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!

Broken Water-Normal Never Happened 7" EP (2010)

As with every revivalist movement, the neo-'90s craze we're experiencing right now is mostly a pile of stinking, retrograde dogshit. Among a horde of contenders, only a few bands have really held up past the "haha, yeah, that reminds me of this one Nirvana riff...." moment. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, only Whirl/Whirr, Psychic Blood, and especially Broken Water are worth a damn in the all-important longevity category. These are the current bands with riffs heavy enough that you actually listen to them for reasons other than that you've worn out your copy of Loveless (again).

Enter Normal Never Happened. Broken Water has sometimes been criticized for writing great songs and never pulling off a great album, but when the songs are as good as the eponymous opener and "Faux King Vogue," it doesn't matter. If I want album-length coherence I'll listen to Godspeed You! Black Emperor or fuckin' Beethoven, thankyouverymuch. "Normal Never Happened" opens with a riff and beat as savage as "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World". It's a trick of production, I'm guessing, that the song is in fact heavier than Neil Young, but still: Broken Water means business, muhfuh. One of the things that separates them from the competition is their skill in creating songs with abrupt changes in mood and tempo, without losing intensity. "NNH" is a great example of this: around 40 seconds, the song slides from full-on rock brutality to a echo-chamber-like solemnity of spacey guitar, light-as-a-feather singing, and a rhythm section relegated to metronome status. As with most of BW's best work, Jon Hanna's guitar wizardry is front and center: the transition from Young-style freakrock to Bardo Pondesque spaciness is effortless. Even better is the drastically abrupt move, around 3:43, back to muddy guitar machinework.  "Faux King Vogue" is another case of how Broken Water manages to meld influences into something entirely their own: the song morphs back and forth between flippant Thurston Mooreisms and crunching feedback heaven without sounding awkward or contrived. It spirals towards sonic oblivion with a sense of control and mastery far too rare among the "I wanna be MBV" set. In short, these brief two songs contain all the reverb and tone you could possibly ask for in a record, and are perfect for getting blackout drunk in the afternoon, as your humble narrator is doing right now.


It's total trash! I don't know if the EP is still in print, but if it is, email Midheaven Mailorder and BUY IT!

The Outlook outlook

Just had the extreme pleasure of getting my dome rocked by Olympia, WA's Outlook at Oakland funplex The Hive the other night. I don't know what it is about Oly hardcore these days but everything that I've been hearing recently has been executed at an extremely high level of awesome. Weird TV, Hysterics, White Wards, and Crude Thought have all been a fucking thrill to discover over the past couple years, and now Outlook has blasted their way onto that list without a doubt.

Both live and recorded these kids fucking RAGE playing hardcore that's as aggro as your teenage older bro and as prog-damaged as your weird burnout aunt. They've got a new LP out called Our Time is Now as well as a couple of EPs all sporting absolutely raging politically radical, positive hardcore that is fiercely anti-generic. Tasteful gang vocals? Not just a possibility dear readers, but a fucking REALITY.

And if you're not twertching out with excitement already, Outlook is currently on an absolutely gargantuan US tour that has only just begun. So, if you live in the U$A, they're probably gonna be utterly slaying at a punk rock haven near you! Peep the approximately 300 tour dates below and cruise over to the Outlook site for more info AND free streams n' downloads AND a tour journal AND other stuff too. YEAH.

Crude Thought-Demo

I just had the extreme pleasure of seeing this band play live. Generally speaking, if there's a bill full of bands you really like, the one that you don't know will either be a soundtrack to another cigarette or an out-of-left-field surprise that flips your shit. Seeing Olympia's Crude Thought fell solidly into the latter category. This is fucked up, bad attitude hardcore wrestling with a bad trip. It's fucking brilliant.

The show was a rager. I have yet to see any show that involves Hysterics (who are on tour with Crude Thought) not be a rager, so no surprises there. But the true standout of the show, and the band that I cant' seem to stop talking about, is Crude Thought. I picked up a tape copy of their demo, whose Youtube reproduction is below. This is, of course, the most alienated and degenerate method for experiencing something truly outstanding. Go get your head rocked by these fools live and then pick up a tape and be happy. I'm fucking happy.

Some Velvet Sidewalk-Pumpkin Patch 7" (1991)

Like most people who know of them, I first heard Some Velvet Sidewalk in that grunge documentary, Hype!. Generally I'm not a fan of twee or the whole K Records thing, but SVS burped out some pretty sweet lo-fi slop back in the early '90s. These songs all indulge in some of that infamous K Records cutesiness, but the last one, "The Real World," has one of the most wicked guitar lines I've heard recently.
This is a pretty good accompaniment to a cold, gray fall day (which is what almost every day is like up in Olympia....).

How I wanted to have some fun.... All of SVS's work is out of print, as far as I know, unfortunately.

