Kent State-Walk through Walls EP (2011)

I have to respect anyone brazen enough to cover Guided by Voices, and a classic like "Pimple Zoo," nevertheless. Kent State does it pretty well, and they do shoegazey, chainsaw pop pretty well, too, on this, their third EP.

Featuring members of Baltimore's Deep Sleep, Kent State blasts out seven tracks of slouchy, buzzy, '90s-worshipping noise pop on "Walk Through Walls."  The best track is "Secrets for Sale," a wonderfully echoing, reverb-drenched slacker jingle-jangle perfect for summer days spent sippin' lemonade (or winter days wishing it was summer and drinking Jim Beam).

Like I keep sayin' on dis heer blog, the various strands of '90s underground rock-shoegaze, jangle pop, grunge, etc.-are back with a bang these days, and Kent State is doin' it well...check it out if you've worn out the grooves on your copy of "Alien Lanes" from excessive play.

Kent State lives here; you can buy the EP here.

Kent State/At the Heart of the World split CS (2012)

Wrapping up the Kent State tape series, this one features Bodymore, Murdaland's At the Heart of the World. You really need to be on different drugs to dig the two sides: I'd recommend booze and weed for KS, but break out the Valium and 'shrooms for ATHOTW.

The Kent State tunes veer away slightly from the  shoegaze bent of the previous two tapes, in favor of the jangle-pop displayed on the Walk Through Walls EP. "Past Lives" is wasted fuzz pop, while "Last Meal" sounds like something that one of the original Slumberland Rex bands coulda made. I wanna say that Nick's going in a Brianjonestownmassacre direction with "Big Iron Door:" chanted vocals, maracas, lightly-strummed acoustic guitar, etc.

At the Heart of the World is quite a departure from the Kent State side, and the split tape series as a whole. Instead of Nirvana worship (Airlooms) or orchestral dream pop (Doleful Lions), we get three chunks of vicious, sadistic noise a la peopling or Dominick Fernow's various maladies. I don't dig this stuff too much these days-turns out it's a bad idea to embrace one's inner demons-but I like these three crunching, lurching slabs of disgust with humanity. I think that the three songs are remixes or alternate takes on the same programming.

Dig it here, dear fux.

Kent State/Airlooms split CS (2012)

This is the second installment in the Kent State split tape trilogy. KS delivers three more of their trademark wasted dreampop. If MBV's "Loveless" had a cinematic quality to it, KS' stuff on these tapes is episodic: I find that it accompanies wasted nights spent aborting bottles of cheap red wine and downing painkillers quite well. I really dug the howling guitar denouement of "Interest Position."
 Kent, Ohio's Airlooms smashes out two tracks of churning alt-rock ca. 1993-94. I really can't make up my mind on them. The lazy guitar riffs and shambolic rhythm section are endearing, but sometimes the singer seriously overdoes the Kurt Cobain affectations. The vocals sound a lot better on "No One" than "Cheyanne." Best in small doses, especially if you listen to a lot of Nirvana. They're a lot closer to KS' sound than the other bands in the split series, Doleful Lions and At the heart of the World, so it's a natural transition.

You can download, and then buy, the tape over at Kent State's bandpage.

Kent State/Doleful Lions split CS (2012)

As a lot of you prolly know already, Nick from Kent State is inaugurating the new year in fine fashion by dropping a triad of split cassettes on us.

This one, with Chapel Hill's Doleful Lions (now based in Chicago), is an auspicious start. Whereas KS' previous release, Walk Through Walls, wore its Guided By Voices influences on its sleeve (to the point of covering "Pimple Zoo"), they're going for a heavier, washed out sound on this tape. The guitar is a lot less colossal than the heroes of this genre-Dinosaur, Jr., MBV-but the slurred vox, blurry guitar, and echoed drumming all make me think of flannel, long hair, and bad downers. "DNA" may be my favorite KS tune: artfully wasted double-tracked(?) guitar, hazy J. Mascis-esque singing, and an artfully wasted sensibility really set it apart.

Chapel Hill/Chicago's Doleful Lions have been around since 1996; this is the first I've heard by them. "Solar Christmas" and "Night Castle" are clean, undistorted, tightly constructed pop tunes. The arrangements are beautiful, and somehow remind me of this rich girl I accidentally fell for in high school.

