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!

Music: Hands Off Cuba "Volumes of Sobering Liquid" EP

The title is right. Four cuts of sober Kraut-fusion-lite.

The signifiers are all motorik and psych but stripped of the weirdness and edge usually associated with those terms. HOC give sort of a "Dad Rock" take on their influences.

That's not to say it's not pretty good. The level of musicianship here is high: most of HOC are session players, or play in other bands that value technical proficiency. Scott Martin's drumming is of particular note for its precision, but the playing here is over-controlled and reigned in: tasteful to a fault. Live, Martin unhinges a bit, making exciting transitions between his rapid stop-gap fills and hypnotic, contrapuntal beats.

Too-tasteful is a complaint I have with the other instrumentaion as well. Ben Marcantel's synth (Moog Opus 3) gets a prominent name check on the cover, but is really only audible/interesting on track 2, "Plastic Handle". At other times is could just as well be one of the soft organ sounds favored by the band.

"Ramrod", which begins side 2 chugs into a bright, pulsing motorik but too quickly gets comfortable in its Neu-groove, then drops it for some ambientish delay-guitar.

"Sabretooths" kind of rocks though, opening with a stuttering drum beat, doubled by filtered samples and Adam Bednarik's bass line spanning like an octave and a half. Cool Morricone guitar chords, some fills, and then the record is over.

Pen and ink artwork by Martin on 85% recycled sleeve. Sebastian Speaks.

Music: Uncle Skunkle and the Scarecrow Family Band "Happily Ever After" single

Another throw-back punk record, but the band's based in Paducah, KY, so they're "marginalized" by default. Plus this record is pretty alright.

The recording is clean with minimal compression, so it relies on the natural distortion of the instruments and amplifiers to give it a lot of punch. High marks for that, since we mostly don't hear a lot of that in our Big Muff-addicted, Master Limiter-reliant punk mileau.

Side-A (45 RPM) contains one, very "pop-punk" a-la-Exploding Hearts track. The female vocals on alternating verses subtract a bit, due to the fragility of her (no idea who any of these people are,) voice, but it's a nice "sweetheart mixtape" type of thing in general.

Things start to cookin' on the B-side (33 RPM) though. "Machete" is pretty Psychotic blues-punk. Nothing new but convincingly performed. Would have liked to see these guys at Betty's. And "Dead in the Pipeline" is really sick. Hard Core Surf riffs, very raw sand-in-your-trunks/cat-scratch music. Real bouncing minor bass lines. Screamed vocals.

Pretty cool disc I got for cheap. Pug Face Records

Music: 84001 "525-617"/"Summer Sketches volume 2" CD-R

Pastoral delay-guitar. It's kind of lilting. It sounds like it's made by a fulfilled-feeling *person. And relayed like a meme, delayed, looped digital memesis.

Man, I really like 84001 as a continuously recording CD-R project. Their sole vinyl object sounds cool--don't get me wrong. But they shine in the little corners. Little bitrate-fatigue moments that make you stop all processes, close tabs.

And let yourself be baptized in melting synths/chunked-out sequencer drums.

This is trippy music at its core, deeply psychedelic: images displayed as sounds. Sonics that slide-upward the brain. Filter warbling like more than just a filter, they take little trains around the classy side of town. I get a feeling like very rich weirdos listen to this while they refurbish Renaiscance paintings and drink from their Gatorade water-fountains. It's a very comfortable feeling. Plush robes, ignoring cellphones.

There are daliances here that remind me too of some bourgoisie questionable ideas... Banjo/acoustic guitar jams like late night billiards sesh, don't recall what we talked about, eh, good. But I mean Phish are a real influence here, along with your Oneotrix and Balam Acab and Hypnophasia.

Free CD-Rs from the band. I'm guessing you could d/l these over at their site.

*"...fulfilled-feeling person," should not suggest much in the way of personification, like i.e. real persons. 84001's sound is beautiful in its purity of digital-tone. It's net-music. It's de-personification Matrix music. Recomended!

Music: Letho / Paper Hats split tape

Side 1: Letho (a.k.a. Jeff the Brotherhood lead singer, Jeff Orral) gives us two repetitive rubber synth zone-ins that begin and end the side, plus two cathedral-y versions of one of JtB's slower songs. One version with 'verbed-out organ, the other instrumental lead by lead guitar.

It's very much an "amateur electronics" sounding affair, but credit due to Orral for not getting too carried away with the synth's tone. A less up-front sound would make the opening and closing tracks feel really FL-Studio-green, as in, this is a very "amateur electronics" recording here. The basic preset rubbery synth sound suits it.

Side 2 features one long piece of haunting, sometimes creepy reverb/delay-washed guitar overlayed with vintage M.O.R. record samples that whip in and out of the mix as though recorded through a guitar tremolo pedal or treated with an LFO. Actually the guitar sounds more thrown up than washed out. It's ugly, dissonant (and I'm not sure whether it's the product of cheap tape-dubbing or not,) murk stands in contrast to the distorted, but mostly Major key samples.

Paper Hats (known mostly as William Tyler) is a guitarist gifted at "pretty" playing in the American Folk tradition, so I like to hear something a little nasty from him. The prerecorded music that throbs over the whole piece has a Residents-like weirdness, but actually WT has a history with found sound, having released "Hilarity & Despair: American Answering Machine Tapes volume 1" on his Sebastian Speaks label. (Review forthcoming)

This tape is probably still around in local shops or try Infinity Cat website.

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!

Music: Deluxin' "Chocolate Jam" tapes

This is an album in three parts (three 10ish minute tapes) which means flipping/changing the tape six times. Worth it.

