Music: Nudity "Heavy Petting" tape

Loosely a lower-fidelity amalgam of say, The Ting Tings and maybe Arcade Fire-style melodrama. I like it OK when they stay closer to Ting Tings-pussy pop. The more dramatic songs, like on Side A, the one where the dude sings, I don't like.

I guess I could throw out trite comparisons to Sleigh Bells too, but that wouldn't be doing the band justice.

Side B starts off with "Cassingle" kinda iffy, all slow but when the woman's voice loops, all chopped up and it doesn't really work but it's weird, catches my attention, then they loop it again, this time at the right pitch, and I think it's a pretty OK track, bombastic hoover bass and all. It really needs to be better organized though.

The atmospheric parts are all okay... "slowed down 800%" style. As for the pop tracks though, this thing definitely seems to have Lightning 100 FM aspirations, so that's alright, that's a thing, OK.

The tape ends with chopped up clacking percussion on "SAURuS RMX" which drops the back beat, that's pretty cool, but more could've been done to whack out the lady's voice which mostly just loops per phrase.

Nicely packaged pro-dubbed cassette, comes with download code and "Magic Eye" J-card interior.

Music: Big Nurse "Who Wants to Kill the President?" single

"Who Wants to Kill the President?" is pretty cool. Whippet-fueled falsetto multi-voice, fingers on the time cotrol. Definitely has a "schizophrenic" feel, subdued disorientation. Also very "psychedelic" with out bothering to use any "psychedelic" tropes, although a little wah-wah really wouldn't have hurt.

B-side is a cover of VOM's quasi-classic "Electrocute Your Cock" and sounds like it was played by 14 year-olds who figured out how to amplify the sound of fingernails scratching a chalkboard.

It's meant to be played at 33 RPM, but give the A-side a spin on 45 too. Recomended!

Music: The Biv "Creatures of the Deep" CD

The freedom from genre-restrictions on this little piece of Nashville house-party faire from 2009 is refreshing. It wouldn't be long before like a garage-rock-only rule went into effect, but if you saw The Biv, like I did, in a sweaty basement or Germantown warehouse loft, you fucking appreciated it.

I mean there are traces of Krautrock grooviness, post-rock drama, and more than a little Deerhoof angularity, but strictly speaking this is Pop-only, instrumental dance music that defies lazy genre categorization.

Nothing here isn't at least basically catchy. Drummer Dan Burns and keyboardist Mitch Jones went on to form/greatly expand two of Nashville's best pure-pop bands, Action! and Fly Golden Eagle respectively.

From what I remember the big hit is "Adventurebot", but that's a little too sticky-sweet for my taste. "Man Overboard (Where'd That Guy Go?)" is a weirdo stuttering minimal-arp piece that should be more than just an interlude. "Reefy the Clownfish" (yes, they mostly have aquatic-themed titles...) is all goofball-early FLips, only well-played. "Different Kinds of Tentacles" has a loping puppet-funk vibe, interupted by Futurama-chimes and a fake horn section. This stuff is simultaneously cartoonish and classical-esque, which basically equals charismatic.

There's a bass player too, but it's mostly MJ's synth leads, organ and piano that supply the broad sound-pallette with DB's skipping, complex drum patterns propping it all up.

Groovy cut out art by Mitch; too bad it's a CD I've ripped into my computer and shelved, perhaps never to look at again, but that's CDs for ya.

Music: John Westberry "Tyrjedza" CD-R

Unquestionably one of Nashville's finest drummers working in the underground, or mostly not working in... Westberry is fairly emersed in the Mainstream Jazz house-show establishment known as Jazz 948, and you might even find him onstage at Green Hills Old-Money watering hole, F. Scott's.

And OK, I understand the attraction to playing that kind of music... It's technically demanding/satisfying and you can make a buck.

But JW at least has one ear pointed toward the "avant" on this release, a collection of mostly-slow burning "pretty" free jazz that occasionally hints at ambient music.

Every track is a duet with either trumpeter Edwin Santiago, or electric pianist Tyson Rodgers, and while Westberry's playing is uniformly subtle and in the pocket, the two other musician's contributions are variously effective and... not.

Rodgers' frantic playing on "Unfinished Look" and opener "Sprint" compliment JW's swift hands perfectly. This is about as good as free improv gets in Nashville. On other songs ("Build", "Abstract") he lets his Rhodes melt into ring-modulator and delay effects while Westberry deftly adds color, playing on the toms and accentuating different tones, pings and hisses from his cymbals, pretty badass. But on other tracks like "Light", the piano playing is so simple, white-keys-only kinda stuff, that you can hardly believe dude has a degree in performance from a major university, which I can only assume he does.

