Music: Terror'ish / Textbook Punk split tape

God knows I've blathered on about Rob Bekham's Terror'ish project on this blog before, "at length"... and with no disrespect to those previous posts, this shit here, this is the best Terror'ich music I've ever heard.

Shit comes strobing out of the gate, and it sounds like your computer's internal sequences eating themselves but “beatwise.” Rhythmic. Add MIDI-fucked piano, voice, the thing is becoming a garbled mess of digital horror-show pop, like a haunted cabaret, man, like WW2 nightmare, Gravity's Rainbow, The Video Game. The tape goes on and on, industrio-pop-noise future. It is very long, and it goes a lil' soft by the end, tbh.

Textbook Punk's side is all goofy loops, sometimes compelling and sometimes not. I know this dude very well, like let's just say that I am this dude, and so even confessing that “this is not my best shit,” betrays insider confidence. Let's just say that “this is some shit I did.”

Dubbed onto recycled (insane paranoid religious re-use) tapes, that have a lil' “No Heresy” logo right on them. (Email textbookpunk @ gmail for availablitliyoiulit.) Very Very Very Highly Recommended!

Music: Piss Bath tape

Here we have a fairly long (45-60 minute?) cassette from Murfreesboro's "venerated" Piss Bath, whom I must confess to never having seen live. That's on me, but I just don't really... eh whatever. Maybe I'm old or maybe... ehhh.

So: to me this tape's tracks, of which, for all intents and purposes, there are infinitely many, all sound about alike. Most of them pretty much consist of a heavy-handed, down-stroked “riff,” (on bass and guitar,) and shouted (female) vocals.

Shit, I could really enjoy this at a show for sure, and yeah I'd probably feel annoyed after like 15 minutes, but ya know, I feel confidant these guys have probably never played for longer than that, and good on 'em. Feel like they know what they're doing.

I drove around with this thing in my car's tape deck for the better part of a week and honestly couldn't tell you if “Side A Repeats,” or if it's all different songs or what, but I like it, I mean it is what it is and I figured I knew what it was when I got it and it, uh, lived up to whatever I thought it would be. The recording quality changes a few times: different "sessions," I guess, but it's all pretty grimy "lo-fi," obviously.

Generic cassette but the Norelco case is yellow (piss) tinted and the art is pretty funny, I guess... J-card doesn't fit into the case properly, so I'll detract a few points for that.  Recommended anyhow ...

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: Minimalogic "Irritant" tape (mp3)

Alright I'm breaking my self-imposed exile from reviewing digital albums in order to write up this (impossible to find) gem.

Minimalogic was, best I can tell, Nashville's very first Noise/"experimental" band. Citing influences such as Throbbing Gristle and The Residents, D.A.C. Crowell, Greg Killmaster (surely not his real name?) and Charlie Newman produced a gnarly sound-world out of pulsing oscillators, heavily effected guitars, tape-loops of found audio and strangled vocals that would sound absolutely at home at a Keffer-organized Betty's show some 16 years later. Noise ages well? "Irritant" is their sole album, released on cassette in 1984.

The creeping A side includes ring modulated monk chants, distorted drum machines, detuned vocals and otherworldly sound effects that are all the more disorienting for their uncompressed presence. Metal pings strike at your temples over a churning guitar/synth loop that gradually falls apart, leaving these incredibly anxious out-of-sync puzzle-pieces.

Later there's heavy storm-ambience over which a weird-whistle synth makes bird calls into the ether. Dramatic Darth Vader string-synth patterns undercut the atmosphere and a gurgling low frequency rolls in, evolving into a cutting pink noise buzz, filter-waffles, and cuts out.

Side 2 opens with a slowly-rolling low synth with Arto-styled detuned guitar chimes and random LFO chirps. A dissembodied semi-falsetto sings about Minimal Love: "Minimal love/ is cuming in silence," while clicking anti-rhythms feel like footsteps of a stalker in a dark alley. It's roughly as creepy as Throbbing Gristle's best work, and really it's hard to imagine this band was working in the weird-vacuum of Nashville Intelligence Report days, alongside so so much rehashed punk (Jason and the Scorchers, Cloverbottom, et al.)

