Don't Burn The Fires

... On a more wholesome note, I give you the crowning couple of the husband-and-wife band trend, which has spread like wildfire throughout indie scenes since. Toody and Fred and their various drummers still wear the belt for hardest working, most solid and sonically consistent performing, producing independent artists. With a recorded output that didn't quit for eighteen years, Dead Moon have left in their tombstone shaped shadow a legacy of life changing and heart breaking anthems. The legacy began with this record, packed with ballads of rock 'n' roll's seedy past and foreboding future. From the opening twang and drum hit of In the Graveyard to the chillingly somber singing and dreamy guitar of Dead in the Saddle, from the meddling drones of Don't Burn the Fires to the bitter sorrow of I Hate the Blues, In The Graveyard is the prototypical Dead Moon trip, and a fantastic introduction to one of Portland's longest running music/culture institutions.

I'm never comin' home

Don't shoot the messenger

Disclaimer: I in no way take lightly, am unsympathetic to experiences of nor, least of all, condone rape. I have known both women and men who have been sexual assault and rape victims. My contact with these issues on a personal level has fixed my stance to be staunchly intolerant of the moronic "cultural" insensitivity that arises around these issues. However, I am an enemy of any kind of censorship or inhibition of freedom of speech, including PC-motivated forms of this. If the issue exists in our society, it must be talked about. Making people afraid to use the word 'rape' or address the fact - in any light - that such inhumanities exist is several steps backwards in regards to ever resolving or dealing with such an issue. Music has been the only platform for much discussion of omnipresent social taboos over at least the course of the last half a century and more. I refuse to accept that there is any subject that cannot be addressed through music and lyricism as we have very thoroughly closed so many other doors to avenues of discussion of these topics culturally. With that, I give you both one of the most controversial and influential bands of the 1980s:

Whether you love or hate him (I go back and forth), Steve Albini's impact on electric guitar-based music, record engineering and independent music making is indelible. While his assumed "politics" (remember that term audio-politics I coined?) and overall anti-populist approach to every aspect of the music business has polarized general opinion of him, the sonic signature he left is far from being forgotten. This short-lived, highly provocative follow-up band to his Big Black, named after a disturbing Japanese manga series, are an example of Albini's musical memorability, in spite of negative public reaction. The fact that the comic book which the band cited as the source of the name garnered nowhere near as much criticism (if any at all) from protesters of the band evidences a late 80s PC mentality that was not in search of addressing larger issues but prefered they be skirted and not brought up at all. In case you were wondering, the music here is not overly offensive nor explicit, in fact I'd say less so than most of Big Black's output. Sonically, this is confrontational music, like the rest of Albini's catalog. Being the first band of his with drums, there are amazingly audible similarities to the sounds of bands he would later engineer, such as Nirvana. Vocally, Steve really comes into his own here, defining the soft/loud approach that would mark the grunge era. The recorded sounds themselves are impressively defined, marking the beginning of his thorough 'precise presentation of performance' style of strategic mic placement and minimal effects/overdubbing. Nods to the Cockrock canon of bands like Golden Earring and ZZ Top, with numbers like Radar Love Lizard and a cover of the latter's hit, Just Got Paid, continue what I see as Albini's career-long satire of rock patriarchy. This is where I feel the lyrical subject matter of Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac are most widely misconstrued. It is one thing to be a man making rock music with other men obliviously, another to self-criticize and try to eschew that cliche and another entirely to try and embody all the negative implications of the cliche. I, for one, commend Mr. Albini for his attempt at the latter. After all, isn't that what punk was all about?

This file is really big for some reason...

ABOLISH ALL YOUR IGNORANT THOUGHTS NOW !

