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: 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: 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: Various Artists "The Neighbors are Dead" double LP

God couldn't strike Murfreesboro lower than it already is, but from the depths comes this compilation of alternating beauty and pure obnoxiousness thru lo-fi live recordings.

All in all a pretty good summary of the music you could find most weekends on the Murfreesboro house show circuit pre-2009, (or whenever Animal Collective caused a bunch of would be out-musicians to turn Pop and ultimately sound just like Animal Collective.)

The recording quality is pretty uniform, (shit,) and suits most of this music fairly well. It's all in-your-face nastiness, (save a couple diversions into folk and delicate found sounds on side 1,) and hits you with the all-nite party vibe that went hand-in-hand with these shows.

Listening to the whole thing can get a bit tedious but there are some really amazing highlights, especially Who is Jackie Sheets' busted drum machine racket, Brown Swarm's ridiculous mess of wheezing electronics and drums, and the heady fuzz-wash of Lazer Slut's "White Sands."

There are solid cuts from Terror'ish, Deluxin' (circa "No Shit" left-feild hardcore), Most Amazing Century of Science (serious Naked City-worship), German Castro, High on Life and Meth Dad too.

The photo-collage outer sleeve depicts such images as Lazerslut's side-scrotum, Terror'ish smoking a cigarette and Meth Dad demonstrating questionable fashion sense via hat, (or more specifically, upturned bill.)

A really good listen/well-done archival release from Private Leisure Industries, a label dedicated to preserving the sounds and sentiments and loose architecture of Murfreesboro's glory years. Recomended!

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!