Music: Mass at Dawn "Pyramid Nipple" tape

Vintage synth fetishism from ex-wearer of large-brimmed hats, Dylan Simon.

Needless to say there are some really cool sounds here, lightly warbling and buzzing and bubbling along, sometimes with mumbled, unintelligible vocals and the recording/dubbing job being shit as it is makes this a murky mess of a record, which is really pretty pleasant.

Most of this tape is the score to every film scene where someone sits cross-legged on the floor, closes his eyes and places a tab of LSD on his tongue.

It's meditation-stuff and I'm about as non-spiritual as they come so I'll leave the mystical themes alone, but the plodding gongs and slow-attack synths should make a pretty good mantra for you Tarot and insense and couscous enthusiasts.

I actually like couscous a lot, and I understand it's quite healthy. I like it with cabbage and, uh there you go, that's my review.

Music: Monsters on Television "Life is So Bizarre" LP

Well-travelled ground/bar chord garage rock/definitely has like that '95/'85/'75 feel, which is maybe to say this is that kind of "timeless" Rock, capital R, all that shit.

It's pretty charming, I guess. Front-man, Brad Sunflower's voice reminds me at times of David Thomas, but less weird, more slacker-stoned.

As far as good songs, there's "Comin' Down", "You Lookin' at Me Weird" and the title track, all of which you've pretty much heard before, which makes them stick in your brain even a little more.

The sound of a minimum-wage job, Mexican Strat and mid-grade marijuana. Really nice screen-printed art. Cleft Music label.

Music: Forrest Bride "Cats with Wings" LP

The centerpieces of this album are the instrumental tracks that open both sides. but there are vocal numbers too:

"Blue Tiger" is the most "pretty" track, vague pentatonic melody that Amy Marcantel's vocal harmonies fill out well, plus lifted moving-bass. Probably the best of the sung tracks. Next "Massacre at Ludlow" is pretty good Radiohead-pastiche but Ben Marcantel's singing is unfortunately muffled by gear affects that squash out the overtones of his voice. "String and Glue", lyrically, is as "twee" as the title implies, but the instruments are "gussied up" the way Adrian Belew "gussied up" Tom Tom Club's "Loreleai", all stuttering atonality and sound-effects, with a little more Folk-feel.

But the meticulously crafted instrumental tracks are where the Marcantels' strengths really lie. "Circa 1973", the sound collage that opens the album is wonderful, gradually building from skuttling noise loops into a two-piano Cosmic-assault with out ever feeling like it's "building" at all. This morphs, briefly, into a feminine kind of Fantasy-Simple xylophone interlude, before Scott Martin's drums first introduce themselves under cut-and-paste organ and slow-attack synth, interupted by these violin upper-cuts just before the denouement, real "feminine "narrative" kind of stuff that lacks an obviously climax but substitutes lots of little peaks in circular fashion.

Marcantel's production is great: it never sounds showy, (except maybe once on Side B where I noticed a tom-tom annoyingly drifting across the stero-spectrum,) but it's meticulous.

Side B's "Death Kit" is the first time the album ever really sounds at all like the "electric era Miles" suggested on the little paper insert that comes with the record. It's more like metal-fusion though; Scott Martin's drumming is especially unhinged with an insistent single-note bass line that charges everything into some super-charged future-war, saxophones wounded-wail, dissonant synthesizers buzz along and melt, and all the sudden there's this lifted lilting piano chord like "walk towards the light" type thing, but still, a glimpse of  the past as evil saxes dance back in, filtered and fading.

Closer, "Living Coral" has a dinstinctly M.O.R.-jazz deep-cut vibe like something on Side 4 of a mid-70's Chicago album, which is pretty fantastic if you ask me. It's interupted occasionally by buzzy angular asides on the organ, but for the most part it's lush and tacitly sensual.

Pretty well constructed album. Cover art is an owl, which I guess is what they mean by "Cat with Wings", probably because of the seing in the dark. Sebastian Speaks label. Approx. $12 at local retailers. Recomended!

Music: Gnarlwhal "Duane" CD-R

Purveyors of Progged-out Hardcore, the Little Hamilton-stapled Gnarwhal come at this 14-track (three of them interludes,) CD-album with hardened fucking Pro-chops and a "shit, whatever" attitude that jams pretty damn hard.

The angular guitars never stop, and underneath pointillistic bass and of course, Tyler Coburn's frantic-sounding but dead-accurate drumming push, pull and drive, endlessly forward.

This is some real front lobe music; it rewards close, attentive listening, and in this way it's "difficult", even though it's mostly-tonal and full of trope-based guitar techniques:

What's interesting is the disperation of the tropes: "jock-off" metal finger-tapping collides with "angst-and-fury" hardcore riffing collides with "Anglo-serious" prog collides with weirdo deconstructed pop. In this way, it's like a Zorn/Bungle assemblage, but really more cohesive than a lot of those guys' music due to the steady instrumentation/unified aesthetic.

There are lots of quick stops, changes in key, rhythmic feel, tempo, just about everything. This whole album is full of extremely complex music that hangs together well. Again, the drumming is pretty amazing throughout.

Call this Chin-Scratching Hardcore or Pop-Metal, I'm not sure. Self released, bear-themed art with jewel-case. Recomended!

Music: Ttotals "Live at Grady's" tape

This is maybe the best document of Ttotals you could ask for. The self-titled studio-record is perhaps too clear for their brand of blown-out punk-psych, which I think fairs better on this equally-blown out tape recording. It's not uncomfortably blown out; it's actually quite well-recorded, live, (I guess, though there's not a single audible audience member,) during a recent jaunt up the West Coast.

Stack it next to "The Quine Tapes" and "'77 Live" for later. No Kings Record Cadre.

Music: Square People "I'm Not Lazy" single [Guest Review]

The more a band intently focuses on being interesting, or "something else," the more they lose the plot and sound boring. Square People don't have this problem. Their approach comes off as calculated, but it doesn't belie the basics: good songs.

Standing tall as the town's only sax-clad house-rockers, they deliver the goods for their first two wax tracks. There have been a few tapes before this 45, that consecutively build up to the feat accomplished here with these two songs: "I'm Not Lazy" and "I'm Not Nervous." Honest statements on their ethics, SP are certainly not lazy, they're one of the most productive bands in town.

"I'm Not Lazy," is their most fully realized composition yet. If all of their previously recorded output were a tough nut, this song cracks it. Encapsulating everything about this band, it strikes the delicate, oh-so-satisfying balance between laid back certainty and haywire anxiety, a la XTC's "Drums and Wires."

There are fascinating dynamics, syncopations, and neatly interactive sax and flute passages, and absolutely NO showboating. There is not one superfluous note played here. There are hooks, however dressed up the arrangements are, and if you strip away the execution you have honest-to-goodness pop songs