 KS and Doleful Lions together are a good antidote to January depression. Pop this on, turn on your sunlamp, and get wasted, bro.

You can download the tape for free, and buy it for $5, on Kent State's bandcamp page. Or you can save some cash and buy this with the other two tapes in the split series. Which I'll be reviewing in the next week or so.

Guest mixtape: Kent State

So Nick from Kent State sent me this mix about two months ago and, industrious young man that I am, it took me that long to get around to spinning it.

If you're into fuzzy '90s grunge/shoegaze/blahblahblah, yer gunna dig this. I vaguely remember seeing a lot of these bands in my local record store's bins back in the late '90s. Highlights include My Vitriol's cover of the Wipers' "Wait a Minute," the GBV tracks, and Kent State's Nirvana cover (f you can't figure out which one that is, I can't help you).

Check it out here, and download it here.

Kent State-Behind Closed Doors EP (2012)

Kent State does it again, on their slickest release yet. Continuing to develop the vein hinted at on their slew of early 2012 EPS, these are four songs of polished '90s retro jams.

"Behind Closed Doors" manages the difficult feat of sounding as cocky, confident and brash as any Brian Jonestown Massacre or Dandy Warhols song. Tambourines, backing female vocals and clean production set this apart from previous KS tunes. "Disconnected," featuring Airlooms, makes it very clear that the singer's disconnected from society and really doesn't give a fuck. "Formaldehyde" continues the brash tone of the first two songs, but "Time Crimes II" might be my favorite track on the EP. Opening with gently strummed guitar and distant, indecipherable singing, "Time Crimes II" slows the pace down and effectively changes tempos. After the swagger and snottiness of the first three songs, it hints at something different lurking behind the 90s popisms.

Download the EP here, then BUY THE THING HERE. Check out the video for "Behind Closed Doors" here.

Deformities-Sometimes I Wish for my Own Death EP (2013)

What do you get when you throw Bodymore's finest together? The best throwaway EP of the year (anyone who thinks that a record consisting of 2 songs that don't exceed two minutes can't be the year's best EP shouldn't be reading this blog). Drew from Sick Thoughts and Nick from Kent State team up for epic, and epically brief, scuzzfuckery on this one.

The eponymous opening track mixes the hilarity and relentless monotony of Sick Thoughts' best with the (slightly) better production and (slightly) more complex guitar work of Kent State. A goblin may have invaded the studio while they were cutting "Still Separated II," to take over signing duties. The guitar slices in and out, and Drew's arrhythmic patter makes it sound like to drummers were dueling while the tape was rolling.
There's not much else to say: you either love sloprock noise or hate it. The latter type can fuck off, the former can revel in Deformities' idiot majesty.

A Sop to the Masses, or, Watch this:

Stumbled home blitzed outta my mind and was pleasantly surprised to find two videos in my email. So while I count up enough quarters to go buy more beer, y'all should check out these flicks, new Kent State video and a documentary of the first Deadshits Festival in Brisbane:

Aaaaaannndddd....Kent State!:

2013 Year-End Lists: Tapes, Demos, and assorted Miscellanies

What follows is the first installment in my year-end list. EPs and LPs will follow; this here is a list of tapes and other jazz. Most of this is hardcore or punk, since it's mostly punks that bother doing demos these days. The exceptions are mostly recordings I liked but didn't quite fit the LP/EP format, but were fuggin' good, and you should, uh, buy 'em.

Prag:
These guys were huffing glue and beating up nerds for their copies of the Negazione discography while you were studying for high school finals, kiddies. Named after a piece of American prison slang (watch "Oz" if you don't get it!), Prag dishes out majestically vicious noisepunk that bridges the garage//punk gulf. The rhythm section's a grist mill threshing through granite, the singer's a demented gremlin, and the guitarist very well might have murdered Crazy Spirit's guitarist and stolen his notebook of guitar tabs.

Prag is a hot band to watch in 2014: scuzzy enough for the garage kids, noisy and bratty enough for the ponx, and they can even write songs coherent enough that maybe some civilians could dig 'em too.

You can buy the demo and bash your brains out HERE.

