singer? With an axe? You decide! I'm not going to decide for you, sorry.

Listen to Kagemni
Totem/Jex Thoth diespace page

Acid Mothers Temple - Cosmic Audrey/Acid Takion

2007-11-14T18:43:00.003Z

Acid Mothers Temple, as you may well know, release approximately 435 albums a year not including side projects (of which there are many, some fantastic!) and in my experience sometimes these albums can be pretty bad. This is the problem with releasing 435 albums a year. Some you win, some you lose.

I've just seen Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO play this weekend and they're a force to be reckoned with live, with Tsuyama's throat singing and crazy bass stylings and the completely mental "Star Spangled Banner" in a blender guitar soloing of Kawabata Makoto. Not to mention their patented space synth. They did a version of their signature tune 'Pink Lady Lemonade' that lasted at least half an hour and it still wasn't long enough. Archive.org has some top quality live shows that are well worth hearing.

Back to the job at hand, below is an mp3 of AMT when they are on fire. No chords, just monster bass, wooshy noises, a ridiculously propulsive beat and bonkers guitar soloing. It sounds like Kawabata's trying to rid himself of his demons one squeeze of the fretboard at a time, then eventually he becomes free from evil and proceeds to channel the sounds of the cosmos once more. Lovely.

Oh yeah, this is preceeded by a few minutes of French spoken word (which my limited knowledge of the language is telling me is random words/nonsense) and drones. Sets the scene innit. It's from the album 'Pataphisical Freak Out Mu' which comes highly recommended - a bit more than I can say for some of their other albums!

Cosmic Audrey/Acid Takion
AMT Website
Live AMT @ Archive.org

Major Stars - Syntoptikon

2007-10-14T19:21:00.001+01:00

The third and final (for the moment) fuzz blast post is brought to you via the magic of Major Stars. There are three guitarists in this band soloing at the same time to majestic effect. The track i'm posting is the final blowout from their 2006 album 'Syntoptikon'. They have a new album out soon through Drag City, six albums in all and a split with sonic brothers Comets on Fire.

Listen to the track 'Syntoptikon'

My waste of space place

Mainliner - Solid Stick Attack

2007-10-12T20:27:00.001+01:00

Mainliner are band number two of the fuzz oblivion post series. Yeah, it's really exciting. They are High Rise mainman Asahito Nanjo, Speed Guru Kawabata Makoto and Drummers Various.

My favourite album of theirs is "Mellow Out", a three track monster with the whole band laying down a relentless Sabbathian groove one moment and a searing smash and grab meltdown the next. The guitar playing reminds me of Jimi Hendrix mangling the Star Spangled Banner but it's more demented and intense. As soon as Kawabata stomps on his wah wah pedal during 'Black Sky' he obliterates absolutely everything in his path.

Anyway i've uploaded "Solid Stick Attack" which is an out-of-print cd-r which was made into an out-of-print LP at some point. This features shorter, more compact tracks that are closer to garage rock than "Mellow Out". It has a version of the Mellow Out track 'Black Sky' at the end which while paling in comparison to the album version is hopefully enough to convince you to check it out.

Could it be called "Solid Stick Attack" because of the crisp drum clicks that begin many of the songs? We may never know. Do the clicks give us any idea of the distorted rock nirvana that is just a split second away? Nope. It just makes the whole thing heavier still.

Download Solid Stick Attack
Buy and Mellow Out

Fire - Flames

2007-09-21T23:36:00.001+01:00

I'm a big fan of genuinely brilliant guitarists who've stolen Satan's fuzz pedals and this track features some of the fuzziest most brain-frying guitar i've heard. Fire are a Yugoslavian band from 1973 and in this song the guitarist is playing through 80 different effects pedals into a tiny little amp while the drummer bashes some biscuit tins put through a flanger. The bassist sounds perfectly reasonable.

There are little instrumental breaks during this tune where howling squiggly guitar and voice come together to form one fucked up nightmare of a sound. Truly immense. If anyone has any more examples of fuzz oblivion i'd like to hear em! I'll try and post a bit more later on this week.

Download 'Flames'.
You can buy the album from aQ.

Sunroof! - Spitting Gold Zebras

2007-09-08T00:45:00.001+01:00

Sunroof! is one of the many projects of Matthew Bower, who as far as I know uses his guitar and some other things to make noise to take everyone higher, whether it be as Skullflower, Hototogisu or Sunroof! The exclamation mark is part of the name, yes.

These days all three of these projects seem to deal in euphoric sound.

Sunroof! is said to be his least noisy project but you wouldn't guess from listening to this new album. As far as I can tell it's a field recording of him scorching and evaporating clouds in the troposphere with a kick ass flamethrower. The tracks jump into each other with no warning whatsoever, snapping you out of one trance and straight into another. Spencer Yeh, Mick Flower and Marc Orleans join him up there for a couple, not that you can tell what they are doing. Most of the time absolutely everything is at the fore forming an enveloping mass of whoop, flutter and shimmer. I think I can hear someone whooping anyway. Regardless the whole thing sounds like someone yelling "YEAH" into both of your ears on an endless repeat.

