The Dictaphone-s/t (Totally Wired, 2013)

Quote-un-quote-noise-rock bands are a dime a dozen these days. Most of them drop forgettable records on forgettable labels, before sliding back into the scuzz pit of hipster trends and idiot fads that bequeathed us such luminaries of dogshit culture as The Killers.

Not so the Dictaphone, hailing from St. Martin's home town. First-gen No Wavers' avant garde pretensions aside, the fundamental intent of this sort of music is to annoy the listener, preferably in the most obvious and thus even more irritating way possible. The Dictaphone are past masters of this sort of nuanced-'cause-it's-not annoyance, and they don't let us down on their new(ish) LP. Everything I liked, and which you probably hated, about their previous essays in the obscene, is present here. Maybe the boys spent the past year huffing the ashes from St. Martin's reliquary, or they just found better recording equipment; either way, their sound is honed down into a precision-guided missile of pure, snide snark on this LP.

"About Blank" could be a lounge tune as written by Klaus Kinski: it offers the lilting repetition of lounge music, with a numbingly snide blandness I could only see the famous Hungarian dishing out. Nuthin' but a 4'4 time metronome, deadpan robot talk-singing, and the occasional blare of a synthesizer somewhere in the neon haze. There's a bit more life to "The Recording," but not much more. Really the best track here is number 3, "Verkehr." In my review of these guys' first LP, Let's Not, I described one song as ripping off the drumbeat from "All Tomorrow's Parties" while leaving the rest to the ages. Either these guys read the review and loved my comparison, or their speed habit coincides organically with a love of Lou Reed pop blueprints: "Verkehr" hijacks the bass vamp from "Rock & Roll" to weave it into a stand-alone piece of cosmic krautrock. Gradually this bass riff builds into a piece of coruscating majesty replete with animal-noise sound effects. "Hardness of Nuns" is the next highlight. Ditching the sophisto-70s references of "Verkehr," this is a bit of knuckle-dragging moron music almost as goofy as the Gorilla Biscuits LPs gathering mold in my record collection. This song sounds like if you spent all day reading 'ole Martin Heidegger then got punched in the face: you're still smart but in a really fucking stupid sorta way.*

Blahblahblah, if there's a point to this review it's that The Dictaphone is by far the best band making monotonous music these days.**

But don't trust my word for it, dear readers, FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF! Then you can buy the real deal from Vienna's Totally Wired, once you bow down and acknowledge the Dictaphone's brilliance. 

*Really, it's your fucking fault for reading that hippy dipshit's ontology mumbo-jumbo, anyway!
**Yes, that's a genre. If you don't believe me, ask my long-suffering friend who used to work at the record store with me. And no, I'm not telling you his name. Or why he would be an expert on monotonous music. He just is.

Toddi Wellman-Yeah! Lp (Cocktail Pueblo, 21013)

Back in business for the first time in a long time and broadcasting live from Crescent City, N'aleans...i.e. New Orleans, you idiots.

Anyway, figured I should kick off regular reviews with Toddi Weilman's latest, a weird, spaced out collection of space-and-or-kraut-rock-jams that goes by "Yeah!" This is a collection of sedate, totally weirded out wastoid rock. I've listened to this LP wasted on whiskey and weed for two days straight and still can't give it the "Stoner jams" approval rating, but that's probably a good thing-my room mate is a bona fide hippy, and all she listens to is techno garbage-so whatever.

Toddi Weilman, in any case, dishes out twelve tracks of heavily repetition-oriented garage slop on this LP. each song focuses in obsessively on a single riff, chord arrangement, rhythmic pattern, whatever...and then just stays in said pattern, til the cows come home. I listened to this before wandering around on Bourbon Street and when I got back, and it was a lot more interesting than said Bourbon Street. You'll dig it. Trust me. Whatever.

Hang out with Todi Weilman HERE!