Shoplift:
6 tracks of bitter, isolated noise that fly by in a flurry of desperation, muttered declamations, and manic drum fills. Helsinki's Shoplift reminds me of Warsaw:  they probably don't have such a luminous craeer ahead of them, but there's the same crude sense of rhythm and rudimentary skill at song-writing. This is despite (because of?) the fact that it sounds like the band recorded each instrumental track in separate rooms and then glued these tracks together, on top of each other. Basically, this is what punk should sound like: young, desperate, and with a trace of talent beneath the sonic muck.
Shoplift is nice enough to let you download the tape for free, which you can do HERE.

Deformities-Sometimes I Wish for my own Death EP:
The more I listen to it, the more I think that Nick and Drew pre-programmed a coupla drone-droids to record this, went out on a two-day bender, came back, and uploaded the results to bandcamp.

This 2-song EP is a note-perfect statement of why we all listen to noise and garage: Sheer obnoxiousness, first and foremost. There are also occasional glimmers of musicianship somewhere in there, along with grunted/growled gremlin  noises of, presumably, hatred and wishing for one's own death.

If you like these guys' other projects (Sick Thoughts and Kent State), you're guaranteed to like B-More's Deformities. Bratty, not retarded.

Gay Kiss-Summer 2013 demo:

My my, are these boys angry. Like, apoplectic fits of rage in the Mojave Desert angry. Bashing yourself in the face with the mic over and over, angry. The sort of anger that gave us grindcore.

Somehow Gay Kiss makes mindless masculine rage appealing, though. This tape is three tracks of demented-yet-highly-mannered hardcore violence. There are even blastbeats in there, at times! Save this one for the truly bleak days when you're not just thinking about killing yourself, you're actually trying to figure out what's the quicker way to die, pills or jumping off a bridge.*
Buy it, or not, HERE
*To quote a character in The Sopranos, "if you wanna try suicide, pills are A LOT easier."

Barbiturates-Shades 10":
I stumbled upon this band while trying to buy barbiturates with BitCoins.

That's a lie, but it could be true (if I knew how to use and/or buy BitCoins). Brisbane's Barbiturates are serious fucking downer music, though. This EP is like going to the prom blitzed out of your mind on whatever pain pills your parents keep in the family pharakopeia: there's a synth beat pulsing in the background, things are mellow, but there's a pervasive sense of irritation somewhere in the background, which will in due time rear its ugly head. Probably when you sober up, come January 2014. Nah I'm just kidding, this is fun music, save it for your next hangover!

Buy the EP for a reasonable 1 dollar, HERE!

Shape Breaker-Eyes Wide CS:
Extended My Bloody Valentine paraphrases, stellar guitar rave-ups, a singer who could very well be the asshole behind BrianJonesTownMassacre: this is Shape Breaker. If you want endless guitar riffs, bratty vocals, and drumming that seemingly never ends, go buy this tape. Good for drinking highly alcoholic red wine to.

Buy the cassette LP here!

Carburetor Dung: best of 2011 mixitup

I hate making lists these days but, good interweb pundit that I am, my Top [insert number here] lists will be up at some point around the New Year. In the meanwhile, here's a mix of some of my faves from the Lester Bangs school of noiseschlock to tide all you weirdoes over...happy boozin'!
smash it up!

1. The Band in Heaven-Sleazy dreams
2. Shoppers-I
3. Art Fad-.......
4. Piresian Beach-Take Me
5. Catholic Spray-Kiss the Smack
6. Kent State-Walk Through Walls
7. Whatever Brains-the Fisher
8. Bass Drum of Death-Nerve Jamming
9. Natural Child-A Man Makes His Own Way
10. The Alright Alreadies-Disconnected
11. Royal Headache-Eloise
12. Triptides-Beneath the Sun
13. Sex Church-Dull Light
14. Horrible Houses-Midlands
15. Sarongs-Police Chase
16. Acid Kicks-Masonic Tide
17. Opus Null-Alkotmanyos anarchia
18. Broken Water-Kansas
p.s.-I think that the Broken Water track actually is from 2010, but, uh, I got the record it's taken from this year...sofugginwhatyeah?

Sick Thoughts-Need No One 7" (2013)

So in case you fuckers haven't heard or noticed, B-More's Sick Thoughts is the current toast of the null-node-garageville-scene (constituted by me, whatever bartender can stand my presence here in the Old Country, a rolling pouch of Vannelle tobacco, and a bottle of bottom-shelf gin). Monsieur Jay Reatard left a massive void in all uv ower hartss when he kciked the bucket awhile ago and, dare I say it, add two or three more years to his run than I envision him actually goin', and Sick Thoughts' Drew will (is, in fact) fill[ing] said void.

