Summer Jams I: Cold Forever

Well, I said I might be back at some point (like Jason Molina said before he checked out forever, for real, "I will be gone/but not forever"), so here's the first in a three-piece installment of tunes for getting drunk, getting high, fornicating, enjoying life, etc. True to my native perversity, this mix is mostly synth-pop and cold wave: not very summeresque, but don't worry. More summer-like mixes (each of which will become more and more unabashedly summer-esque until by August you're so fried on summertime sunshine that you could use some more of Ian Curtis' lyrics!) will follow in volumes one and two, for those of you who care. I'm including my always-brilliant, perpetually-effervescent commentary on the songs, 'cause whateverbigshitwhocaresletsgogetsunbuned!.

Get it here

Per usual, have fun (or not), kiddies. Blast some tunes, pop a beer, catch some sun, life ain't so bad:

1. T.V. Girl-I Don't Care (super nihilistic, super summer: "I smoke a pack of Reds and drink a six pack every day/I wanna stay sane and there ain't no other way!")
2. Keep Shelly in Athens-Cremona Memories (Syriza and the Greeks are in trouble now and have been for quite some time, but, as usual, they produce some great tunes anyway; requiescat in pace, Anestis Kostis!)
3. Blank Dogs-Another Language (I'm sure Blank Dogs ain't cool no more, but real drug punks disdain coolness and focus on whatever intoxicant is at hand. As some stupidhardcoreband said long ago, "charge ahead/charge ahead/we keep on fighting to the end!")
4. Naked on the Vague-Old Leader (Aussie synth savagery. Misery never sounded more relaxed.)
5. Dirty Beaches-Belgrade (unrelenting synth, an overpowering sense of anxiety, and Alex's haunted and haunting vocals, synth-driven, propulsive sadness hurtling towards the Danube)
6. Lust for Youth-Sickness (Scandinavian. Scandinavians, as far as I understand it, have a real health care system, so who the fuck knows what's going on with them.)
7. Thorir Georg-Skiptir Engu (Even more remote than the continental Scandi countries, Iceland not only has health care but ACTUALLY SENT BANKERS TO JAIL FOR THEIR CRIMES. Sounds like Mars? Yeah, 'cause it is, and their minimal synth is pretty rad, too!)
8. Rosenkopf-Troth (They're (are/were?) from New York or at least claim NYC status, so who knows what to make of them until they do something outrageous enough to have some dipshit from Village Voice do a feature on them [no, I didn't ask Google if there is an interview with the VV).
9. Carol-So Low (This very well might be the sound of austerity closing its warm, seductive, suffocating hand across your throat as the EU strangles the life outta ya-er, they're Belgian.)
10. Joy Division-Something Must Break (demo version)-(yeah JoyDiv bigdealsowhat. But how many of you fuckers would know about half of the music you pride yourselves on knowing about without having first discovered JD's Unknown Pleasures? That's right, none of you and me neither, so we could all use some more Joy Division!).
11. RZA-Ghost Dog Theme-(No comment, much respect. RZA matched or beat Jarmusch here. Brilliant soundtrack for a brilliant film.)
12. Fausto Amodei-Non 'e finita a Piazza Loreto (Because I have to include some sort of overtly commie propaganda here. It's also a pretty good minimal keyboard piece too, though....As a friend said a long, long time ago of The Majestic Arrows, "sit alone and cry to this raw shit".).
13. Makis Prekkas-Morocco (Minimal synth from before Greece was famous for debt instead of all the classical/philosophical/etc. stuff. Anxiety and dread seep through Prekkas' work, and those emotions are much more appropriate to the capitalist apocalypse that is Greece than pride, anyway)
14. Mushy-Kshetrajna (Italian-Ethiopian/Eritrean lady makes some dope minimal dronesynth. Dig it.)
15. Popol Vuh-Gemeinschaft (needs no introduction)

The attached picture was taken in Italy, "3 summers, .and a thousand years ago," as Peachy Carnahan says to Rudyard Kipling in The Man Who Would be King). Or, as Slim Charles says in The Wire (season 4), "Yeah, well, life's strange."

Ciao, ragazzi!

