Music: Ttotals "Silver on Black" 10" EP

Ttotals' guitarist, vocalist, and de facto leader, Brian Miles, takes a heavy Jim Morrison tip on the first side ("Special A") of this 45 RPM 10" record. It's the first time I've noticed the similarity between BM's and the Lizard Queen's voices, but it makes a lot of sense.

Both Ttotals and The Doors deal/dealt in pop songs, abstracted beyond their logical purposefulness, to the point that they become almost-ambient, mind-wrapping art pieces, in which the listener's subconscious becomes a character in an exploratory world of reverb-drenched, stoner-rock dream-environs.

I mean, it's seriously easy to imagine Martin Sheen's head slowly rising from the steaming Cambodian river to these tunes.

Ttotals, at their best, get at the Punk-dream. They are, after all, two dudes with a guitar and a few drums, (OK, and a lot of FX pedals.) The raw primacy of punk is imbedded in their being. They're all id, man.

Side 2 gets into mushroom-punk territory with "Flowers Follow", and "Over the Years". It's still the classic Ttotals tones. They're secure and it's damn alright with me.

Really nice packaging: sparkly silver silk screen on semi-recycled black sleeve, (Art by Tim Norton, ex-of Holy Spirit Suckers.) Self-released by the band. Jam it.

Music: R. Stevie Moore "Advertising Agency of Fucking" lathe cut

I have the sneaking suspension that this piece of transparent polyurethane is eating up my phono needle. Is that a thing? Even if it's not, I'll be the thousandth person to say it: (most) lathe cuts sound like shit. I may not review mp3s, but I'll definitely enjoy listening to them over cheap-cut vinyl alternatives like this all day.

OK, enough bitching...

The songs represented on this abomination of a medium-sample are pure RSM Classics, as in, are absolutely brilliant pop (/punk, to be addressed below,) tunes that don't require the listener to submerge her/his self in R. Stevie's singular world of absurd puns, Beatles-worship, self-congratulation, and, uh, general quasi-genius, to appreciate.

"Advertising Agency of Fucking" on the A side finds RSM working his lyrical forte: sexual politics. It's melodically engaging in the way that British canonical acts like The Kinks and XTC are. Major key jumping all over the place, but focused, convinced of its own arrangement and full of forward momentum.

The B side is a brilliant post-punk-aping tune with a slinking, dissonant bass line and a deceptively important piano part: hammered chords, Reggae-syncopated during the chorus, but used only as punctuation during the verses. And lyrically it's R.'s second-best consistent theme: meta-style questioning the relevance of his own art.

So, don't buy this piece. (Ed. note: you can't buy it. Limited to preorders amounting to 76 physical copies; the one in my possession is #24.)

Do download RSM's "Poached Punk" comp. on bandcamp. The two sides of this record are tracks one and two, and there's a bunch of other great shit. And your payment goes directly to the artist. And it'll sound way, way better.

If you're the collector type, and a RSM fan, I recommend PIAPTK's "Javascript" lathe cut (onto a glass mirror.) Same label, maybe slightly better sound quality than this one, but it's a mirror, and it looks pretty cool spinning on yr deck.

Music: DJ MDMHey tape

If you're looking for DJ MDMHey's usual take on contemporary pop via fractured, noisy remixes, head over to soundcloud. This tape is another beast all together.

I can't say it's much like any releases I've heard by Rob Bekham's main outfit, Terror'ish either, although that project's most consistent feature is its inconsistency: ranging from harsh, clipped pink noise onslaughts to tape loop abstraction, to fuzzed out drum machines and everything in between.

This is atmospheric synth music, think a more Industrial-leaning take on Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack, minus the bluesey Film Noir affect, plus throbbing digital drums. The warbling, detuned oscillators and studied-over ADSR envelopes are there, as is the attention to atmosphere, though it's a distinctly tape saturation environment we're talking about here. (Praise is due to the mix, which manages to find an ideal level of natural tape-distortion/compression, without becoming murky or ugly.)

Side 2 begins with a more aggressive rhythm than anything on Side 1, calling to mind the recent "Tech-noise" style of MTVE-favs Container and Unicorn Hard-On, albeit with much more attention payed to harmonic progression, and with out the obvious genre tropes. This is loosely Synth Pop, but its minimal aesthetic and dark tonalities make it a unique effort. The sounds may be rooted in Depeche Mode and Cabaret Voltaire, but these are the weird outtakes that could never be. Dig it.

Label is Ranky Tanky "Champs" (or R.T. "Champs"?, I don't fucking know.) (It's Noah Anthony of Night Burger/Form a Log's label.) Edition of (more than one.) Decent art.

Music: Bad Friend "Let it Go" LP

"Throw away your first keepsake" is how this record begins, I mean, that is the first lyric, after some (eh, I hate to but yeah)-90s, semi-angular guitar riffage.

This is a record of solid to very solid "Big I" Indie rock. If these dudes knew the right people in 1998, they might be a big fuckin' deal. As it is, we're left with a record of tunes recorded too many years ago for the media cycle to take an interest.

It's some pretty great song-writing, at least at times. It's rooted in Matador tropes circa 2001, sure. But I haven't listened to that kinda shit in long enough that it's effective.

I used to have a serious emotional connection with "The Fruit That Ate Itself". If you did too, check out this record. Eight tracks of longing living room rock music. Recorded by Scott Martin. First full length LP on blossoming Nashville label, Hag Bloom too.

Music: Leslie Keffer & Valerie Martino "Prissywillow" single

Pretty killer 2008 release from Nashville's two ex-leading ladies of out-music. Unfortunately Keffer's fallen into unprecedented obscurity after the release of her sex-pop crossover 12" from late Spring, (play a show!) And Martino's left Music City for Rhode Island, like as in Nashville ain't sophisticated enough.

Anyways, A-side, "Letch Luff", bares LK's bruised and battered visage on the label and begins with a-rhythmic drum machine battery as creepy-but-consonant Industrial-style synths enter. There's a brief pause for electric bongos and gym coach whistle, then a harsher low-note pattern re-introduces the scattered tripping-over-yourself vibe with some unadjusted accoutrements, and repeat.

B-side shows an equally beat-up VM on the label and this one's all stuttering drum-pattern while horn-like drones and crystal-synth lead evaporate over top. You get some random-LFO action and other analog-style noodling whilst the drum machine fills out, all distorted like.

Pretty stoned-jammy vibe on both sides, but the sounds are killer.

Pick it up at Fusetron. Cool silk screen and spray paint art by Gina Denton. Collab-release by Tusco Embassy, I Just Live Here, Tangled Hares and Action Claw.