Yup, the I-don't-give-a-fuck-but-God-do-I-love-Rock vibe I always got from Jay's best shines, even spits and shouts,* through, on everything Sick Thoughts has shat out since its brilliantly moronic inception. Which is a lot, in fact-dood has thrown three or more proper releases at us since the beginning of 2013, in addition to the sickeningly-awesome collabo project he's got goin' with Nick from Kent State.
All of this makes for preemo-primeo noise, voidoids. "Need No One" has everything you need for a great Saturday night: throwaway guitar leads that Johnny Ramone woulda thought rude, drums that Tommy never bothered learning 'cause they're that crude, and vocal lines that, and I have it on good information straight from whatever Ramone is still alive, y'all, Joey himself wrote and then discarded in a dumpster in Queens ca. 1976 'cause the kids at CBGBs woulda laffed him outta da rooom for singin' 'em. This beautifully beshitted 7" is ample proof that dood behind the sleez, Sick Thoughts don't need no one, and neither should you!

Get the picture? No? Well let me illustrate it WITH CRAYONS, you stupid cunts. Good, I finished this review and now I can get back to drinking gin straightout ov a plastik cupp.

Anyways, if you love crude rock and everything it entails, go buy yrself a pack of smokes, go home, blast this as you get blackout drunk, then start yr evening. I love you all, shitbirds.

*Especially given the blatant aesthetic rip-off-appeal of the cover aesthetics. JR LIVES, SHITBIRDS!

Best of 2012: EPs, etc.

1. Kitchen's Floor-Bitter Defeat
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No one else came close this year. Two songs of heartfelt, savagely emotional white blues from Brisbane (the digital version includes two alternate takes and a track from Matt Kennedy’s pre-KF project). Kennedy has been bashing out noisy, tuneful downer pop for years now, but this is easily his best work. I won’t bother going into detail on this one-I wrote a longreview of it earlier this month-and most of you have probably heard this one already. If you bought one record in 2012, I hope it was this one; if you buy one in 2013, make it this. 

2. Meat Thump-Box of Wine

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These two songs do battle with The Men’s “Turn it Around” as the best piece of rock ‘n’ roll released in 2012. They’re a testament to Brenden Annesley’s song-writing talents, his sense of humor, and the strength of the Aussie rock scene right now. Both songs clang,bang, and drag themselves through an alcoholic muck of Cleveland-indebted riffs and rhythmic patterns, while Annesley deadpans tales of alcoholic impotence, indifference to things that ain’t fun, and boxes of wine. Annesley will be much missed for a number of reasons; one of them is that we can’t look forward to more Meat Thump songs. If you buy two records in 2013, this should be the other one.

 3. Muuy Bien-s/t 

 

--> I didn’t listen to a lot hardcore this year, but this was the best HC record I did hear-probably in part because it’s art punk, not hardcore per se. Muuy Bien managed the unlikely feat of convincingly recreating the vibe of The Middle Class’ “Out of Vogue” EP on this one. The speed, the snide vocals, the arty pretensions: it’s all there. Four truncated hardcore punk tracks, none of them longer than a minute, followed by a weirdo guitar instrumental closer to John Fahey than the Germs. This one is a real keeper. Buy it from Mellow Riot records.

4. Piresian Beach-Alle Falle

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 Zsofia saved the best for last. The final PB record really pulled together the garage punk ramshackleness and psychedelic tinge of her previous records, and stitched them together into 6 songs to get zonked on acid to. The ramshackle punk vibe, in fact, cedes center stage to a big guitar sound, especially on “Play Today,” and Zsofia’s hazy, wasted singing voice is perfect for it. This EP is like a warm bath to sit in while grooving on hallucinogens. Pop a beer, settle in, and enjoy the freakout.

 5. Sonic Death-Gothic Sessions

  Sonic Death could very well be The Sonics caught in a time portal and somehow spirited away to Petrograd. If you want to hear the best that the international garage scene has to offer in 2012, this is where to start. All of the songs on this EP are real songs: they have discernible, distinct beginnings, middles, and endings, instead of just being whambam pieces of noise. Sonic Death knows their rock ‘n’ roll history but unlike a lot of bands working in this genre, they’ve managed to create a sound all their own.  I hadn’t heard this EP since reviewing it back in May, and I had forgotten that every song here stands on its own. SD has released a slew of excellent records this year; start with this one, then wind your way through their twisted maze of garage wizardry.