Have yourself a listen to track four.
Buy yourself the cd which comes in very nice but annoying packaging.

Pumice - Raft

2007-08-30T00:11:00.001+01:00

At some point the frequency of my updates will increase, honest. I'm studying for exams so it's both a difficult and exceedingly boring time. Maybe I should hire another member of staff.

Pumice is a one man band from New Zealand and the album I am currently spinning the hell out of is called Raft, released in 2004 on Last Visible Dog Records. Basic recording, melody, fuzz and crackle can become the most beautiful music in the right hands. That's right, he literally has fuzz and crackle in his hands. Even the staticcy noise reminds me of the sea. The song i'm uploading could be the soundtrack to a voyage across some vast ocean. The calm after the storm part that is. It's all good. He has some ace pop/folk songs too on a few albums, the most recent of which is "Pebbles".

This mp3 of In Space (On The Burst) is guaranteed to cheer you up/make you cry. If it doesn't you have my permission to set fire to this blog. Or at the very least leave a nasty comment. I don't get many comments so any are appreciated!

last visible dog catalogue page (buy yourself some Pumice)

pumarse myspace page (listen mo)

The Golding Institute - Final Relaxation

2007-08-18T11:06:00.003+01:00

This is definitely one of the oddest records I own. It manages to be totally terrifying and very funny at the same time. It's a parody of those relaxation tapes you see at those hippy shops that are full of dreamcatchers and stink of incense.

The twist is that this relaxation tape wants you to die. An extremely creepy voice guides you through your last thirty minutes on this dreadful planet saying absolutely ridiculous things like "put your top teeth over your bottom teeth and bite them off! Bite your teeth off!" and "You will never be able to cook like a television chef...your time on earth will be spent failing."

While that goes on nauseating tones get louder and louder seemingly drilling holes in your skull and mangling your brain. Relaxing whale song this ain't. The cd inlay has a special contract that if signed gives your estate over to the Golding Institute should the album be successful in its mission.

I wouldn't actually suggest you buy this album, but it's sad that some people are trying new things/ideas and getting no recognition while other people are peddling lowest common denominator crap and making millions dollar by merely sitting and farting into a condenser mic in their solid gold mansion.

There are a few clips on the boomkat site.

This album was released by Ipecac and is available to buy in all record stores that have a copy.

Kemialliset Ystävät (2007)

2007-08-17T20:14:00.001+01:00

Kemialliset Ystävät (chemical friends) are a Finnish folk collective led by Jan Anderzén. This was another almost entirely random purchase - the only thing I knew about this band initially was that they played 'psychedelic folk'.

The label 'psychedelic folk' did not prepare me for what I was about to listen to at all. These guys sound completely crazy. You'd think that they were playing in a jungle full of insects plugged into amps - there's that much bleeping, scratching and whirring going on. Right from the beginning it's really dense and confusing. There are voices moaning and howling and some cheap sounding synths along with some drums, bells, tiny little bongos and more besides.

Eventually you can make out some cool melodies amidst the murk. They aren't there all the time though - there are a lot of melody-free sections that make my head spin. This could be due to the sheer number of people (seventeen spread across the 12 tracks) playing on the cd, often playing 'together' in the way that unrelated noises on a busy street play together - basically chaos with the occasional bit of harmony. On first listen it was completely overwhelming but it became strangely beautiful pretty quickly.

http://www.myspace.com/valojuopot has some tunes from the album.

Download an mp3 of "Tullinen Kiihdytys" (weird to type) here.

Buy the record here.

Daniel Higgs - Plays the Mirror Of The Apocalpyse

2007-08-11T16:00:00.002+01:00

Daniel Higgs, singer of songs, tattoo artist and shaman released this C60 cassette via Open Mouth in 2006. Beautifully ragged acoustic guitar collides with scraping drones, jew's harp, tape noise and spirits from the past, present and future. As Homer Simpson would say, groin grabbingly transcendent. Stick this on your headphones and float into another plane. It's spot on if you need time to stand blissfully still.

Well, you know, for an hour.

This tape is already out of print so here it is in its full glory:

http://www.mediafire.com/?40cenbexjqu

Check out the stuff that's in print:

http://www.holymountain.com/danielhiggs.html

http://www.thrilljockey.com/artists/index.html?id=10236

http://www.dischord.com/band/danielhiggs

and don't forget the band he sings for, Lungfish.

http://www.dischord.com/band/lungfish

Mammatus

2007-08-05T14:33:00.001+01:00

Happy Sunday! Between acquiring an ancient valve amp that resembles some kind of control panel from Thunderbird 1 and being covered by gallons of black bean sauce thrown at me from a passing car I haven't managed to update, apologies.