Nathan Vasquez's song-writing is really something. He manages to synthesize from so many more influences than most of his contemporaries from the NSA school of "punk." Like, instead of channeling an established genre, Deluxin' channel three or four disparate energies into one relatable but still weird pop-song.

All but maybe three songs are plenty memorable. "Shiny Lid" has a delicate aching quality and a quick bass line allows its buoy to skip. "Houses of Space" wanders, philosophically, around God's palace-or-whatever bareback on Vasquez's urgent, utilitarian singing voice.

NV's lyrics sound highly relevant to most of you, but you only can snatch. Bits of angst at inconsistant relationships. Elation at the more consistant artifacts of life: video games, etc. It sounds very intimate.

Tape 2 absolutely kills. "I Thought You Were Cool" takes you to task with its quick, Electric Eels-like gut-rock. "Cry for a Shadow (On Easy Street)" is faux-country scatter-swagger in a loose, rough bounce.

And it's plenty rough. Beautifully recorded onto tape and lovingly hand-dubbed. Word is, a re-sequenced, re-recorded version is due on vinyl at some point. Here's hoping.

Hag Bloom Tapes. Highly Recomended!

Music: Hobbledeions / Sugar Sk*_*lls "Secret fugue Machine" split tape

Side 2, Sugar Skulls side of tape is all made on Nintendo's Gameboy hand-held video game player. There are some interesting melodic ideas, but the sounds get dull pretty quickly. Whatever compositional talents Ben Marcantel has are obfiscated beyond interest by the hardwear involved.

Side 1, Scott Martin's Hobbledions is something of a force of poped-out inexplicable nature. We've all seen the countless bands he's in and ended up zoning in on two arms, two pairs of drum-sticks. Yes we were high, of course! But...

What's great about "The Warning Chirp" in part is how disguised SM's drumming is. Filtered and mixed with percussive samples, the real-time elements erotically merge with the prerecorded hard tracks. It's pretty post-human stuff.

Later we get to some more human-sounding jazz guitar samples. Heady hop. It's just one chord but we'll take it. Followed by some kind of bear-stomp. Yes this tape gets real. Far out camping meets industrial wilderness. Denney-xotica sounds, but we remember they're samples and then there's a whole new Mirror Stage.

No Kings tape. Ugly J-card but it's hand-made vintage-pressed and feels recycled(?) so ya know... Recomended!

Music: Ancient Ocean "I" tape album

Ancient Ocean (a.k.a. John Bohannon) used to live in Nashville, first Murfreesboro, so forgive a little interest on the part of MTV.E.

But

Very

Very little happens on this tape.

Wide tones. The idea is to hear the timbre-point in the well-blended guitars and synths. Listen to it move. It dances between the wide tones. Sometimes slowly, sometimes more skipping.

Then heavily delayed folk vortex, but there's always a reassuring sound, a mother breathing the main chords somewhere in the mix. Leave the mother, I say!

The effect pedals give JB's guitar this weird removed sound, like the "acoustic tones" were ineffectually rendered by digital modeling guitar programs. So, well-removed there...

It's a pretty good tape in general. Order from Sonic Meditations.

Music: Trophy Wife EP

Not to mention there isn't a single damn word printed on this thing other than the band's name. I know some of these got inserts, but not mine, I've no clue what those inserts said.

Roughly four songs of strangled-sounding instruments and floating-sort-of-ghostly Pretty vocals. It's extremely affecting. I like it a lot.

I know there is a song about ambiguous rape. One of them has "Somebody jizzed in the/ light socket" repeated quite a bit. But the crass lyrics are masked by Sarah Cozort's dark yet effervescent voice. It creeps into your headspace; it's at once arousing and ominous and surrounded by the buzzing no-wavey din the other girls create. Really Gothic-ass stuff.

Newer material by the band is predicted to be more New Wave-y, but this EP transcends immediate genres, and really doesn't sound that much like Sonic Youth, a major influence.

Pick it up from Private Leisure.
Trophy Wife have broken up, but we'll be sure to review their forthcoming EP which you should also pick up from Private Leisure, a pretty good label.  Highly Recomended!

Music: Leslie Keffer "Give it Up" / "Dormant Torment" 12" single

First, I like side 2 better. Better beat I think, but I don't know if I lean more hip-hop than house?

Second this thing is like pretty expensive. It's on Ecstatic Peace.

I think the live rock-drums on side 1 don't sound that good. Would rather hear LK's cheap drum machines or a taped beat-loop. But the vocal loop is pretty immediately-fetching. Distorted bass synth pierces ocassionally. Add ping ponging samples, etc.

Side 2 is just fucking wonderful. Teched-out stomp. Digital drones over post-tribal synchopation on the drum machine. Unicorn Hard-on provides some addition "squelching". Synths like whales chirping. It's a really great record, and I dig the 12" single format.

Front cover features cool abstract-style acrylic painting of like LK's name and the title getting turned into bones? All other art is cats and LK sex-eyeing the cellphone cam.

Recomended!

Music: Malkauns "Electric / Sunshine" single

Really vintage kind of "heart on sleeve, but my heart is an expensive piece of analog gear."

I've given this record quite a few spins and mostly dig it. Some killer bass lines and psyched-out zone-in's feel good outside of their precedents. Precedents tend to be the key feature here though. For me, groovy psyched out vintage acoustics sound cool, but let's face it, are vintage. I don't blame anyone for sounding like something, but you got to then acknowledge the lineage. Skipping several generations breeds pastiche. More pastiche.

As Nashville music goes though, first-rate. Bought this at Grimey's for 5.99. Screenprinted cardboard sleeve. Recomended!