Running-s/t LP (2010)

Holy studded assflap, Batman! This thing is sick! DNA spool of dysentery sick! Contagious contamination sick! Oh yeah!

The Permanent Records writeup of Running describes them as "psych/punk." I take that to mean "psych" as in "psychotic," not "psychedelic." There's nothing psychedelic about this record. Unless you yourself are a bit psychotic. This is a yowling, yammering acid bath of reverb and mutilated howling.

 But there's obvious artifice to Running's bathroom-cleaner binge. One of the great conceits of noise rock is that you can just turn on a switch and the music will create itself. WRONG. At first listen, this album sounds like a collection of fragments. The cymbals fade in and out of focus, songs fall off a cliff instead of ending, and I think the guitarist just leaned his guitar against the amp and walked away, with the tape running, in between takes.
  But then you start to realize that those transitions are a little too sharp, that surf guitar intermezzo at 1:30 into "Garbage Truck" too clever, for this to be a bunch of SAIC amateurs fiddling with feedback. The opening ~5 minute dirge, "Garbage Truck," is actually a series of snarling snippets that (I'm assuming) captures the band's live sound well: the transitions are seamless, the assault pacifies you into inattention, and towards the end of the set/song the random changes in tempo give you a horrid taste of vertigo. "Pillow Talk Revisited" begins as a standard punk riff Varispeeded to death, before another amazing tempo shift that drags the band back to their usual pukeoid pace. A few posts ago, I described Running as the perfect soundtrack to rhythmic convulsions, and this LP fully supports said statement.

You'll love Running if, like this upstanding citizen, your wine never comes in a corked container.

Gurgling bloody mess.  Support some righteous doods and buy said gurgling bloody mess here.

Loose Dudes/Running split 7" EP (2010)

 Split seven inches are a dicey proposition, especially in the world of punk/noise. If the two bands have the same sound, what's the point of the split? On the other hand, put two bands that are utterly dissimilar on the same slab 'o' wax, and there's a good chance fans will opt for a full recording by whichever of the two they prefer.

 This split, a co-production of Catholic Tapes and Priority Male, manages to strike a nice balance between Loose Dudes raucousness and Running's static panic attack. "Black Preacher" is on the Permanent Sex Vacation EP (see below), but this version's better, for my money. The mix is cleaner, which makes for a better balance between the drums/vocals and the guitar. The bridge is sweet-sorta like that scene in Blues Brothers where Jake & Ellwood attend James Brown's service, only if Agent Orange was playing instead of the gospel choir.

"Father's Day" sheds any pretense of being anything other than a drinking tune, which is fine; perhaps as a result, the Dudes have never sounded tighter. There's a subtle line between fast punk and outright thrash, and the Dudes straddle it smashingly-the guitarist really starts to fuckin' wail towards the end, then they start mumbling about 'shrooms. Go figure.

Tonight, the crazy man who lives across the courtyard from me was ranting about killing someone in Italian and English when I put on the Running side, which was actually a good accompaniment. The tune really reminds me of the opening of Decline of Western Civilization, with LA punks slamming the shit out of each other to X's "Nausea." Not that Running sounds like X-it's just a good accompaniment to rhythmic convulsions, or said crazy man's homicidal fantasies. The singer sounds like he's arguing with himself at the bottom of an elevator shaft, and the song sort of collapses in on itself towards the end, with a loopy, sputtering fade out.

This baby is gonna go fast, so contact the good folks at Priority Male to Pay Pal your way to sonic bliss, or at least something rad for that hangover. Oh, did I mention the artwork for this thing is amazing?