The ambient-piano isn't always bad. Take for example, "Stuttering" which features light-modal playing at first that eventually catches on itself and loops like a CD skipping at a particularly pleasant moment. It's like glitch-jazz, and that's pretty cool.

Similarly, Santiago's dark-toned, unpretentious trumpet-playing sounds beautiful and rich sometimes ("Conversation Piece B", "The Unwritten Rule"), but he sometimes flounders into obvious arpeggios that harken to well-worn standards, and these feel too much like accidents, like he doesn't know quite where to go next and is treading water. On moodier material like "Conversation Piece C", he seems to attempt Coltrane-Minor-seriousness from his horn while Westberry conjours similarly at the kit, all rolls and crashing cymbals like Love Supreme's "Resolution".

Westberry may have the technical chops, but he's not quite convincing in this mode of "heavy" Jazz. He's too polite. But then album-closer "Abrupt" may be the most "challenging" track and one of my favorites and it cuts off mid-riff. I wish it lasted longer!

Classy looking, totally-recycled sleeve and insert. Self-released.

Music: Submission Skills "I Bought Lance Armstrong's Colostomy Bag" tape

I wanted to not like this tape, OK? Hell, I was told not to like it, but damn it all if I don't kind of love it.

It's stupid. I get that, and it's a joke sort of tape, obviously, with that title. The fragments of lyrics and song titles (drummer, Rob Bekham shouts the titles before counting off each song,) are all nasty jokes about anal rape and finger fucking. Sophomoric, to say the least, it's a bit like an Adam Sandler movie for the noise set. But if Diarrhea Planet once set the bar for sophomoric humor in Nashville punk music, well that's just been obliterated absolutely. (And, by the way, they didn't. There used to be a band called Asschapel for Christsakes.)

The music is ridiculous speed-punk. The guitar is so distorted it becomes just a big cloud of noise. The drums are all bashed, two hands at a time, never changing. Singer, Kevin Cunningham's vocals are off-key raving and never as audible as Bekham's unamplified voice, screaming the song names. And everything's about as unlistenable as this description makes it sound. But it's a lot of fun.

Shit-quality recording and dubbing, (in between songs, bits of random, mostly awful-sounding pop can be heard, presumably having been recorded over for the release.) And yes that's a woman drinking from what appears to be a colostomy bag on the cover, but I'll have to see some kind of documentation of proof before I believe it's actually Lance Armstrong's.

Definitely pick this up if you come across it.

Music: Deluxin' "Smelly Kelly" single

Here you have it: the back-to-blood-basics punk-as-hell Deluxin'. Gone are the arty asides, near-falsetto singing voice and intricate arrangements of "Chocolate Jam", which to be fair, also had its bruisers. This is just fucking bruising along man.

"Smelly Kelly" is the kind of crushing, no-frills punk that's real blatant but not like that stupid fucking plebian-Hans Condor shit. It eviscorates yr shit like a whip. The hook is massive and filled out nicely by the new double-guitar lineup; it's pretty heavy but skips along to Glenn Coburn's swift-handed drumming. Rad break down before the single-note ascending guitar solo thing.

"Sick Lick" on the B-side is another head-wiper, just maybe not as catchy. Still when Nathan's simple high-note guitar lead (really similar to the A side,) kicks in the thrash hits home hard. After a stuttering refrain, the song dumps into a slower tempo grind. It doesn't last long and when the regular Lick returns it's pretty much all over as far as keeping your shit together goes and there"s this other part with a really frantic vocal, and then it does most everything again. This song is pretty long.

Props to Kevin Dietz for the awesome artwork: some kind of Man-Eagle scalping a traveller in the desert(?) on photocopied letter stock, in keeping with the Hag Bloom aesthetic. Pretty sick record all around. Recomended!

Music: Sparkling Wide Pressue "No Need for a Meaning" tape

We can probably mostly agree that Neil Young's soundtrack for the film "Dead Man" is pretty effective, even if it sounds like Neil layed it down in an afternoon, just noodling around and abusing his whammy bar. And that's kind of the feeling I get from most of this tape. It's kind of lazy-style guitar-picking, but with heavy atmospheric elements, distant drones and birds chirping and the like. Rendered casually but pretty impactful in context, and with layers far to rich to have been really layed down in a day.