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it. There is so much shit going on in the world, especially my world, right now; people fighting for what we assumed too long to be our given rights and getting tear gassed. Students on strike because they've learned something from school and those that haven't opposing to keep blindly feeding into the business model that will make our Universities into men-in-suits-with-briefcases factories and leave the concept of class mobility and personal betterment through public education in the dust. We need this kind of apocalyptic idealism right now, or I do anyways. Take a bite out of that Crunchy Bar guitar tone and the bludgeoning drum machine gun precision of Mick Harris, who bashed buckets on Scum the very same year this came out. Be confused by the 20sec-1min tributes to the band's favourite cartoon cat and friends. Be astonished by the nihilistic brutality that accompanies them. Look into your nuclear crystal ball and see the end times. Abolish all your ignorant thoughts now!

Uninformed

She Was Different

   

  Git In There!

  

Anti-Love 

Even with the recent renaissance of interest in her highly innovative musical output, Betty Davis remains one of the most underrated figures in music. Leave out the all-too-talked-about marriage to and influence on Miles Davis (we get it), being backed by some of the funkiest line-ups ever (among their ranks former Family Stone members, Herbie Hancock, Alphonse Mouzon...) and an unmistakeable image, Betty Davis should be praised for the sexual revolutionary that she was. Her in-your-face "I don't give a damn" lyrics were light years ahead of the misogynistic implications of the free love movement and waspy conservatism of second wave feminism. Betty took the female objectification being glorified in male musical circles at the time and threw it back in the mainstream's face. She showed that seduction, sexual deviation and promiscuity have implicit power and were not simply tools for gender oppression and championed other taboo sexuality like masturbation ("In The Meantime"). As for the music, it reminds us pungently of where the term funk comes from. You can practically smell these bass and guitar licks while drums and keys stay a throbbing pulse to keep your hips gyrating. Betty soars over it all with a vocal approach half-way between Sly Stone and Patti Smith. By the time of her third album, Nasty Gal, her vocals had grown into their own commanding raspy bellow of bedroom domination. Start with these two classics and see if you don't start sweating.

HAVE A HIT

The first PSF Tokyo Flashback compilation was my teenage introduction to the long and devote tradition of Japanese musical pyschedelia. Not sure, but it seems like at the time this was released it must have been a pretty exciting little pu pu platter of unearthed recordings obscure enough to make at least the western enthusiasts salivate. It was here that I got a formal penetrating of my virgin ears to the disturbing utterances of one Keiji Haino, both alone in a large room and with his longstanding ensemble 不失者 (Fushitsusha). What this little sampler does particularly well is present both the rocking, wanking (High-Rise, White Heaven) and the dark, mystical (Ghost, 不失者, 光束夜, 灰野敬二) sides of the early Japanese scene, as well as those that are the summation of both (Marble Sheep , Verzerk). As far as personal faves go I needn't go on about the importance of Haino or his veteran act (whose 1990 live session here will fuck you up), however I cannot speak highly enough of Verzerk or 光束夜 (Kousokuya). The former, although somewhat trad, deliver a crusher of fuzzy lead heavy psych bordering on metal which the internet claims to be their only work. This is perhaps explained by two of the members evidently pictured literally behind bars in the liners. Kousokuya on the other hand yield what seems to be a characteristically suffering and broken performance that gets at a drunken and deeply depressed emotional interior to pysch rock's posturing facade. Though, really, I love every track, its hard not to also give High-Rise honourable mention for their contribution (notable namesake to the illustrious Japanese outfit from my last post) and clearly being way too cool, and loud, to hear anyone who accuses them of a dated aesthetic. Through live and studio representations, this comp communicates superbly the religiosity with which long-haired Tokyo-ites have practiced their duly inherited craft for decades. Although we weren't there, and we missed the acid, we can still have the Flashback.



Back in '95

Mellow Out

"Now that's a HIT!"

 Brooklyn ZOO!