Thee Source ov Fawnation-This is Psydust CS (2011)

I started listening to noise music several years ago, when the numbing ritual that is hardcore punk began to grow stale. Initially thrilled by the sheer brutality of Chicago acts like Bloody Minded and their ilk, the premise quickly wore thin. Turns out that people pressing buttons to produce a horrid racket isn't much more interesting than 1-2-3-4 punk idiocy.

Thus Thee Source ov Fawnation, Olympia's newest, meanest shitpsych extravaganza. Unlike most of the drooler drone I was nodding out to ca. 2007, Brian and Pearson weave electronic pulse-level beats, oddly soothing vocal tracks, and short, sharp bursts of white noise to create something approaching what Popol Vuh might sound like if they were starting out now, in our post-techno, post-power electronics times. It sounds retarded in print, but somehow works quite well. Hell, I've been blasting it for an hour straight, sober the whole time!

Get into it. For a larger view of the truly excellent cover art, click here. West Coast folk, take note! This is limited to 35 copies they'll be selling on their upcoming tour, the dates of which are:
  
09.14.11 House Show | Boise, ID  
09.15.11 House Show | Salt Lake City, UT   
09.16.11 TBA | Las Vegas, NV  
09.17.11 The Castle | Los Angeles, CA
Summer Fun Time Society & DUM DUM present...
+++DEAD SUMMER+++
+ Luna is Honey, KILLKILLKILL, Jung Hollywood, WMX, Pulse Out, The Flytraps, Tleilaxu Music Machine

09.18.11 White Lotus Collective | Long Beach, CA  
09.20.11 TBA | Los Angeles, CA  
09.21.11 Lot 1 | Los Angeles, CA
The Spread presents...

09.24.11 Zool | Oakland, CA
Record Label Records Fest
+ Wisp, Terminal 11, Xanopticon, Scuzi, Kush Arora, William S. Braintree, DJ John Yoo

09.25.11 House Show | Portland, OR

Weird TV-demo CS (2010)

Boyhowdy, readers, it's been a helluva week here at Drug Punk headquarters, which temporarily resided at a decaying 17th-century convent.
 So to celebrate our return to the modern world, I present you with Weird TV's demo. The last time I was in Olympia, we spent most of the time sitting around on my friend's couch doing whatever shitty drugs a steady trickle of visitors brought over, complaining about the rain. There were vague plans to go to a party at some place called the Funny Farm, but the cops busted it up right quick. By the time the sun came out, we were such paralyzed putzes that all we could do was drink more Rolling Rock and watch "Class of '84" until we passed out.

  It's too bad I didn't have this demo with me, as it's the perfect accompaniment to doing bad drugs on a rainy Olympia day. The singer's petulant, bograt bawl barely rises above the muddy, mucky mix but it has a snidely endearing quality to it when audible. The music ambles along at a drudgy tempo, with sweet guitar leads that never really go anywhere, and 1-2 1-2-3-4 bass lines worthy of Dee Dee. These are excellent jams for numbly nodding along in a seasonal affective disorder- and bad whiskey-induced haze...and in that state, you won't even realize that they covered a Them song!
   Get into it. I'm guessing this thing's long gone, but they have a 7" EP on M'Lady Records. Hype 'em before Vice Magazine does!
 

Sex/Vid-Nests (2009)

These'uns were the HC community's favored wank material a few years ago, and I remember, around 2008, wanting to hit the next person who told me that if I liked Void, I'd like Sex/Vid. This sort of reductive, "new product A sounds like old product B, and thus is approved listening in our cult-scene" mindrot is a disease all music fans are prone to, music writers in particular (myself included); perhaps it's unavoidable, but it's certainly undesirable and mentally deadening.

"Nests"' howling guitar riff quickly builds into a raging whirl, but then around thirty seconds, the momentum slams to a halt and morphs into a grinding dirge-then the riff jumps into hyperspeed, and throws you across the room, only to slow down again a few times. It's remarkable how well Sex/Vid uses the fast/slow dynamic to trick you out of complacent listening, and the song reminds me of PiL's "Memories", in its startling, effective change in tempo.
"Exorcism" is a bit more standard hardcore, but "Always Home" is a funereal spiral of tormented guitar, relentless drumming, and barked vocals. It's actually pretty close to a certain Ann Arbor band's song about the desire to be a canine, really.
Sex/Vid is one of maybe four punk bands (with Tragedy, Giant Haystacks, and Pink Reason) from the '00s whose music not only does not bore me years after first hearing them, but which actually rewards close, repeated listening.

Knock that fucker off the wall! then, check out this remarkably intelligent piece on Sex/Vid. The "Nests" EP is probably out of print, but write (yeah, write!) the folks at DOM and they might have copies left: Dom America, PO Box 2066, Olympia, WA 98507, USA

*EDIT, 9.20.12: Re'up'd the file, here. *