The Dictaphone-Muzak EP (2011)

The Dictaphone brings you another piece of tightly-controlled misery on this late-2011 EP. Whereas the material on this year's Let's Not settles into a miserably mopy series of loping basslines and burble-growled incoherent lyrical nonsense, this is a bouncy, noisy, energetically contorted series of no-wave squall and harsh guitar. "Sleep Maps" even has one of those annoying fade-outs where it sounds like the guitarist left his guitar leaning against the amp and walked outta the room.

"Died Horny" is a delightful mix of maniacally repeated synth notes and guitar fuzz thrown together and put on repeat. I've had a headache for the last five days such that it feels like I left my brain sitting in a chair whenever I stand up, and this whole album sort of sounds like that. Y'dig? If not I don't care cause my head hurts too much to think right now. Goodbye.

Get loose. You can buy it from Schmalzgrub Audiokassetten.

The Feeling of Love-So Chocolate CS (2012)

The fact that a man is making out with a cat on the cover of this cassette tells you a lot about Metz's The Feeling of Love. Well, not that much, in fact, although it hints at the perversity lurking beneath the harsh red-and-black cover.

The Feeling of Love's sound has three components: shrill, scrollsaw guitar; arrhythmic, off-kilter drumming; and a singer who howls in what sounds to me like the male version of the woman from AIDS Wolf. Being a Frenchman, The Feeling of Love's singer is a lot snottier, in a punk sorta way.

This album might be a bit too long-noiserock terrorism is, after all, a delicate proposition for most audiences-but I dig it. "Because He's the Singer" is just an almost-tuneful guitar line that the singer bounces, howls, mewls, and talks around. Most of the time he seems to be discussing Jon Spencer Blues Explosion(?). "Jordan's Rules" sounds like it's gonna be the cathartic release after the first two miserably drudging tunes, but the opening guitar riff just keeps riffing: sorta like Plastic Crimewave Sound, there's no release to found here. The singer lectures/rants/stalks over this guitar in French.

"Hand Clap Girls" unravels the blooz punk roots of The Feeling: go figure, electronic handclaps feature heavily. The music is moronically simple in the same way that the best songs on The Stooges' first album was:intentionally boring, it sucks you into a hypnotized fixation. Hell, it almost makes ya bounce! Really, though, the gold gots ta go to "I'm Nothing but a Drunk Pussy": it's a blues stomp filtered through people who've listened to the No New York comp a few too many times. The whole thing blows up in a hissing, staticy mess halfway through: it's the brilliant core of the album. Hell, I liked it so much it's on the most recent installment of Alone and Forsaken.

Listen to the tape and then buy it here. Read an interview with the frontman, Guillaume, Marietta, qua.Follow The Feeling of Love and their shenanigans on facebook. Brought to you care of Schmalzgrub Audiokassetten label.

Tachycardie-Be Nice to Music EP (2012)

I don't think I've explained how much I hate southern California on Drug Punk, yet. That's kinda a different spiel than I wanna hold forth on here, but it's relevant insofar as listening to Tachycardie makes me wanna throw very sharp rocks into all the private pools that dot the (non-)neighborhood around my apartment. All those filthy rich bastards soakin' up the sun while the rest of us grind...
...anyways, Tachycardie blasts through seven tracks of twisted, constipated noise in the Big Black tradition on this EP. The wrecking-ball drums are mixed to the front, the guitars are a squalling mess in the background, and the singer's words get lost beneath the sonic muck as you empathize totally and completely with the noxious misery that would lead people to produce such contorted, misanthropic muck.

Really, they're a lot friendlier, sonically speaking, than Drug Punk favorites such as Billy Bao, Bloody Minded, and Brain Bombs, but they perfectly suit the misanthropic mire I'm in right now, so whatever, go shoot yr boss and then throw this record on. So there.
On Cocktail Pueblo Rex. If you read French.

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.

Jagwar Pirates-Full Total Complete Bronzeage LP (2012)

This is the second band I've heard recently that combines surf rock grooves with noise/mathrock savagery (the other being Sarongs), and while I'm uncertain how this mutation came about, I heartily approve of it.

