Fancy Dress Party-Letting Things Go LP (2012)

I started working at a record store when I was 17. Mebbe the 2nd-3rd week there, one of my co-workers did me the foolish courtesy of giving me the store copy of the third Pedro the Lion LP, Control. A courtesy, 'cause he was doing himself and the customers a favor since I was probably playing something equally awful, like Filth, at the store that day; foolish, 'cause that was all I played during shifts for the next six months or so. I think he actually gave me the store copy 'cause he wasn't allowed to play it himself, by general consensus of everyone else concerned. It definitely spoke to my narcissistic 17-y.o. self, who was undoubtedly crushin' hard on some uninterested girl at the time. I dunnowhateverit's been awhile.

Oh, uh, Fancy Dress Party. Yeah. They don't have much to do with Pedro the Lion, except the mainline of each band's sound is more or less similar: clean, undistorted guitar and snappy, crisp drumwork that frames the vocals. The vocals are kinda mopey, which I should condemn but actually, as anyone who's read a few entries here knows, I love mopiness. "Mind is Gone" almost gets into Monkees territory: cutesy harmonies and jangly melodies (or vice versa? I dunno I'm tone deaf). "Under Ground," which delves into psychrock territory, features Zsofia from Piresian Beach on backing vocals-it's probably the least straightforward song here.

To summarize, I probably should dislike Fancy Dress Party but I actually think this album's pretty damn good. In fact, people who dig Pedro the Lion will prolly dig this (no offense intended to those behind Fancy Dress Party!). Find out for yrself, dear reader.

Broken Cups-Slaves of the Grave LP (2012)

One of the best books I read as a teenager was Don DeGrazia's American Skin. Set on Chicago's North Side during the mid-80s, it's about a bourgeois suburban boy who runs away to the city, becomes a skinhead, and spends his formative years fighting it out in the vicious turf wars of the era between Nazi and anti-nazi skinhead gangs. When they're not bashing fascist heads in the gutter, Alex & his friends are working door at the infamous Chicago club Medusa's, home of proto-industrial Wax Trax acts, synthpunk, etc.

Broken Cups woulda fit in quite well on that scene. The band consists of a drummer who sounds like a drum machine, a guitarist specializing in minimal, Gang of Four-style riffing, and manic vocalist who either yowls like the singer for Scratch Acid or croons it like Dracula.  "Slaves" is 80s worship down cold: dehumanized beat, pulsing guitar notes on the riff, with the singer howling on the riff about bein' a slave. Spooky.

Most of the songs on the album are a variant on this, moving from from mid-tempo tunes you could dance to ("The Burnout", "She Thinks of Death") to speeded up robot punk ("Bank of Souls"). Although they hail from Budapest, they'd fit in quite well on a bill with American gloomrockers like Chicago's Population or Oakland's Branes.

Download and buy the LP here. Check out a video for "Flesh" here.

Useless Eaters-Addicted to the Blade 7" (2012)

If you read Drug Punk and don't listen to Useless Eaters, you very well may live under a rock. Whatever, this 7", Seth Sutton's most recent, is as good an introduction as as any to his idiosyncratic songcraft.

"Addicted to the Blade" is built around an infectious guitar groove and Sutton's bratty, Class of '77 snarling whine. I think he's singin' about some girl he's in like with, go figure. The bridge has one of the best smart-dumb bass chords and guitar mini-riffs I've heard in months. In the background is an ethereal synth line, I think.

"Starvation Blues #2" is the sort of rigid funk produced by Brit post-punks like 23 Skidoo, Josef K., et. al.: repetitive, wobbly bass, chugging drums, slightly harmonized vox. Sweet, dood.

Check it out here. [password is "cantaloupe"]. Then buy the 7" at Midheaven, here. Useless Eaters is touring the eastern USA this summer, here are the tour dates.

I'm reblogging this from Iamtheleastmachiavellian blog, which you should be following if you aren't already.