Gradually electric bass presents itself and the casual acoustic strums give way to some consonant electric scratching. But the music takes its time and never tries to do too much. Gutteral feedback and cassette recorder breaking down a bit and everythings played like with out too much purpose. Sunny-afternoon-stoned vibe. It's "jammy", no doubt about that, but whatever catharsis frat boys get from listening to Phish, the underground set can get from listening to this.

Atmosphere is happening big time. When the drones and verb settle down toward the end of side 1 and we're presented with a somber finger-picked guitar, it's the light crackling of dust on the tape head and snippets of reversed e-guitar that give it some weight. But even at its hissiest and droniest, this thing is pretty approachable. Familiar fragments of various guitar-based stoner genres (If anyone tells me that Frank Baugh doesn't smoke pot every day I'll be shocked,) keep this thing well under most of your thumbs.

Pretty groovy January 2012 release on Fadeaway Tapes. Nice little Ab.Ex.-style J-card, non-recycled.

Music: Terror'ish "Weak Stance" tape

The latest from Murfreesboro noise o.g. Terror'ish is all about digital drum machines and just creaming them into waistoid grey residue. It sounds like a pair of jeans so encrusted with dirt and grease and cum that they stand up on their own, which is pretty alright.

Once the trotting distoted rhythm that begins Side 1 subsides, "Over Your Skin" is some ugly waves of white noise on top of a nauseating, churning machine grind, and I mean I'm literally feeling nauseous listening to this, but I've been taking pills all day and I think the wine and pizza combination has just hit the bottom of my gut, so ya know...

Side 2's "Last Slice" starts off with this absolutely killer deep synth-kick that has this sort of pink noise lead in and gradually hihats and snares clap-on, clap-off and there's the sound of like a fucking power drill that comes in. It's all metal on metal and gives me that really anxious feeling I got listening to the car horn-techno music they play while you wait in line for the Test Track ride at Epcot. Anxious is exactly what this music is. It's seriously unsettling.

After that there's this Gothed out synth pad with tape-skitters all over it and 'verby crack-head drums clattering. It's all very ugly and deep and, uh kind of awesome. Just don't let your mom hear you playing it or it's straight to the psychiatrist.

Nice combo of pro-printing plus hand-writing/spraypaint on the art. Ratskin Records. Recomended!

Music: Pineapple Explode "Cooke City" tape

Kind of dreamy, kind of lazy ambience. The parts where it's like a feild recording inside a house and you can hear walking around and setting down objects and picking them up are sort of obnoxious.

Side 2 is mostly dreamscape-style. Some underwater sound effect rhythms and quiet drones. It's probably pretty good to sleep to music and I suppose I could say you won't miss much if you do fall asleep.

PE are pretty good at the folk pop game, making music that takes a little effort to make. I dunno, this one's pretty aimless.

Self released. 85% recycled J-card.

Music: God Willing "Traditional Sand" tape

The sounds of choking, quietly and shuffling around...

This tape is like landing on another planet, gradually getting accustomed to the atmosphere, the new smells and sights.

And the sounds: all alien banality amplified like a disjointed dream. The resident beings go about their day, unaware of how foreign the ins and outs of their regularly scheduled lives are to you, distant traveller. Little bursts of methane from the ground, industrial-grade lazers, giant chrome machines grunting and hammering out arhythmically, matter-of-factly. No weapons, no one here cares about just what you're doing in their world.

Gradually you enter their city on tired legs from the greater gravity, tired lungs from the denser air. You hear the hum of busy commuters' hovercars, one nearly clips you. The driver never even saw you.

Ren Schofield takes his time on Side 1, letting a feild of unfamiliar, post-tonal sounds envelope the listener gradually. By the time it climaxes in a dense mess of noise, you've just barely gotten used to it.

Side 2 is just like drones and backwards sludge, a little less entrancing, but still cool.

Another classy, clean release from I Just Live Here.

Music: Leslie Keffer "Finally, Caves" 12" single

So this is very much a dance single meant for deejays, more than for your average basement-dwelling, holyier-than-thou, cassette-fetishist noise-head, but ironically, it's probably the noise-heads that funded this record.

I, like hopefully most of you, feel extremely ambivalently toward Kickstarter. For every Leslie Keffer, there's a whole bunch of Natalie Prasses begging you to hire a studio, hire musicians, pay for the bullshit that doesn't matter when fact is, high-quality recordings can be made for nothing, plus the cost of a laptop, audio-interface and a couple microphones... all items your average Natalie Prass probably already owns.