The weird thing about traditional surf rock is that, although it requires a high level of technicality to play (sayeth my musician friends), it sounds dirt simple. Not so with Tours, France's Jagwar Pirates. These spawn of St. Martin wear their chops on their sleeves, and "Full Total Complete Bronzeage" (jeez, what's with all the superlatives, guys?) is a heartily enjoyable slice of tech-surf.

"Rocket Surf" perfectly showcases the speed-fuelled licks the Pirates spit out: sped-up Ventures riffs combine with spazzy, laser-precise drumwork for an extended instrumental workout. "Agony of the shadow in the dark and crus[h?]ed forest of Chinon' [what the fuck kinda name is this?] is more contorted: snap time changes intersperse tension-building drum fills. "Surf in Indre et Loire" is an interesting use of guitars tuned for a metal song in surf structures. The whole album careens towards the sprawling, seven-minute climax of "Death Valley 37," which rivals Hella in intricacy and bizarrely compelling instrumental psychosis: ricochet drumfills and trebly, insistent guitar soloing smash it up nice 'n' proper.

....anyways, if you're looking for some fucked up, spazztastic surf fuckery to brighten your March afternoon, check out Jagwar Pirates. Out on Cocktail Pueblo Records.

Drosofile-Mal b/w "Your Roberts" 7" (2011)

 "I was a teenage zombie...." pt 5 (in a semi-occasional series)

"Waddaya wanna be around other people for? Most of 'em suck anyways...."-barfly friend of Lester Bangs

For those of you who haven't figured it out by reading this blog regularly, I like getting drunk. A lot. As many of you know, getting wasted often involves a dizzying low at the end of the night.

Last week's dizzying low consisted of lurching mindlessly around a disgusting bar while Fear's "I love Living in the city" blasted on the PA. I had been drinking cheap beer all night, but then my caveman of a friend convinced me to take a few shots of vodka with him.

At this point, things spun out of control and everything morphed into a spiraling torrent of burbling shit, with lights blinking around me, peoples' words turning into ritualistic incantations of impending doom, and the music losing all rhythm and becoming a grey sludge of dissonance. After stumbling away from the girl I've been sweet on for three months, mumbling "water...gurgle...beer...gurgle....call me...gurgle...," I ended the night puking on my friend's front lawn. I think I killed his flowers.

This two-song EP from Gay Par-ee may in fact have been what they started playing at the bar after I drank that vodka: relentlessly churning, miserable, frustrated, stupid and self-destructive noise that sticks in your brain and refuses to leave except via a bowel movement. Obvious references are Brainbombs and Billy Bao, and I might like Drosofile almost as much as Brainbombs...

Also, there's something massively appropriate to the songs being sung in French: it just makes the scenes of debauched hell more believable, I guess. It also reminds me of the all-time champion of Francophone punk, Kickboy Face. The spiralling, record-stuck-on-repeat guitar chord(s) of "Your Roberts" is the coolest thing I've heard all week. Sounds like the whistle a bomb makes on its plummet target-ward.

Enjoy here, fuckers. SDZ Records, the people responsible for this atrocity, live here.

Catholic Spray-Fruits of the Moon LP (2010)

     Most of the current crop of garage-beachpop contingent here in the States can't get over or past trying to sound like they're a long-lost Phil Spector side project. Across the pond, however, a lot of the better Euro garage groups skipped that junk 'n' headed straight for the Nuggets collection.

   Mining the Nuggets vein for all it's worth, Paris' Catholic Spray dropped this 7-song collection of snarling, snotty blues punk last year. The lead guitarist gets off some sweet licks, and I love the singer's voice: the lyrics are unintelligible, but he gets over with the pure force of his howling. The trashed dual-harmony vocals on "The Only One" make it my flimflamfaveotune.

Frogfuck killjoy! Check out the CS webpage for tour dates and more albums....