About a quarter thru Side 2, the track ends and we're presented with a nastily melting, bright square wave arpeggio. It's academic Minimalism thrown to the dogs of punk: entirely unsettling and strangely beautiful. And its warped beauty lasts a long time, gradually reforming as a metallic bulb-worm, then ripped outside itself, computer-guts hanging out of its android skin. Almost thirty years before the Nashville Symphony commissioned an original work by Terry Riley, this is maybe the first Minimal piece to originate in Music City.

It's certainly the first piece of "harsh noise" to come out of a town where feedback loops and heavily distorted electronics would eventually flourish.

Good luck finding the cassette. (And if you have one for sale, please let me know.) I'll be happy to share mp3 files (with C. Newman's blessing,) to interested parties if you email me. Highly Recomended!

Music: Sparkling Wide Pressure "Previous Openings" tape

2011 release from Sprakling Wide Pressure's Frank Baugh, prospering in the cassette underground, seemingly.

Jeez this thing starts out beautifully with a sequenced sine wave and fretless bass lead. Add rusting guitar drone to fill out the chord progression, man is that something a lot of this so-called drone music lacks? Chord progressions? Is that antithetical to the whole idea of drone? Is it pop-drone? Heady resonance sweeps into the synth program, delay-cluster ending... acts as track's end, but liners tell me Side A is all one: "Crestland I".

A bass-arping synth, no it jumped an octave, then back down, it's alternating under machine-grade guitar reverberation, plus some light-picked single-note solo, trippy styled, oh god there's a wah pedal! Man, if you put a wah pedal onto so much of this fucking drone I'd dig it a lot more!

Crusted over machine, factory floor, industrial revolution: prettier than Eraserhead, less horrible, for one thing because it ends, and you know it's going to end. Soon enough we go back into some light-wah guitar-chordery, very nostalgic and bleh, if you're me. Like, dude is really feelin' it ya know? Like, head back, wind-blown silk scarf... Jimi-feelin' it, ya know?

Machinery comes back in for a moment, (really just a mic-on-the-ground, phaser and delay pedals.)

Side B starts with just a little of this interstice before a heart-felt folky strum + meandering electronics vibe-field takes over. This is "Crestland II" and I give it just a little credit.

Some background caterwalling and about three minutes later we find ourselves at "Battleground", the slowly loping percussion loop-and-bass guided track that sounds like an Eno ambient thing rendered with recognizable instruments. There's a guitar and some synth stuff too, plus eventual scraping electronics which provide the only tension. Slow-build, very nice background stuff, better than a fucking fridge, at least.

C-32 on Diatom Bath Tapes out of Ashville, NC. Another nice Ab-Ex cover and I'd generally recommend this for your Facebook-philosophy-discussing dinner parties over cous cous and red wine, or any time you wanna get so stoned and stare at your bookshelf. Recomended!

Music: Quietly "Unfortunate Sound" tape

One thing: this tape sounds fuckin' huge. Guitars, bass and vocals all smear together in this cavernous sound-mass. Lo-fi to an extent, but not messy, as every instrument is played with precision, rooted by relentless, massive-sounding drumming.

Seemingly drawing inspiration from European post-punk and 90's American alternative rock in equal measure, the chord progressions are all tension-and-release, very dense and swathed in room-reverb and distortion while vocalist, Kara Stafford's darkly melodic singing cuts then dissipates.

It's easy to mistake Stafford's voice for that of a man's, as she sings primarily in a rich tenor that's almost other-worldly, unnatural at times and very affecting. She's like a spectre, man. Real urgent haunting.

Hints of Bauhaus emerge in the music but there's a certain sadness to highlights like "In the Mouth of the Wolf" and "Borrow Tomorrow" that Bauhaus and those other Goth-originators could never achieve from behind their makeup and fake cobwebs. This is evident in the lyrics as well, collected inside the j-card, though barely legible. Waiting, for something cryptic but probably very heavy, is a recurring theme. (And wait you should: there's a "hidden" track at the end of Side 2.)

Totally unlike any other punk in Nashville, and it's a steal at $2 from local retailers. Color ink-jet printed insert. Self-released. Recomended!

Music: Bonus Beast / Terror'ish "Incantations" split tape

Two one-man awful-noise projects, (and both were members of Big Nurse at one point,) divided by like a few thousand miles and the estimated 3-8 seconds it takes to flip over the tape.