Just saw that I only had four posts for January and started feeling guilty. Well, what do these three disparately legendary recordings have in common? They are all OLD and DIRTY... and DIRTAY! Just as aesthetic similarities can be drawn from Eric's Trip and Ulver's 90s four-track masterpieces, Mainliner, GBV and ODB formed these seminal works through seemingly similar DIY approaches. While four-track tape portastudios are likely implicated in each of these records, it is a whole other common element to these artist's worlds that each manages to capture on disc: dirt. Grit, degradation, imperfection; the creative influence of the presence of such qualities in these musicians' artistic environs shape their output and are readily acknowledged and, in one way or another, transformed. For Mainliner, dirstortion, fuzz and minimalistic repetition are a direct route, through hynoptic sonic immersion, to obscure subconscious realms. GBV's Robert Pollard understands the importance of the spontaneous recording (and beer) to capturing great melodies and pop sensibility. For Dirty, existence in the world's underside is the longest and most intensive scholarly experience and yields knowledge that is tangible through its universal cultural applicablity. Get dirty.

  

Canadian Metal Classics Pt. 4 - Winter Metal

It is that magical time of year when the thick, fluffy head of condensation spills from the heavens and covers my part of the world. It is a time of howling winds, hail that whips the earth like chains and engines stalling as their drivers accelerate into white death. It is the season where nature and technology alike go to die. What better mascot could it have than some spikey, spaghetti-mopped, webbed-mouthed, killing technology wielding stormtrooper???! And what better sound track than one of Canada's earliest contributions to international stereo grimness. Voivod are, to me, our Celtic Frost or Venom. From the get go, with this debut, they set about blurring the jagged lines of speed, thrash and heavy metal and punk. Owing about as much to Charged GBH or D.O.A. as Hellhammer or Slayer, Voivod were one of those fearless acts, like CF, who knew that one could crush just as easily at sludgey, slothful tempos as blazing fast ones. It is their similarly idiosyncratic style to the Frost's, which sacrifices no heaviness in maintaining a chilling atmosphere throughout, that set Voivod apart upon release of this criminally underacknowledged record and eventually gained them international appreciation. From the icey church bell hits that open the album to the ashen desolation of closer Nuclear War, War and Pain is a long, blackened trudge through Quebec winter replete with hulking snow drifts of doomy riffs and frigid frenzies of guitar violence at whirlwind tempos. Easily one of the most important records to the development of Thrash, Black and Death Metal as well as Crust Punk, this demands your worship. R.I.P. Piggy, forever.

Your Sky is Black Today

Curtain Call 2011

Well it might have taken us 30 years but Canada has issued its response to Intermittent Signals. But, in true blue canuck (add to dictionary) fashion Dog Day has woven twelve wintry tunes into a hockey sweater of sonic cozy. Dreams, woods, winter, Woofy, friends, travel, these are the make up of Dog Day's lyrical world and inform the sounds they capture within the comfort of their Nova Scotia country home. The album entrances the listener with its auditory warmth only to lead them down a bread crumb trail into the trees, at night, away from the streetlights and loud bars, the band's other life. As well as one can hear in Toody and Fred's rAT$ performances the frantic energy of city nightlife, Dog Day's hominess and intimacy are conveyed with amazing clarity through their compellingly insular songs. Listen to this at night 

in the woods    

Frank Ocean appears to be dubbing over and completely rewriting the faces of the mix tape. Using the format in the truest digital sense (free online download replete with uncleared samples) to release his latest album, the work is thoroughly influenced by the medium. Each track works to create its own detailed static image of a moment spent in reflection, not unlike Stetson's compositions on Judges. True to its title, Nostalgia quells its material from Frank's vivid remembrances, painted with outstanding melodies on a backdrop of pop tableau. From Novocane's euphorically subtle bass crescendos to American Wedding's thorough deconstruction of the atmosphere of a cultural anthem to Swim Good's existential desperation, Ocean takes the listener on a trip through a vibrantly experiential past. Forget Jay-Z and Kanye's Redding abomination, its Frank that will "give you chills harmonizing to Otis." 