After 3 years or so, I'm pulling the plug on this blog. 2014 was the year I realized I'd never really get caught up on all the stuff I'm supposed to review, and 2015 promises to have even less free time in store for yours truly to blather about music. I think I've had a good run, and it's over. Pink Reason and Dirty Beaches, two of my favorite recent bands, called it quits in 2013/2014 and I'll take that as an omen and get out while the going's good. I did three interviews (Kevin from Pink Reason, Matt from Kitchen's Floor, and The Wizard from Terminal Escape), reviewed a bunch of stuff-some good, some great, some decidedly less so-and in general I've hollered and whined in my online backalley long enuf.

I'll continue to occasionally re-up some of the music I've posted, and will respond to emails requesting that; same goes for the Alone & Forsaken mixtape series. I may at some future point get DrugPunk fired up again but for now I'm kidding myself to think I want to, or can, keep this thing going further.

I apologize to everyone to whom I gave assurances that I'd eventually review their music. I wanna thank all of youse guyse for reading this blog over the years, and especially those of you who I've exchanged commiserations, scene information, and other sundry bits of knowledge (y'all know who you are). Keep your heads up, and drink a beer for me.

Alone & Forsaken XXV (25th and Final): Never talking to you again

Never Talking to You Again (Alone & Forsaken XXV):

1. 13th Floor Elevators-You're Gonna Miss Me
2. The Abigails-Shadow of Our Darkness
3. Galaxie 500-Walking Song
4. Beat Happening-Cast a Shadow
5. Merchandise-Time
6. The Modern Lovers-Roadrunner
7. The Gun Club-House on Highland Avenue
8. The Wedding Present-Getting Nowhere Fast (Girls at Our Best cover)
9. Vertical Slit-In-No-Sense 1X2
10. Sex Church-I Don't Want to Die
11. Husker Du-Whatever.
12. The Adverts-Quickstep
13. Criminal Damage-Victory
14. The Gits-Second Skin (Live '93 version)
15. Jim Shepard-A Streetcar Named Desire
16. Broken Water-Kamilche House (live @ the Oly Library version)
17. The Wipers-Blue Cowboy
18. Dead Moon-Unknown Passage

Cast a shadow in my direction....

Happy Holidays....

Buon Natale/Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, to those who don't, crack a beer and hang with Fabrizio de Andre'!

The only sentiment that matters, right now

Even by my standards, it's been an atrocious last coupla weeks. Neo-nazis, racist quacks, and plain 'ole vanilla white supremacy have all received a huge boost in the US from one of the state's favorite judicial tools, the grand jury, twice in as many weeks.  I won't bother going into some sort of rant on this matter, since while the whys and whereofs of how we got to this sick situation in the States is extremely complicated, the sentiment any sane person is feeling towards our so-called protectors can be adequately summed up as:

Also, new in the general "Why bother getting out of bed when reality is this sick?" file, check this out!

Or, if you prefer it in punk terms, we have Texas' finest:

And then a third time because, no matter how juvenile, reductivist, and plain old silly it is, I never get tired of saying "All coppers are bastards!":

Pink Reason & Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones-Split 12" (2008)

Whoah ho ho ho, here we go, I'm finally posting something for the first time in months....

....sorry for that, ah, blank space, kiddies. Been homeless, been vagabonding, been drinking, yadayadayada.

I might as well pick up in the same general place I started this blog with, a Pink Reason post. I just learned that Kevin finally called it quits recently, after a hiatus following 2011's Shit in the Garden and European tour. PR will be sorely missed, so revel in this, one of their more obscure releases.

Originally released on Florida's Dying back in 2008 or so, it features PR covering two Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones tunes and vice versa. The cover art, vaguely derivative of Exile on Main Street, adequately encapsulates what the songs sound like. Clattering, ultra-lo-fi, sub-blues rock scribblings like a junkie who's been locked in a room with a 4-Track, smack, and a 2-string electric guitar for like a week. The songs stumble, surge, and mostly just ebb along in a narcotic summer haze. Hue Blanc's rendition of "Down on Me" is more frantic than the PR original, while "By a Thread" drifts into psychedelic, Bardo Pond realms before drifting back into standard garage slop.

