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: 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: Ttotals EP

Everything through some kind of gated compressor gives this thing a pretty unique, if perhaps of-its-time, sound. I think it's a sort of Signature Sound for producer, Jeremy Ferguson, who's done similar work for Turbo Fruits and I guess a lot of other bands.

Super-star producer aside, Ttotals are some pretty o.g.'s who've seen enough to just play what they dig and dig it themselves.

And what they dig is both In and a little Out-There. Trippy, 1990s mushroom-gazing-at-the-sky music, with real "haze=clarity" vibes. Simple but pure. And Brian Miles strangles some pretty hallucinatory tones from his guitar/amp. Whammy bar feedback drones and the like. Simplicity. It's free-ing because nothing gets in the way...

Until the end: "Take Care of Me" is the last track and the biggest departure from the duo's ussual Motorik+Pop-Drone. Huge monolithic drums sound like they're crashing out of the sky. The guitar chugs and chokes like Nature taking its course: Killing off the weak.

Yellow vinyl, cool art screenprinted on some gnarly silver paper. Recomended!