 6. Wild Moth-s/t

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San Francisco’s Willd Moth is a band to watch in 2013. I’m just gonna quote my buddy Max’s writeup of these guys: “Wild Moth wastes no time in making with a cacophony of hooks and croons whose assault on your eardrums leaves a sticky residue in your brain. Pretty, almost bubblegum components are thrown together in a manic frenzy.” Seriously, this EP is a fantastic piece of bittersweet guitar-driven pop, bitter enough to nurse your depression with but catchy enough that you can hum along to most of these songs. Get into it. 

 7. Buso-3E
Everyone and their fucking brother is making synth-based new/post/dark/cold/whateverwave these days. Most of this stuff is a stinking pile of shit. It helps, if you’re going to make a stinking pile of shit and call it music, if you can hide your lack of passion or skills behind a synthesizer, since played the right (wrong) way, it hides this lack of the essentials behind mechanical efficiency.

Buso’s “3E” was one of the few convincing pieces of bedroom synth music I heard this year. “Summer Skins” in particular is a majestic synth-guitar combination with a killer series of guitar notes stretched out over a numbing synth beat. It’s a simple song but for whatever reason, this guy does it like he means it. “Mutual Valley” could be everyone’s favorite dance song in hell, while “leaving” is a blissed out crescendof of swirling effects and a clanging beat. Check this out to remember why you got into “coldwave” in the first place.

 8. Nite Fields-Vacation

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This was the other good darkwave (or whatever the hell you wanna call synth-driven post punk) EP I heard this year. The beat and guitar riff of “Vacation” are absolutely infectious, and if anything could get me out of my chair and onto the dance floor, it would be this. The track gradually builds and builds, flattens out into a fuzzy bridge, then closes on a clattering cluster of organ notes. “Hell/Happy” is more introspective, for the morning after an excessive bender. Treat these two songs as a bracket for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

 9. Batu Kan Pesti Rokona-Mezofoldi Kozmosz

 

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Strictly for the adventurous and the truly weird among my readers. I think that this one will be forgotten about and then, maybe twenty years down the line, some overeducated music nerd will rediscover dude and laud him to the skies. Long after it’s too late to do Batu or anyone else any good, of course.

Anyway, on this EP we’re treated to a truly confusing and challenging hodgepodge of punk, space rock, improvised guitar experimentation, and just plain eccentricity. There are traces of Opus Null’s sound-dude plays guitar in that band-but this goes way off the deep end. “Araben’ is a mid-tempo krautpunk (think Teenage Panzerkorps on even more drugs) banger that slips off into fuzzed out, drum-less humming. Things get really interesting on “Panelhazi Ugros,” though, and showcases what makes this record so memorable. Batu develops a series of guitar soundscapes that are inimitable; psychedelic rock is a genre of music, but his guitarscapes are psychedelic in that you imagine whole landscapes when listneing to them.

 10. A Black People-Red Eyes
Big ups to Robert at Terminal Escape for turning me on to this band. A Black People does a great job of reviving the sound of early ‘80s SoCal deathrock bands (45 Grave, Christian Death) etc. while keeping up a snide, snotty punk vibe under the macabre façade. This EP is ragged and crude, and attractive for just those reasons. The singer sounds like the snotty, holier-than-thou pretentious asshole who works at your local record store, who goes home every night and gets bombed out listening to Sisters of Mercy. Unlike most bands in this genre, ABP strings together two 7 minute+ songs that are worth listening to in their entirety. Play on, kiddies, play on.

Other Hot EPs:

Summer Schatzies-Take me to Bohemia

Preludes-New York

Solar Snakes-s/t

Useless Eaters-Addicted to the Blade

Walrus-Odobenus Rosmarus

Teen Suicide-Goblin Problems

Top Five Cassette Releases:

Faggettes-Vols. 1 & 2

Trauma Harness-The Way you Press Harder

Kent State/Doleful Lions split

Psychic Blood-Autumn Curses

The Feeling of Love-So Chocolate

 Best Demos:

Violent End

Michael Wohl

Teens