"Frolicked Walk Through Autumnal Bliss" is the standout track here. I haven't heard the HB&JO original, but Kevin does a rambling rave-up version that's good for gettin' drunk while watchin' trees change colors and such autumnal activities.

Hanging by a Thread. I'm pretty sure that this one is out of print, but check over at Florida's Dying to see if there are any copies left. RIP Pink Reason.

American Waste: Black Flag and The Jeffersonian Imaginary of 1980s SoCal

So a friend of mine has been blogging on the political economy of the SST scene in particular, and the subtly reactionary aesthetic of Black Flag in particular. He's done three entries so far, the most recent one on Raymond Pettibon's films. Those of you who are into reading books and talking about ideas and stuff should CHECK OUT THE POSTS, everyone else can get back to crushing beer cans on their heads and singing about anarchy and stuff, preferably while playing The 4 Skins.

Looks Like Miaou-Handbrake CS (Bon Voyage Rex, 2014)

Many of my American friends who have never been to Europe think of one thing when said Continent comes to mind: electronic music. Some of you (myself included, at one point) might view this as a gross reduction and misunderstanding of a place old in history, culture, language, blahblahblah.

But there is a nugget of truth to it. For the past century, Europe has been confronting its own decline, rather obsessively, in a myriad of ways. These run the full gamut from extreme right-wing nastiness to the beauty of Walter Benjamin's prose, or Dadaist perversity for perversity's sake. I submit that Europeans' love of electronic music is, simply, another mode of grappling with this terminal decline. For what better way to deal with one's obsolescence (in the Hegelian, big-H-History sense of "obsolescence") than with loud, mindless, bass-heavy dancing?

I would submit that mannered yet excruciating noise is an equally good way of responding to said obsolescence. And Brussels' Looks Like Miaou dishes out early Sonic Youth-style noise in spades. They've got everything: Kim Gordon-esque hollering, stray trumpet notes, a desultory rhythm section, and plenty of subdued guitar squall. The band is part of a burgeoning noise scene in the EU's capital, along with the other acts on Tendresse Records. Take a walk through hollow, cacophonous soundscapes of your own neuroses with LLM. Their harsh clangor points straight at the profound squalor at the heart of the European Union's dream of nihilistic affluence and cultural superiority stuck in apparently permanent decline.

If all of the abovesaid is too sophisticated a description for you, dear readers, just know this: LLM's cassette is a good soundtrack to sweating out late July in a fetid, filthy apartment, guzzling cheap beer and waiting to go home not 'cause you like home all that much, in fact, but 'cause your Safe European Home isn't really home. But what's home, anyway? Nothing, really, except austerity and  refugees turning up dead on the European side of the Mediterranean, that's what.

Anyway, check out Looks Like Miaou, and get the cassette, HERE!

McBain-s/t EP (2014)

McBain's debut EP is as sweet as the candy that rotted out your teeth (like the tooth on the cover). Just when you think the band is going to descend into the standard hardcore speedslop, they jerk to a stop. Full stop. This is the sorta music best experienced in someone's crowded, filthy garage or basement on a hot summer night, half-delirious from heat exhaustion yet still guzzling Labatt's or some other Canadian pissbrew.

"I'm Exhaustion," opening with growled vocals worthy of the dood from Scratch Acid, exemplifies the McBain sound: as the guitar meanders through a postpunk number, the drums counterpoint the singer. Of course you can't understand anything he's singing about, but "whiskey" does get repeated a lot. One can imagine the song was written after drinking a lot of it, but the boys kept it together to throw in coherent choruses. Just when you think it's over, minor notes lurch into more frenetic, seething tension.

The drums win the fight on "Cooking with Feelings"; I haven't heard punk drumming this good since the days of Giant Haystacks. My guess is that "I Survived the Moe Earthquake" is a reference to a Simpsons episode I never saw, and Moe might indeed throw this one on to drive Barney Gumble outta the bar at 3 AM. It's that good!

At the end of the day, Mcbain is a punk band that's a little too clever to play retreaded retard rock with a mohawk cresting over the din. These Aussies is so nice, you can download the EP for free, here!

