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: Monsters on Television "Life is So Bizarre" LP

Well-travelled ground/bar chord garage rock/definitely has like that '95/'85/'75 feel, which is maybe to say this is that kind of "timeless" Rock, capital R, all that shit.

It's pretty charming, I guess. Front-man, Brad Sunflower's voice reminds me at times of David Thomas, but less weird, more slacker-stoned.

As far as good songs, there's "Comin' Down", "You Lookin' at Me Weird" and the title track, all of which you've pretty much heard before, which makes them stick in your brain even a little more.

The sound of a minimum-wage job, Mexican Strat and mid-grade marijuana. Really nice screen-printed art. Cleft Music label.

Music: Forrest Bride "Cats with Wings" LP

The centerpieces of this album are the instrumental tracks that open both sides. but there are vocal numbers too:

"Blue Tiger" is the most "pretty" track, vague pentatonic melody that Amy Marcantel's vocal harmonies fill out well, plus lifted moving-bass. Probably the best of the sung tracks. Next "Massacre at Ludlow" is pretty good Radiohead-pastiche but Ben Marcantel's singing is unfortunately muffled by gear affects that squash out the overtones of his voice. "String and Glue", lyrically, is as "twee" as the title implies, but the instruments are "gussied up" the way Adrian Belew "gussied up" Tom Tom Club's "Loreleai", all stuttering atonality and sound-effects, with a little more Folk-feel.

But the meticulously crafted instrumental tracks are where the Marcantels' strengths really lie. "Circa 1973", the sound collage that opens the album is wonderful, gradually building from skuttling noise loops into a two-piano Cosmic-assault with out ever feeling like it's "building" at all. This morphs, briefly, into a feminine kind of Fantasy-Simple xylophone interlude, before Scott Martin's drums first introduce themselves under cut-and-paste organ and slow-attack synth, interupted by these violin upper-cuts just before the denouement, real "feminine "narrative" kind of stuff that lacks an obviously climax but substitutes lots of little peaks in circular fashion.

Marcantel's production is great: it never sounds showy, (except maybe once on Side B where I noticed a tom-tom annoyingly drifting across the stero-spectrum,) but it's meticulous.

Side B's "Death Kit" is the first time the album ever really sounds at all like the "electric era Miles" suggested on the little paper insert that comes with the record. It's more like metal-fusion though; Scott Martin's drumming is especially unhinged with an insistent single-note bass line that charges everything into some super-charged future-war, saxophones wounded-wail, dissonant synthesizers buzz along and melt, and all the sudden there's this lifted lilting piano chord like "walk towards the light" type thing, but still, a glimpse of  the past as evil saxes dance back in, filtered and fading.

Closer, "Living Coral" has a dinstinctly M.O.R.-jazz deep-cut vibe like something on Side 4 of a mid-70's Chicago album, which is pretty fantastic if you ask me. It's interupted occasionally by buzzy angular asides on the organ, but for the most part it's lush and tacitly sensual.

Pretty well constructed album. Cover art is an owl, which I guess is what they mean by "Cat with Wings", probably because of the seing in the dark. Sebastian Speaks label. Approx. $12 at local retailers. Recomended!

Music: Gnarlwhal "Duane" CD-R

Purveyors of Progged-out Hardcore, the Little Hamilton-stapled Gnarwhal come at this 14-track (three of them interludes,) CD-album with hardened fucking Pro-chops and a "shit, whatever" attitude that jams pretty damn hard.

The angular guitars never stop, and underneath pointillistic bass and of course, Tyler Coburn's frantic-sounding but dead-accurate drumming push, pull and drive, endlessly forward.

This is some real front lobe music; it rewards close, attentive listening, and in this way it's "difficult", even though it's mostly-tonal and full of trope-based guitar techniques:

What's interesting is the disperation of the tropes: "jock-off" metal finger-tapping collides with "angst-and-fury" hardcore riffing collides with "Anglo-serious" prog collides with weirdo deconstructed pop. In this way, it's like a Zorn/Bungle assemblage, but really more cohesive than a lot of those guys' music due to the steady instrumentation/unified aesthetic.

There are lots of quick stops, changes in key, rhythmic feel, tempo, just about everything. This whole album is full of extremely complex music that hangs together well. Again, the drumming is pretty amazing throughout.

Call this Chin-Scratching Hardcore or Pop-Metal, I'm not sure. Self released, bear-themed art with jewel-case. Recomended!