So why did MTVE-Nashville support Leslie's campaign? (Aside from the fact that we think her music is not bullshit...)

Simply, this music was made for wax, a tangible, spinnable disc that deejays use. It makes, breaks, mends and bends the party. This is social music. Sure, both sides have been floating around Soundcloud for a while, but the internet-music experience is far different from its physical counterpart. This music is for sweating to, dancing and making out and fucking, and it goes without saying that fucking in 192 kbps is just not as good. We need the needle raw in the groove.

Furthermore, this Kickstarter campaign pretty purely embodies the D.I.Y. spirit of Noise music, (which this very much is not, but in a past life would have been.) "Donations" paid for the pressing and materials. Once those things were secured it was LK, herself recording at home (with Hobbledeions' Scott Martin,) pasting on art-work and addressing packages. This is not only a limited-quantity object, but an object that has real human hands all over it.

But nevermind the logistics... how is the music?

Relatively simple and very pretty. A secure synth chord, overwhich the low radio-strains bend consonatly a la "Loveless" guitars. Then the beat drops, a simple boom-chick elecro that nestles against the high synth in a very natural-sounding ecstasy. Pieces drop out to make way for a little modem-bleep-hook, come back in, repeat, etc. All very tantalizing, like neck-hairs pricking up tantalizing. Supple and basically very sexy.

Side 2, "Luna Loblolly" opens with monk-chant vocal samples that quickly fall in line behind a "Liquid Sky" drum machine. From there it's pure minimal bliss as the samples repeat and new textures emerge. Drop all for a whirling synth drone, modulating and recombining until a new beat enters and the party pulses on. Flinging sweat and fingers unto dawn.

Beginning with "Give it Up", the 12" single format is a really good look on LK. This one's definitely worthy of repeated spins from any deejay not puking out endless Garage Rock around Nashville, (though we suspect a lot of Europeans might catch on more quickly.) Recomended!

Music: Trophy Wife "Stella My Star" single

"Stella, My Star" features such a dead-on Kim Gordon impersonation from lead singer/arguable TW-mastermind, Sarah Cozort that I find it hard to take seriously. Kind of boring, dissonant guitar/bass/drums, yadayada...

The B side, "Frankie's Song" fairs much better. It feels rushed, unnatural, especially given the synth tone which sounds destined for sequencer-automation a la Human League, but instead is played with classic TW earnest-sloppiness. Meanwhile SC delivers the stuff of adolescent wet-nightmares. Melodically charged faux-naivety; she plays the victim, but her sexually-predatory nature shines over churning bass and tom-toms. It's all "Virgin Suicides" and that's pretty affecting, though the end break-down loses momentum and sounds slightly forced.

Another worthy and weird single from an already broken-up band, (see also: Buffalo Bangers,) on Private Leisure.

Prediction for the label: 2-3 more releases of increasing commercial appeal (rather than that fucking Taiwan Deth LP they've been sitting on,) then caput.

Prove me wrong, Private Leisure.

Music: Taiwan Deth / Unicorn Hard-On split single

33 RPM group-grope from a couple of Nashville's more productive, and yes, important anti-scenesters.

Taiwan Deth's side (and fuck, we need more sides from Taiwan Deth; this is their only vinyl object!) is face-to-the-sky Eastern-worship. Bells turn into cymbal, then tom-rolls while single-string free-guitars, sometimes with slide or wah-wah lurch and celebrate the master-nothingness.

It's a little bit European free-jazz, a little bit Boredoms and a lot of blazed meaning. It grinds, even as it fades out. A real lost Nugget from before Nashville dropped its last leg back into the Country-grave (I mean Garage Rock.)

Unicorn Hard-On's side opens with some bit-toy action before introducing a nasty clipped drum sound that fuels the rest of the side. The toy slides and squirms in free-harmonic joy, slips itself, and then we get that nasty Electribe-electro we know and love from UHO. All while the main synth becomes a bunch of different unsettling sounds, flips on itself and all around like a big mess.

The track feels improvised: sometimes a sound we like should stick around a little longer, but the constant movement is also enjoyable, plus respectable. It's not the fully-bloomed UHO we've lately been more-or-less obsessed with at MTVE-headquarters, but it's an interesting article in the wardrobe of an artist whose wardrobe is a little bigger than the average music-fan can probably carry.

I Just Live Here / Black Lakes split release.