Trobecove Krušne Peći-S Mukom Žvaču Trubadurov Vrat LP (Doomtown, 2014)

You have to love a band that includes aquarium ambience on the first track. From what I understand, Zagreb's  Trobecove Krušne Peći (TKP) were a seminal part of the former Yugoslavia's underground scene in the early '80s. They never released a full record, so Doomtown has collected their recorded output for a latter-day artifact from the days of samizdat culture. 

This is taut, hop-along-jerk-along postpunk akin to [insert here the names of all the bands you're waiting for me to reference]. Like a lot of the European post-punk of the period, it sounds like dub with all the rhythm flattened out and compressed into a tin box: what comes through is the anxiety and brooding, with none of the expansiveness. That's not a criticism-most of the best post-punk worked in that manner. "Zvijezda" is, for my money, the best song here: it stutters along in an offkilter, stumblebum way, with bass and scratchy guitar notes merging with what sounds like seagull noises. "Boje Noć U Krv" could be a Brainbombs tune, stripped of the squalling dissonance-it's built around a lone horn twiling away as the singer intones about, well, something. In a bark that reminds me of the Brainbombs' singer. 

My guess is that one misses a lot by not understanding Croat (I don't), but the music is top-notch, neurotic Iron Curtain punk from the dying days of Tito's "Real Existing Socialism." You keep waiting for the explosion, and it never comes-history would take care of that a little later, of course. 

You can check out TKP here.  Doomtown has released this on a double LP with a fancy insert detailing the history of the band. If you're a geek for all things '80s and all things post-punk, as I am, you should probably get your ass over to Doomtown's site and BUY IT IF YOU LIKE IT!

 

Отстой- Сахара EP (2014)

So what if this thing came out back in April, Petrograd's Otstoy is a great summer soundtrack. Snide, off-the-cuff-'cause-who's-really-listening vocals, all the tone the Russian steppes can offer, and a drumbeat so basic it might just be someone tapping their foot against a tin can. That's it.

And man, is the one (ok, maybe 2) note guitar solo on the first song majestic! Majestic in the way you'd expect from a band that probably consists of one dude chainsmoking and sippin' on potato-mash vodka in the studio and bangin' out whatever comes to mind. The second song's even better. By song three you've probably moved onto your 5th beer of the night, so you won't remember it, but it's good too.

Go swimming, go drinking, go listen to Otstoy!

бичкрафт- маскот LP (2014)

Grinding, excruciating noise rock will always get a fair hearing in these parts, and Kiev's бичкрафт passes muster. Wave upon wave of plodding, catharsis-denying feedback and clanging cymbals usher you into this echo chamber of squall.

Track two, "кроссовки," lightens it up a bit with resolutely, passionately meandering feedback, again. I could probably go on for a few more paragraphs wherein I try to extrapolate upon the subtleties and nuances of this slab of drone rock from the Ukrainian steppelands, but you probably get the idea. There's a weird pseudo-techno segment tossed in just to confuddle you. This probably isn't anyone's daily soundtrack, but it certainly does surprise. Proving once again that rock is probably the most versatile genre of music known to humankind, including classical, because it's amazing how much variation can be packed into mutilated, butchered and necromanced blues chords. Especially when you've got synthesizers and a shitload of drugs to help you out on said quest. Hell, this LP runs the gamut from electronica to metal and back without ever, i think, changing key.

All of that makes the LP out to just be a pretentious heap of clever showmanship, but it's pretty fun, like guzzling tallboys of bad German beer (i.e., all German beer) on a hot summer night's fun. That sorta fun. FUN.

Check out this hellacious squall HERE!

1984-"Barranco" video (or, fuck the World Cup)

Everyone's going ga-ga over the World Cup currently, so 1984's debut EP is timely. Some of you may be following the on-going protests against World Cup spending in several Brazilian cities. If not, the basic point is that it's criminal to piss away millions of dollars/pesos/reales/whatever on a tourist circle jerk when millions of your citizens are living in desperate poverty. If you want a reminder of how little the money wasted on mass sporting events does for the cities concerned, take a stroll around the 2004 Olympics buildings in Athens, Greece.

In any case, 1984's "Barranco" is a savage bit of basic, direct hardcore. They sorta sound like Los Crudos, but with something approaching production (gasp!). The video intersperses footage of the band with shots from their hometown, showing some of the squalor that billions of people worldwide live in every day. I like football as much as the next person, but 1984's video is a timely reminder of what daily life is like in Brazil, and what it will probably continue to be like long after the 2014 Cup is over. Fuck JLo, check this out.