Bonus Beast, based in San Fransisco, is Ryan King's projected muck-lust via cassette loops, pedals and all-together nastiness. His side is full-throttle blown-out tape saturation: you know the kind of noise music that's so distorted it doesn't sound like distortion. It's just a big fat slug of sound, wriggling around and occasionally slithering over some obstacle. Real bass-heavy sludge that probably sounds great on mushrooms, and kind of makes your stomache feel all weird, (just like mushrooms?)

The Terror'ish side is a little less intense, starting with whacky resonance-filtered noise and a pulsing low-end. It pretty quickly gets wrapped up in some serious-warp-delay, but then you get a track 2!

Real instruments: heavy, descending distorto-bass-line and strangled sax (similar to that on "Marvelous Cosmic Space Association".) There's also a whispy synth on top. This is followed by some formless delay-pedal noise, making this particular side of tape by far the weakest/least interesting outing I've heard from Terror'ish. (Full disclosure: Rob has always compelled me to "take a shit" on his music but I so far haven't because I pretty much love everything he does.)

High Density Headache, catalog number 52, which makes this circa early-2009 or 2008, by my estimation. Pick it up at Grimey's (haha, not really.)

Music: Lebaha Men "Garifuna Feild Recordings" tape

The Lebaha Men are from Belize, which is not close to Nashville except in full pan-global scope.

Which is maybe what makes Field Recording right? Escapism maybe, or a pseudo-adventurous state induced by industrialized-culture. Right?

The Grammys may be somewhere along the entrails of the luxury class/American appreciator-of-music, but they're a distant yet bright star to some, presumably, right?

One mustn't abstract too much from the socio-political implications of this tape though, lest we detract from the music, which is basically really cool. The drumming is mostly very complex, full of 32nd+ note rolls and thick with flamming and quick changes of emphasis. But it never loses the primal pulse, in spite of the heady roll-exchanges, (there are only three drummers, and their ability to play off one another is laudable/extraordinary.) The vocals are basically "ethnic" chant/call-and-response, but often quite a bit more melodic than you might expect.

Recording quality is decent, well-suited to tape, (recorded direct to cassette by Stephen Molyneaux.)

Watermelon artwork from No Kings.

Music: Hobbledeions "Asyndeton" tape

Heavy J. Bonham-meets-hypnogogic-flavored-murk at first; of course Habbledeions' Scott Martin isn't one to hang out too long on a real floored beat.

This third tape for No Kings is not a paradigm shift by any means, and really only barely an expansion of the sound Martin's been establishing since "Capisce" (perhaps with less emphasis on Dilla-esque lo-fi hip hop.)

It is, however, the best. An extremely focused effort that nevertheless trades styles, timbres and moods like an Indian. And so that heavy lump that begins Side 1 is quickly replaced by skittering fusion, then filtered noise, a tropical-pop waltz, and then this chopped and unscrewed Motown (or something) sample, over which Martin's trap set becomes some sort of lyrical rabbit, bursting down the hole. It's pretty much the best thing I've heard from Hobbledeions, and I've heard nothing but great shit.

So that's about halfway through the A side, because this is a hefty tape at 45 minutes, which is nice because a lot of what's great about the cassette, as a format, is its accomodation of lengthier albums, etc.

Vocal drone and these chopped up "eh-eh" vocal samples round out Side 1 all punk as hell.

And Side 2 starts out pretty nasty too. A Brit yelling, sampled from "The Wall" or maybe "Brazil", I've seen neither film, and the beat! Complicated but direct, it buoys pinging synth and noise and I'm at a loss for pinning its antecidents other than Can.

Most of Side 2 is pretty song-oriented, though those songs are in pieces assigned to the pads on Martin's MPC. Usually the sounds are filtered and processed, re-sampled so that exact instrumentation becomes an unnecessary means of signification. The drums too, are well-blended and I guess here's another panygeric on the cassette-medium, exemplified by this tape: natural compression, I mean Dolby filtering... It just sounds GOOD.

Later there's a real bouncy quarter note-bass/delay guitar jam that reminds: your vibes are maxing out. And fade into calming vamp. And fade.

Groovy pink-on-white, non-recycled stiff J-card, edition of 60. Highly Recomended!

Music: Clearing "No Titles" tape

For a tape called "No Titles", the insert included in this baby is chock full of titular information, but OK that's helpful sometimes, what is written.