We all try

Here's just what your NYE soundtrack needs. Hurry Up was probably 2011's biggest pay off. Extensively assimilating traits of the various styles throughout the band's more than a decade of constant evolution, this album delivers the perfected M83 recipe for hooky french synth pop with a potent 80s flavouring. One can hear echoes of the songwriting of the last three albums, but with all fat trimmed and catchy choruses abundant. The album delves at times into the ambient leanings of the group, branching out in composition out while maintaining and developing its unique textural environment. As far as I am concerned, Anthony Gonzalez has gone ahead and secured himself the throne of the prince of french dance pop.

The city is my church

This is so easily the boldest record of the year it sort of had to make number one on my list. Anyone who hates this already hated both the artists involved by this point, because it is the perfect synthesis of their respective styles. Whoever said this was Berlin meets Master of Puppets was dead on. No, it is not "accessible", I don't really understand why that is what people who would call themselves Lou Reed or Metallica fans would want. For 50 years Reed has been setting his unnerving poetry to conventional pop and rock as well as avant garde musical forms, it seems natural that he would tackle one of the monoliths of 20th Century metal to channel musically the horror of his images, and they do amazingly well. Its not the music here everyone hates, its the fearful awesomeness of this collaboration that they're not ready to handle. This record is too real for 2011, maybe people will get it in 2012, or 2112 and then it will be retrospectively lauded like a Metal Machine Music.

Happy New Years

Reverse Crystal

Yamantaka//Sonic Titan is a very cool art collective, I suggest you read about them on the interwebs. They also became a cool band this year and put together a simply amazing S/T record that invokes sounds reminiscent of gamelan, garage rock, Deep Purple, Can, Cure, Soft Machine, Amon Duul II and Cocteau Twins. Sounds pretty fucked right? It is. This psychedelic black noise soup is best served chilled with a heaping side of mind fog. Truly one of the more original projects active in the Montreal scene at this time. Bravo!

Sea of trees

Strangely Merciful

Perhaps the most unnerving quality to be found in the music on this record is the way in which its eerie arias float as comfortably above the earthy rhythms as a UFO above a vivid memory of your childhood home. Annie delivers alien material from her now familiar human form through which she manipulates us with her natural and artistic beauty. We being hardly the only thing manipulated, her clinical approach to the textures on Strange Mercy shows Clark's meticulous control and integration of all elements of her music as a defining characteristic of her recorded output up to now. While she tightens up the rhythmic/chordal palette and restricts herself to 3 or so guitar tones, Annie continues to cultivate and communicate her expressionist pop tendencies, isolating into lead gestures that move in parallel to the songs' pulses. Take, for instance, the "Bodies..." motif of lead single Cruel; the near operatic, soaring melody disjointedly floats atop an updated disco beat and is continually interrupted by the song's hooky verse and choruses. In much the same way St. Vincent super-imposes her geometric mannerist melodies with fuzz guitar onto her deeply magnetic moods. Bearing its weak links (Cheerleader, Hysterical Strength) the album overall shows an interplay between Annie's guitar and the rest of the instruments that would seem to reflect her still rapidly developing ability to write for unique ensembles. A fun trip.

Champagne year

Strangely fascinating

If there was a debut this year of an artist who came out guns blazing, it was this one. About as afraid of pretension as of being too rock 'n' roll, EMA's Past Life Martyred Saints delivers the kind of unforgiving and self-confident individuality its title suggests. While evoking a lineage of underground female rock icons too obvious to list, EMA stands out with her extremely bold and captivating songwriting which relies as much on its melodic simplicity as its stark arrangements and grainy production. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of this record is its utter lack of gimmick or novelty. For as blatantly "hipster" as her visual aesthetic can be, these songs are impressively original in their composition and arrangement while the lyrics, at first sounding overbearing, have a great depth to them. Sexually grimy, simultaneously culturally void and rich mimicking the both passionate and understated monotone of her singing. She's almost Nico meets Thurston, really, which goes somewhat for the rest of her musical aesthetic. The production is tastily overdriven which, espeically in contrast to the acoustic sections, gives a warm, vaguely psychedelic murkiness to the atmosphere. Enjoy, with drugs.