Milk Music-Beyond Living EP (2011)

So awhile ago two guys were sitting on some couch in Olympia, Washington. Neither of them had a job. But you don’t need a job when you can sell loosie tall boys of Olympia out of a shopping cart on the street, right? Right. And anyway, weed had just been legalized in California so they were enjoying the toasty vibes from south of the border and couldn’t believe how sweet it is to be at Evergreen College and gettin’ stoned and blasting Sabbath Vol. 4 on the MP3 player Dude 1 got from his big sister a few months ago. She had moved out of the house to drop acid and follow Phish’s reunion tour and said that he could have all of her material possessions (these mostly consisted of said MP3 player, a battered-but-serviceable hip flask, and something she had bought from some drug dealer in high school, thinking it was a book about Tibetan Buddhism but in fact turned out to be a ruined copy of Athanasius’ Life of St. Anthony). Anyway.

 Then some other dude came over with a vinyl record. These two dudes on the couch didn’t know that they still made vinyl, so they were pretty stoked. Suffice to say, Sabbath Vol. 4 was toasty fucking vibes, upon first listening, bro. A few songs into Vol. 4, dude Number One said, “hey bros, why don’t we start a band? I’ll bet these dudes in Sabbath get all the free herbs they want.” Dude two happened to be from British Columbia so he was like “yeah that’d be pretty cool eh, I just need to drink like 20 more Labatts and I’m as good as fucking Mo Tucker ever was, eh?” Dude Number Three, who had brought over that original vinyl copy of Vol. 4, then produced another hat trick: he had A SECOND VINYL RECORD! HOLY FUCK!  For the sake of conversation let’s say it was Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over me. Dude Number Three was like “yeah dudes I can totally play a mean bass lick, sure I stole it from fuckin’ Glenn Matlock but if you crank the treble all the way past 10, it sounds like a Chuck Dukowski riff anyways!”

These three dudes were STOKED. Soon they figured out 3 chords and pretty soon after that they managed to scrounge a SuperFuzzBigMuff pedal or 4 from a local pawn shop. In fact I think I saw the bassist from Mudhoney selling his SuperFuzzBigMuff pedals at that pawn shop like a week before the three dudes of as-yet-unnamed-Olympia band walked into said pawn shop, but whatever man. Anyway, with four SFBM pedals and three dudes steeped in the traditions of…well, those two vinyl records and whatever guitar rock was on Dude Number One’s sister’s MP3 player (mostly Jimi Hendrix tunes but these dudes thought they were fuckin’ Aerosmith tunes, c’est la difference in the internet age), combined with a few SFBM pedals…shit man, you got Milk Music.

Beyond Living goes beyond living over here.  I'm not sure if this is out of print, but try to find it on Discogs!

Ski Patrol-"Extinguish" Remix (1980s/2014)

I just read Simon Reynolds' Rip it up and start again, a history of British post-punk from 1978-1984. Through Reynolds' coy, slightly overwrought prose, it's clear that the UK spawned hundreds, if not thousands, of weird, resolutely avant-garde bands during the period. Ski Patrol is a good example of the sound and scene: dark, elliptical, and fixated on pushing the boundaries of rock-by-the-book. Borrowing heavily from the echo-space of dub, this track is a sprawling shower of guitar reverb and synth gloom. As the rest of the band drops in and out, the singer intones about, uh, some sort of apocalyptic scenario. Ski Patrol is, of course, noisier than their Rasta bred'ren, as were most white post-punk groups.

In any case, if you've played your Bauhaus records to death and need something new in the eerie-and-melancholic department, check out Ski Patrol. You can check it out on Soundcloud, and get physical copies of Ski Patrol's collected, re-mastered discography on Dark Entries Records.

Quicksails Mix (in Russian!)

Hey hey, it's mid-May and here I am. Segueing back into regular posting, here's a post that Ben from Quicksails/Tiger Hatchery/Druids of Huge put together for a Russian site. It's a lot more sedate than most of the aural atrocities featured on here, but hell, even drug punks need to chill out sometimes.