*EDIT, 9.9.12: REupd the file, HERE. *

Batu Kan Pesti Rokona-Mezofoldi Kosmosz EP (2012)

Being that this is a solo project of the guitarist for Hungarian noise boys Opus Null , I was expecting raucous cacophony from "Mezofoldi Kosmosz." There's a bit of that, especially on the first track, but mostly the album features daring, varied improvised guitar that mostly succeeds.

"Az Apeh Gyermeke" is the closest song, musically, to Opus Null's work, although a bit less raucous than most of their stuff. Trashy guitar fuzz, rambam Ramones-style drumming, and heavy bass; along with "Araben," it marks a transition from the contorted thrash of Bencze's band. "Panelhazi Ugros," however, marks the real departure point: song structure is replaced by meditative, brooding guitar sketches that sound like distant thunder peaking over a mountainous landscape.
   The main strike against the album is the track arrangement: it jerks back and forth between the ambient stuff and more traditional psych rock. Whatever, "Felrehangolt Letelem" is truly idiosyncratic: as far as I can tell, it's just an extended bass solo with interspersed guitar: sort of like listening to a song on the radio, then changing the station and getting a completely different song.

"Zenit" and "Mezofoldi Kosmosz" are the heart of the album, and the most interesting songs. These are searing, minimalist pieces of guitar improvisation. It's only the guitar, scratching out patterns against an utterly empty, expansive mix. The closest parallel I can think of is Neil Young's majestic score to "Dead Man": raw, haunting noise that meanders in and out of focus. Whereas most rock music tells a story, music like this sets a scene, or paints a landscape. This is lonely, barren music that reminds me of driving through Wyoming: nothing but open country, malevolent skies, and yourself.

"Mezofoldi Kosmosz" surprised me, and all to the good. It's not as good as the "Dead Man" soundtrack, of course, but given that this is a first solo effort, I can't wait to hear what this guy does next.
Check it out HERE.

Petition against imprisonment for online file-hosting

If you download music (which is all of you reading this now) or watch television online (probably all of you, too), you should sign this petition:

http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/odwyer/?akid=1423.1952659.4A0SJW&rd=1&t=3

This guy, a British citizen, is facing extradition to the US and ten years in US jail for setting up an online television site. If it happened to him, it can happen to any of us, and probably for a lot less than that. 

More music to follow, I promise.

Alone and Forsaken XIII: Po' Boy Long Way from Home Blues

It's 2:15 am, I've been up for about 17 hours, and I still have a few hours to go before drinking myself to sleep. It's getting to the point where I think I hear stuff in the halls of the office I work at, but then realize it's just dust settling on the fan, and I can no longer tell if it's night or morning.

In that spirit, here's a collection of spaced out, atmospheric tunes, pieces, and improvisations suited for drifting away on cosmic rays of insomnia, workaholism, and/or drug abuse.

I should also mention that this installment in "Alone and Forsaken" is partially a shameless plug for a good friend of mine. You should check out his music, here.

Fade into you.

1. Νικκ Καβε αντ Ωαρρεν Έλλης-χάππυ Λαντ
2. John Lurie-Bella by Barlight
3. Popol Vuh-Tanz der Chassidim
4. Michael Wohl-Variations: Melatonin Blues
5. Γρουπερ-Δισενγαγεδ
 6. Cavedweller-Poison II
7. Will Oldham-Do What You Will Do
8. Sun Kil Moon-Heron Bloo
9. Josephine Foster-Where There Are Trees
10. Dirty Beaches-The Death March
11. Moon Dog-Theme and variations
12. βριαν Ενώ-Αλλ θε Σταρς βερε ούτ
13. Crimewaves-Sun Rays
14. Peaking Lights-All the Sun that Shines

Solar Snake-s/t EP (2012)

 * Bands/musicians: if I take a long time to respond to you or post yr stuff, it's not indifference but the fact that I have to act like an adult in between bouts of imitating Lester Bangs.*

Solar Snake is from Murmansk, Russia, a lovely port fronting on the White Sea. This drug punk in chief ain't no dummy, and knows where Murmansk is! It was a major shipment point for military hardware goin' to Crazy Uncle Joe during The Big One (World War II), and was also where Elizabeth I of England's emissaries landed when initiating diplomatic contacts with Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century.