As for audible "titles", I'd proffer "droopy-eyed synth pad-ery". Some of the sounds on the first side are booming and others are all wet with effects or detuned in interesting ways. Yes often they're interesting sounds, and always they're very static.

If that's your thing, you'll hear a lot more maybe. As background noise, I'd rate this definitely above say air conditioner or refridgerator.

Pretty good Blue v. Pink art from No Kings.

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: 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: Stephen Molyneux "Cambodian Feild Recordings" tape

I'm not certain what I'm supposed to hear here but it's absolutely mesmerizing.

The scenes that unfold over the course of this too-short cassette are all entirely ambiguous. One presumes that street scenes, social dances and sacred music all collide, but these are merely presumptions. The musics' origin is mysterious, and this in-itself is overwhelming.

Add to the foreign instrumentation and forms, the use of lo-fidelity recording techniques that at times suggest additional delay-effects and looping, (or is it natural reverberation? The ambiguity enhances the overall effect,) and you get a consciousness-enveloping throb of music that defies expectation.

"World Music" is not really the correct moniker, as the sounds of rolling wheels, rumbling engines, wind, conversations and random microphone noise interfere with the throaty singing, flutes and unrecognizable percussion and stringed instruments that make up the "musical" parts of the tape. And musically, it's mostly consonant (albeit Eastern-pentatonic) music, but combined with the field-recording elements, this thing is more bewlidering than a lot of "Noise" music I've heard.

Totally unique and well-combined collage from Molyneux (also of Horsehair Everywhere, Poet Named Revolver) on No Kings. Definitely Recomended!

Music: T.V. John "The Dream Man" tape

Sort of a "Songs in the Key of Z"-styled outsider artist, "T.V." John Langworthy's lyrics supposedly come to him in his dreams.

Here, he bellows them over poppy garage rock instrumentation that's well-performed but delves into the kind of "Exile on Main Street" derivation that we Nashvillians are inundated with to the point of... Eh, who cares?

The guy's (questionably) Weirdo persona is obfiscated by the ultra-conventional Rock ensemble, assembled by Black Tooth Records (members of local popsters Fly Golden Eagle, Majestico.) Wesley Willis this is not.

Weird as T.V. John may be, his super-banal lyrics are maybe good for a quick chuckle, but nothing close to shocking, revalatory or pure. On camera he comes off a little more like a luny, but the record is all rock-chops without depth.

Pro-recorded, poorly-dubbed cassette that is for some reason shrinkwrapped...

Music: Horsehair Everywhere "Volume 1" tape

Perceived self-seriousness (needs jokes) freely-improvised non-jazz-folk.

Sporadically interesting tape that's mostly forgivable where it wanders too far. They stay well enough away from Pop-Tribalism for most of the running time.

And there are some highlights: mostly when you get down to only two or three abstracted instruments. For instance, around halfway through side 2 we dip out into just a couple shouters, muted trumpet and arhythmic drumming that stays sparse while distorted shakers and Z.H. Rollo-slide guitar edge through the crowd.

At other times the sheer density of eleven people playing disorganizedly and all at once makes such an overwhelming cacophony that critical faculties are rendered ineffective, and with music like that, you just kind of lean back and enjoy how unpleasant everything is.

Divergences into folky guitar and harmony vocals are the weakest parts of the album, but luckily this is cut together from a whole lot of "jams" so it's easy enough to wait out the boring bits.

It's decent background music if you dig NNCK et al, but a lot of the members have been involved in more interesting projects. No Kings label.

Music: Leslie Keffer "Whorny 4 U" tape

Heavy distortion-bubbles from tape or table, very graceful, gently ambiguous whirring synths fold in and out of the fuzz, all blissful and alive and horny.

Side 1 gets denser toward the end, few notes on out-of-phase cassette loops loom in and side 2's right off with it, chugging and wheezing along.

All in... Dense... Eventually LK's voice emerges, swathed in phasers and filters, like steam rising from the jungle. It's pure-seeming and guady, like teenage love. It's very becoming.

Pretty affective white-wall-of-sound/stoner-lectronics from LK on Tusco/Embassy, 2008. Still available(?!) from Fusetron.

Music: Bad Cop "Stevie Nix" tape

Bad Cop's songs are simple-ish but they're pretty ugly, at least sometimes and that lends to phased interest/disinterest louch.