Mammatus are one of my favourite new bands. Underneath gloriously over-the-top song titles and artwork lurks an heavy riffing psychedelic rock beast. They've released two self-recorded albums on the consistently brilliant Holy Mountain label. They channel the heavy cyclical riffs of Sleep with passages of driving Can style driving beats all the while firing focused guitar through an echo chamber and off into the stratosphere. Yeah!

On listening to the first s/t record the influences mentioned above are very obvious right from the start, but every song hits the spot exactly when you need it. Just as the pounding motorik rhythms are starting to become etched into your skull another layer of fuzz comes in with some swirling phaser and wah and the whole thing goes up another notch. The infrequent vocals mostly seem to provide another texture, rendered not-exactly-legible through a mountain of effects. The atmosphere and ambience and the way the songs are put together really sets them apart from most of the 'stoner' rock bands around these days. On the first track "The Righteous Path Through The Forest Of Old" it's just payoff after payoff.

The second record "The Coast Explodes" came out this year and brought more riffs along with new additions like epic dueling guitars, freakouts and head spinning time changes. There's a short foray into psych-folk too with some indian-style vocals and shimmering acoustic guitar. It's definitely a grower, probably because some of the stoned grooves have been replaced with almost prog passages with many notes. Don't worry though, for every widdly bit there's a bit of spacious droning somewhere else.

This band is so good you can have a warm chinese meal thrown over you while you're listening and you won't even be mad. That's scientifically proven. I was pissed off as soon as the music finished though. Bastards!

Have a listen on the myspace page and be sure to visit the Holy Mountain for all of your psychedelic music needs.

Culver - Surgical Memory

2007-07-28T00:58:00.002+01:00

Culver is Lee Stokoe, who is also a member of heavy rockers Marzuraan and noise rock legends Skullflower as well as running his own tape/cd label Matching Head. Thanks for that, Google. He's from the North East of England like me but i've only seen him play twice - once a week or so ago in Skullflower and once as part of the (mind meltingly brilliant) free noise gig at the Sage. I picked this up after Skullflower played, possibly roped in by the nice packaging (this seems to happen to me a fair bit and yields mixed results soundwise).

The first time I put this on, the nice blue sky was swamped by grey clouds and then it got dark.

It was probably a coincidence, but Culver soundtracked it perfectly. Some plucked hazy sounding guitar faded in and the notes seemed to split apart and go back on themselves as they moved into the background. Soon there was a wheezing drone casting a shadow over the whole thing. This continued for around nine minutes, but it could have happily gone on for days and I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. It reminded me of bands like Can and Pärson Sound in that respect. All the while it constantly moved forward, with subtle changes in the guitar and microscopic sounds weaving in and out of the mix. Later on the murky wheezing drone noises took centre stage while the guitar provided texture, now seemingly playing somewhere way off in the distance. More droning sounds from sources unknown came in and the aforementioned dark shadow became progressively more huge and all-encompassing.

It's really great stuff but at the same time be warned - you may feel like an insignificant blip in a huge universe when it's finished!

Have a listen to a little bit of it here.

Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice - Angel Hair

2007-07-18T17:26:00.001+01:00

This is a pretty diverse one. Most of the cd-rs I have so far seem to essentially consist of one idea with variations on the idea, but this runs the gamut from relatively normal creepy guitar picking ("Wooden Wand Versus The Great Outdoors") all the way along to what sounds like some kind of husky beast in a crowded jungle kicking oil drums around while a flautist hides somewhere nearby ("Nunu Blues For Rhonda").

My favourite tracks are probably the first two (including the aformentioned jungle beast one) just because of the weird atmosphere they create. "Horse Powder" starts the thing off with picking of what could be guitars and some low moaning while Wooden Wand (I suppose that's him) chants "Hatred" over and over. You can imagine the band dancing round the "Hatred" chanting man and throwing their hands up to the heavens or down to hell. There's a heavy cult/worship vibe. I don't say 'vibe' in real life.

After the first two tracks (which take up the majority of the 29 minute long cd) there are four shorter ones featuring (1) a woman fighting against herself in the mix while trying to tell some kind of story, (2) some guitar picking, (3) a fairly boring conventional song and (4) some random instrument distorted up to the point where you can't identify it. None of these tracks are anywhere near as good as the first two, one of which you can sample below.

WWVV - Horse Powder mp3

You can get a copy of "Angel Hair" from Chocolate Monk.

Introductory Post

2007-07-18T17:13:00.000+01:00

Hello. I thought i'd start up a blog about the noisy cd-rs that I seem to be addicted to. Fuck knows why. Every so often i'll write a bit about what a particular cd-r sounds like and whether I like it, hate it or think it's boring as piss.

Please bear in mind that i'm a total novice when it comes to noise/music and anything surrounding the noise/music (band members, influences etc etc etc), so if at any point you wish to correct a mistake, educate me or call me an idiot feel free! Also i'm going to try my best not to describe sounds with phrases like 'crying into the void', but i'll probably lose that particular battle. An advance warning for you there.