The Dictaphone-Let's Not LP (2012)

People often equate depression with self-destructive and/or suicidal behavior. This is erroneous. The truly gut-wrenching thing about depression is that, becalmed in a sea of melancholy, one loses the energy to do anything, even/especially self-destructive death revelry. One just...is.

Enter Tours, France's The Dictaphone. Whereas the Brainbombs play depressed noise that musters up the energy to go on a killing spree, the Dictaphone is mired in an apathetic nightmare whose main feature is a grinding, softly shrieking monotony. Like a rainy day of the mind that never goes away, it just chugs on, in circles.

Most of the songs, especially the opener, "Modern S," and my personal favorite, "Fake dancing," are built around massively, numbingly, intentionally repetitive bass and drum spiralling. It's like someone tried to put together a dance beat with a drum machine and metronome, and went out for a drink, leaving the equipment on and the tape running. Then some drunk wandered in and started burbling something pseudo-lingual over the resulting repetition. Oh, "Safe substitute" is the bee's knees, as well. Imagine that opening drum beat of "All Tomorrow's Parties", but it never really goes anywhere-it just keeps plodding along, sort of like the voices in yr head.

This is fantastic music for staring at grey walls, laying in bed thinking of reasons not to start the day, and for sitting on the sidewalk curb, bombed out of your mind on Klonopin. It's real fuckin' good.

Listen to "Let's Not" here. This is brought to you courtesy of Cocktail Pueblo Records. The Dictaphone shares at least one member with the Jagwar Pirates, by the way.

Contaminators-No Friends 7" EP (2007)

 *Edit, 12.13.13: Re'upped the file again, so get it here.*

 *Edit, 8.3.12: I re-upped the file; you can now get it here.*

Those of you who were hangin' round in Chicago in the mid-'00s are probably familiar with the '77 Street Punks, a bunch of white-denim rockin' dweebs who took Sid Vicious/Johnny Thunders worship to extremes only attainable by kids who grew up in subdivisions. Having to worry about getting jumped by these morons whenever I went out 'cause I liked Crass definitely turned me off to the Noow Yawk, junkie blooz side of punk that these louts venerated, and I only recently started coming around to this stuff (The music, that is. Junkies are fucking horrible creatures. If you don't believe me, try going for a walk at 11 pm in my neighborhood).

  Enter the Contaminators, a Bakersfield, CA duo who bashed out some pretty sweet riffage ca. 2007-'09. The recording quality is so shitty on this thing, the first time I heard it I wasn't sure there was any drumming on the first track-the vocal and guitar tracks are blown through the fucking ceiling. Don't let that stop you, though. These guys had the swaggering petulance of Mssrs. Johansen, Bators, et. al. down to a "T" as in "Thunders." The song titles tell you what you're in for: "Human Mess," "Closet Junkie," "Sick Fixation." So if you're down in the dumps of the sort that require glorious two-note solos as accompaniment, pop on the Contaminators and nod out.

I think this is still available from Blackwater.
Up next: some Heavy Times, Raincoats, and a few surprises. Mebbe.