Side 2 starts off especially twisted with brass Wire-y instrumentation and Snotty vocals recorded through some kind of melting effect I think. I can hear everything melting.

I'm OK with the way this whole thing sounds (Garageband,) more or less. Recorded carelessly, (presumably,) everything's bleeding into every mic a bit and it all sounds pretty creeped out/live.
"Wet Lips" is all Cramps. You get a lot of that, basic references.

By the way, this is a six song EP (short songs... Two on side-B cut off before they even end.) dubbed onto 60-minute Maxell Type II cassette/probably other, spare tapes. So, in addition to the EP you get some 45+ minutes of Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits.

More Pogo reheshing later on.

Self released on the Jeffrey Drag label. Named after a lady songwriter, more importantly, a beautiful person, Stevie Nicks.

Music: "Terror'ish presents the Marvelous Cosmic Space Association" tape

OK so maybe there was some intention toward Sun Ra style Space-with-like-barely-musicians when this was recorded, and there's a bit of marching band camp sound. Terror'ish mastermind Rob Bekham is known to be dismissive of the recording session (Garageband.)

What you have (instead of whatever they tried for?) is this Curtis Mayfield-style dope-funk (Like those scenes in Superfly) churned out by Noise-scene familiars, (so instead of coke it's... mushrooms-and-coke?) drug-munch stomp. Like this makes a better soundtrack to Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch" than Ornette's old ass ever could.

Murky, murkily recorded by, OK essentially a funk ensemble (drums, perc., bass, guit., and leads sax and synth.) Sounds like some ugly basement party, or like that scene in "Jacob's Ladder" when they're dancing and she gets the tail-hallucination. (Spoiler Alert)

This is butone very cool object in the large and diverse Terror'ish/DJ MDMHey discography. White tape. Psychy art by Mr. Bekham on some grooved, recycled(?) paper. High-Density Headache label. Highly Recomended!

Music: MARJ tape

MARJ is a (were a?) nasty impression of a band. Conflicting hyper-ideals and low-energy consumption crust-kid talking to.

The thing is these guys are all really fucking great at music and their ideas get all mangled up in wild ways sometimes that are real visceral and dense... and then they get involved in, eh I dunno...

But MARJ is (was?) great.

Good god, Acme can play the damn drums. Every riff leads with drums, and then the riffs disentigrate, guitars into pedaled-out weirdness, bass descending modally. Then smack, back. You can hear the vintage head/cheap cabinet tones bouncing off Little Hamilton's peeling-paint walls and everything.

Dime-turns/happy-hardcore/weird noodles command. God, I do like this tape/band a lot. Feedback... uh, I'm feeding back.
Short and complicated. Self released. Recomended!

Music: Various Artists "Fake Sound Routine Volume Two" tape

Basically a really really tight comp. from Ren Schofield's (Container, God Willing) I Just Live Here label.

 Real zone-in type repetition is order of the day from each artist here, making this a great document of, uh what I heard is an ongoing trend in underground music: introducing Techno signifiers into the D.I.Y./"Noise" aesthetic and shit. (Which I think has been going on around Nashville for a while, so...)

Starting with the locals: Container's "In a Pile" starts off best-of side-A run, through FRAK, Diamond Catalog, and Unicorn Hard-On. Technically among the most "true Techno" tracks here, (not that I'm an expert...) Basic Channel-esque synth and drum machine delay-evolve in a really spacey way. A vocal sample here, an analog squirt there, and sometimes weird "bong-rip" or completely unrecognizable sounds emerge, then fade back into the Tech-void. By the end, the beat has intensified to a sort of in-your-face coke zone and lazer-delayed synths start flitting from the top of your head. It's like a static-charged sweater, but the whole sweater is wires. Fucking rad.

Unicorn Hard-On's "Feel Dead" buries the Tech beat in heavy resonant filter-swept bass synths and a Romantic-sounding MIDI piano, which is great. It's quite melodic/consonant, and shit, it's about time for some melody to reemerge in out-music. The melodicism doesn't precur texture though. Digital and rough fragments grind into yr ears and stick barbs from the rhythm. It's good stuff.

Other noteworthiness too, like, a lot of this stuff's very good. I already lost the insert though, halfway through writing this review, so other bandnames and titles are a blank. Screenprinted J-card. Recomended!