The Gun 

sounds in a basement

Somewhere in the sonic smut cellar - built on top of an ancient native burial ground - of the decrepit Mtl art motel where Fucked Butter's music resides their is a shaman mystic mining dirges of its dank depths. Synth-slime slit open by faux Frithian ultra-chorus jagged wryffing. A demonically debased Sage, like Greg without the clarity Wipers gave. Analog as analogous to a filmy fuzz of future's fog; misty-eyed from mystifying mental mold... When I saw this performed at Pop opening for YT//ST the stage banter consisted of such great lines as "this next song goes out to a friend who isn't here, but if she were here, she'd be outside smoking" and "who knew southern Ontario is now southern California". Then it got vicious.
Basically, this shit is fucked. By far one of the best releases this year.

No Cars

... For the Fuckedness of the Butter

Sorry for that momentary lapse, lets get back into gear, shall we? Fucked Butter is a mysterious entity creating post-ironic electro-lounge disco fucnk grunge rap sporadically since 2010(?) in some twisted, sinful studio/loft space in Montreal's Griffontown area. The group's formal conceptual beginnings are about as vague as their artistic goals and official line-up, which at least includes Mtl hip-hop hooligan Nick Persons - geared for a 2012 solo release - renowned orator Lucas Julien and some other guy I went to highschool with. If Fucked Butter did have one primary intention evidenced by their 2011 output, it was hits. The guys have hits, not the kind that could be played on the radio (well, maybe one) but those kinds of hits that channel that celestially poetic power of music that touches us all, in places we're not sure we want to be touched, but we are. Then they have some weird songs you won't like. For a look into their creative processes of making hits, here is an in-studio making-of video for their one potential crack at charting

You can download their greatest 2011 hits here

The Ross Bay Cult Lives On!

Don't be put off by the somewhat tasteless cover art, C. Moyen doesn't have enough hands to do every black metal record cover, he does come damn close though. Keeping right on rolling with this theme of unearthed booty of metal's forgotten past, I bring you easily the best and most compelling "re"issue of the year. "Re" because this was never released way back 1994 when it should've been. As the story goes Antichrist shared a rehearsal space, some top-notch junk and west coast style bestial mayhem with Canadian BM gods Blasphemy. There must not have been any sound proofing between their rooms because at times it sounds like these guys break into riffs straight-off Fallen Angel of Doom, war metal galloping drum beat and all. Frankly that's fine with me. For all my love of Gods of War and Blood Upon the Altar it is FAoD that unquestionably reshaped the sonic morbidity of all black metal to come. With the hordes of bands flying the war metal flag for kvlt status it's great to finally have another stone up in the cemetery of one of Canada's most important and influential moments in metal history. Best not to analyse this one too much, just drink yourself into oblivion and pretend that's Black Winds barking at you.

Devour 

EMERGENCY AT 30: Rocktober appended!

Alright so I know what I wrote and I lied, this is the actual last post before my 2011 in review series (starting Dec. 15). It's just that I realized I had foolishly overlooked perhaps the two most monumental works of our nineteen-thousandth and eighty-first year. Perhaps this oversight could be compared to another I often have which-due to it's close proximity and sovereignty from predominating music trends of the rest of the States-is to intermittently grant Portland honourary Canadian residency in my mind. Having never been there, only through the famed records and tales of the legendary minstrels of the mythical, woodsy city, can I romanticize the darkly shadowed rock 'n' roll pasts which dwell within it and the hearts of its fabled tune-smiths. As is characteristic of  the nature of most great thriving punk scenes, there is a lineage to the creators of these two PDX punk masterpieces, found in the bucket bashing of Sam Henry. Henry had, in fact, exited Wipers by Youth of America but his memorably dynamic driving of the band's 3 minute masterpieces made him a sure fit for what tHe rAT$ went for with Intermittent Signals.

Defiance!