Check it out here!

Happy May Day!

As many of you know, today's May Day, otherwise known as International Workers' Day. Here's a mix to mark the occasion; it's a combination of Italian partisan songs and leftist anthems from around the world (including Leadbelly's contribution to the anti-fascist cause, "Mr. Hitler"). The picture to the left is of Communist partisans during World War II, from L'Unita', the Italian CP's newspaper. Enjoy (or not)! I pulled a lot of these tracks off youtube, so forgive me for not having an artist designation. Do the research yourself if it bothers ya.....

*EDIT, 5.24.14: I re'up'd the file, it should work now. Get it here !*

...and the last fight let us face....

1. The Ex-No Pasaran
2. Bandiera Rossa (pre-1922 anthem of the Italian Socialist Party, and covered by Angelic Upstarts, among others)
3. Bella Ciao (unofficial anthem of the Italian partisans during World War II)
4. Fischia il vento (another partisan song)
5. Per i morti di Reggio Emilia (commemorates a massacre carried out by the Nazis during the occupation of Italy, in retaliation for partisan attacks on Nazi & Fascist troops)
6. Paolo Pietrangeli-Contessa (see below for a video)
7. Joe Fallisi-Ballata dell'anarchico Pinelli (commemorates an Anarchist train worker framed by the police for a bombing carried out by Fascists in 1969, and suicided by the police)
8. L'Internazionle (Do I really need to explain this one?)
9. Chumbawumba-The Chartist Anthem (the Chartists were a radical democratic English group in the first half of the 19th century)
10. La ballata di Franco Seratini (Seratini was another Italian anarchist murdered by the police, in the early 1970s)
11. Come out and Fight (traditional anti-British/Black & Tans song)
12. Leadbelly-Mr. Hitler
13. Pete Seeger-Solidarity Forever
14. Woody Guthrie-I Ain't Got No Home
15. Rino Gaetano-Nun te reggae piu' (Communist beach music, try it!)

Reatards-Get Real Stupid 7" (1997)

Most of you probably own this one, or at least have played it to death. Some benighted souls may, however, still be ignorant of the illuminated crudity that was Jay Reatard & his minions.

In any case, this is the Reatards' first, majestically moronic release. All the elements we love in the Reatards are here: Jay's trashed howl; pitter-pat paintbucket drumming; and two-note guitar rumbling that barely makes it to 3 chords the entire EP. It's nice when song titles adequately encompass the emotional range they express, and boy is that the case here. "You Ain't No Fun No More": Man, you ain't no fun no mo'! Other target-topics include fashion victims, Chuck Taylors, and so on.

Really there's no point in prattling on here. Either you love the Reatards or you haven't heard them. In the unlikely event that someone reading this actively dislikes the Reatards, that's cool, check back in when I post more cold wave.That's all for now. Get it here.

Then go see if Goner Records ever re-released this thing. I think they dropped a shitload of Reatards re-issues last year, so buy those if you can't find the 7" per se.

Urbanoia-Svart Sement EP (2013)

Well, I haven't reviewed any hardcore records in awhile. Hell, I haven't reviewed anything at all in awhile. So why not get back to music-writing, and the music of my youth, with Stavanger's Urbanoia, eh? Following in a venerable tradition of heavy Scandinavian ragers, Urbanoia presents thee with four tracks of 'eavy, 'eavy blitzkrieg bop.

 I'm pretty sure it's obligatory to mention Discharge if you're reviewing a hardcore punk record these days, but actually Urbanoia doesn't really do the d-beat thing. As far as I can tell, who knows, maybe d-beat has morphed into how Urbanoia sounds. In any case, this is heavy (not metal-heavy, though) hardcore that goes for mid-tempo, clean production instead of a wall of shrieking feedback. It's raining, I'm hungover, the sun hasn't been out in days, and I'm pretty sure lots of bad things are happening in the world right now: Urbanoia's just as good a soundtrack for this mood as anything else.

You can listen to Urbanoia, and possibly buy their EP, here.

Confusion is Sex[ting]

....'cause only a teenage riot could get me outta bed/right now....

...and also cause I've been doing this blog for almost three years, it was probably time I posted something involving Sonic Youth. Why not their most pop song ever?