Historical geography lessons aside, Solar Snake gushes through some sloppy, noisy, distortion-overloaded blues-meets-shitgaze on what I assume is their debut EP. This falls somewhere between the tuneful end of drone and the harsh, anti-social end of lofi indie: there's a thick, muddy layer of guitar fuzz slathered over everything like peanut butter covering mouldy bread. Deep beneath the guitar squall, the singer intones in what could be Russian or English (honestly the vocals are mixed too low for me to tell) while the rhythm sections plods through their sections. "Rumble" brilliantly plagiarizes the riff of "Yr Gonna Miss Me" by 13th Floor Elevators, but slows it down and strips it to a savage, naked howl. Definitely the best track here. Instead of shredding, like the Roky original, it slithers along, draggin' you in its oil-slicked wake. Nod out to this after guzzling a bottle of robitussin and downing some acid.

I just got home, wasted and alone, and Solar Snake is shaping up to be a good accompaniment to a July evening where the sun doesn't go down til 9 pm: the noisy guitar licks are my companion in isolation, and there's a chilly, frigid feel to the whole thing that has something to do either with the guitar-domination nature of the recording, or the fact that this band is recording in the most populated city north of the Arctic Circle. Either way, keep on keepin' on, Solar Snakes!

Listen to the Snakes here. ROCK ON, RUSSIA!

Lebenden Toten-Cataleptic Noise Contamination CS (2008)

The Fourth of July is one of the few annual occasions upon which I will post things political on Drug Punk-for my problems with the genre of anarchopunk, read this. I'm not fetishizing apolitical apathy, but rather tacitly acknowledging the inherent silliness of protest music. Anyway, enough blabbling; last year it was Tragedy's best record ever, this year it's a 2008 tour cassette from Portland's finest.

The tracks on here are nothing radically different from previous and future LT releases: savagely distorted dbeat misery, with contorted, frantic drumming and guitar that sounds like electrodes sparking just before they hit yr neuron receptors. Noise punk has been trendy lately, but Lebenden Toten is the only band that can hold their own against the originators of the genre like Disorder, Confuse, Gism et. al.: the band is incredibly tight (playing this fast is an art form unto itself), and there's nothing superfluous in any of the songs. Chanel's lyrics cover a variety of topics, but can be summed up pithily: late capitalist society is a cancerous body too atrophied to kill itself, and instead keeps itself going on the productive energies of us all. We built it, why don't we destroy it?

So throw this on, and melt yr brain on fireworks or distortiontildeafness, it's yr choice. I'm reblogging this from Robert's most excellent blog, Terminal Escape.

Horrible Houses-Kathy EP (2012)

'Nother Sunday, 'nother hangover, 'nother Horrible Houses EP to review. I'm in fine Grumpy Gus mode, so this one'll be short.

 If you've been reading Drug Punk for any length of time, you've prolly stumbled upon previous reviews of previous HH releases. If you dug the earlier ones, you'll dig this: dude's up to his same 'ole tricks. Extended guitar noodlings over basic (like, hi-hat 'n' snare basic) drummin', talk-hummed singing. Meandering tunes with sweet melodies buried just beneath the surface. I think I  like "Kathy (Psychic Ending" more than "The Yellow House," but there's something enchanting about the prolonged, minimal 10 minutes of "Yellow House" such that it's all I've been playin' today.

For some reason I'm always hungover when reviewing HH work, and it's pretty good hangover material 'cause it's avantgarde in a non-noisy way. That said I'm gonna go stick my head in a bucket of ice and chill out, y'dig? Whatever.

You can listen to the two tracks over at the HH Soundcloud page. Y'know you wanna. Do it.