First we have the highly coveted second installment in the short-lived but brilliant punk brainchild of Fred and Toody Cole (later of Dead Moon fame). While their S/T debut established the band with bubblegum punk classics like Teenagers and an overall endearing ferocity and knowing naivete, Intermittent Signals rips through the sturdy punk facade to reveal a band in reflection, equally inspired and disillusioned by the arrival of the 'New Wave'. It's all just "the same shit playing on the radio" to these newly christened rock and roll vets. A string of both imposingly punchy and seductively catchy proto-pop-punk anthems, Signals burns a blazing trail through the cannon with such underground hymnals as Descending Shadows, Defiance and Nightmare. It is the silhouette of this artistically ingenious twosome and their undying contribution to their scene that thoroughly consumes my mental musical landscape of PDX. The originals for over 30 years!

Can this be?

Unlike tHe rAT$ sophomore, with its assaying of the airwaves, Wipers traverse more direct connections to your cerebral cosmos via a Sage's circulation of cyclic licks in cylindrical orbit to the grooves on your disk. Indeed one can hear echoes of Greg's mystical lead playing in the reverb drenched leads Cole plays on In The Graveyard and throughout much the rest of DM's catalogue. There is no question Youth of America is a fate-altering classic all the way from monolithic title track through to feedback infinity. If you are averse to doing acid you might as well drop this on your ears, it's the perhaps the only way your mind will be freed.

Slavic Black Metal Attack no. 2

Watching a blackness spin before me - cyclical altar, cylinder sorcery rituals

Flowing of victims' (((speakers))) blood unto my sonic tissues

Audio-entrancement meditation

Occult fantasy, mysterious woods

Of the mind, darkened catacomb of the soul

Dream wanderings through obscured landscapes

Ancient spells resonate lost walls, instruments possessed by evil winds

Deviant dirges of time immemorial wed with symphonic sacrament

Arias to haunt the graves of your thoughts

A winding way

GET ON YOUR KNEES AND WORSHIP, WORSHIP, WORSHIP

Don't let some philosophizing USBM bull-shit artist sweet talk their way into your studded leathers with their false second-wave Scandinavian scholasticism. Don't be fooled when they expound about how their band's bloated drumming, ooey gooey choclate-chip guitar tone and cookie-cutter shrieks are really some existential distillation of "true Norwegian black metal". Don't let them get away with idiotically professing "De Mysteriis Dom Satanas is the best thing Attila ever did". Instead put this on and watch them cringe at the acoustic intros, the keyboard bridges and major-scale riffs played over top thrashing proto-blast gallops in fluctuating tempos. Then watch the stupid blank look they get when they ask "who is this?" and you tell them it's Tormentor, Attila's first band, and their 1988 debut Anno Domini. It is the only CD Mayhem sold on their 2007 North American tour when you had yourself entranced by the dark master himself, hypnotizing you with a noose from the stage and convincing you that any evil command he made of you, you would follow. Apparently Mayhem are on tour again. Go see them, if not for the aforementioned experience then at least to get yourself a physical copy of this under-praised masterpiece of first wave black metal. This is beyond transcendence, this is perfection.

Beyond

A Dead Post

A Dead Link

Smells like Foetus

Frenetic frenzies fraught with funky frustrated fury. Bastardized bebop barrages, bleep-blasts, barked bitch bouts, bent & busted bass bursts. Crazed, cramped, crooked & crowded car-crash collage cut-ups. Gagged guttural grunts growled & garbled to gaggles of gluttonous gunk. Nightmarishly narrated nervous nods to naked knuckle-knocking neurosis. Dated daring, dismissive destruction, daunting dark derision, derivative derogatory danced damnation. DEAF!!      

Broken Record

This is the record that broke sound, first in CBGB's 30 years ago and later (2006) in a particularly mind-bending Dilla donut. Don't fuck with Frith.

Speechless

This might be the record that broke music, for good.

just killing time...

This record was made broken.

Down Below