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: Square People "I'm Not Lazy" single [Guest Review]

The more a band intently focuses on being interesting, or "something else," the more they lose the plot and sound boring. Square People don't have this problem. Their approach comes off as calculated, but it doesn't belie the basics: good songs.

Standing tall as the town's only sax-clad house-rockers, they deliver the goods for their first two wax tracks. There have been a few tapes before this 45, that consecutively build up to the feat accomplished here with these two songs: "I'm Not Lazy" and "I'm Not Nervous." Honest statements on their ethics, SP are certainly not lazy, they're one of the most productive bands in town.

"I'm Not Lazy," is their most fully realized composition yet. If all of their previously recorded output were a tough nut, this song cracks it. Encapsulating everything about this band, it strikes the delicate, oh-so-satisfying balance between laid back certainty and haywire anxiety, a la XTC's "Drums and Wires."

There are fascinating dynamics, syncopations, and neatly interactive sax and flute passages, and absolutely NO showboating. There is not one superfluous note played here. There are hooks, however dressed up the arrangements are, and if you strip away the execution you have honest-to-goodness pop songs

Music: Nudity "Heavy Petting" tape

Loosely a lower-fidelity amalgam of say, The Ting Tings and maybe Arcade Fire-style melodrama. I like it OK when they stay closer to Ting Tings-pussy pop. The more dramatic songs, like on Side A, the one where the dude sings, I don't like.

I guess I could throw out trite comparisons to Sleigh Bells too, but that wouldn't be doing the band justice.

Side B starts off with "Cassingle" kinda iffy, all slow but when the woman's voice loops, all chopped up and it doesn't really work but it's weird, catches my attention, then they loop it again, this time at the right pitch, and I think it's a pretty OK track, bombastic hoover bass and all. It really needs to be better organized though.

The atmospheric parts are all okay... "slowed down 800%" style. As for the pop tracks though, this thing definitely seems to have Lightning 100 FM aspirations, so that's alright, that's a thing, OK.

The tape ends with chopped up clacking percussion on "SAURuS RMX" which drops the back beat, that's pretty cool, but more could've been done to whack out the lady's voice which mostly just loops per phrase.

Nicely packaged pro-dubbed cassette, comes with download code and "Magic Eye" J-card interior.

Music: Big Nurse "Who Wants to Kill the President?" single

"Who Wants to Kill the President?" is pretty cool. Whippet-fueled falsetto multi-voice, fingers on the time cotrol. Definitely has a "schizophrenic" feel, subdued disorientation. Also very "psychedelic" with out bothering to use any "psychedelic" tropes, although a little wah-wah really wouldn't have hurt.

B-side is a cover of VOM's quasi-classic "Electrocute Your Cock" and sounds like it was played by 14 year-olds who figured out how to amplify the sound of fingernails scratching a chalkboard.

It's meant to be played at 33 RPM, but give the A-side a spin on 45 too. Recomended!

Music: The Biv "Creatures of the Deep" CD

The freedom from genre-restrictions on this little piece of Nashville house-party faire from 2009 is refreshing. It wouldn't be long before like a garage-rock-only rule went into effect, but if you saw The Biv, like I did, in a sweaty basement or Germantown warehouse loft, you fucking appreciated it.

I mean there are traces of Krautrock grooviness, post-rock drama, and more than a little Deerhoof angularity, but strictly speaking this is Pop-only, instrumental dance music that defies lazy genre categorization.

Nothing here isn't at least basically catchy. Drummer Dan Burns and keyboardist Mitch Jones went on to form/greatly expand two of Nashville's best pure-pop bands, Action! and Fly Golden Eagle respectively.

From what I remember the big hit is "Adventurebot", but that's a little too sticky-sweet for my taste. "Man Overboard (Where'd That Guy Go?)" is a weirdo stuttering minimal-arp piece that should be more than just an interlude. "Reefy the Clownfish" (yes, they mostly have aquatic-themed titles...) is all goofball-early FLips, only well-played. "Different Kinds of Tentacles" has a loping puppet-funk vibe, interupted by Futurama-chimes and a fake horn section. This stuff is simultaneously cartoonish and classical-esque, which basically equals charismatic.

There's a bass player too, but it's mostly MJ's synth leads, organ and piano that supply the broad sound-pallette with DB's skipping, complex drum patterns propping it all up.

Groovy cut out art by Mitch; too bad it's a CD I've ripped into my computer and shelved, perhaps never to look at again, but that's CDs for ya.

Music: John Westberry "Tyrjedza" CD-R

Unquestionably one of Nashville's finest drummers working in the underground, or mostly not working in... Westberry is fairly emersed in the Mainstream Jazz house-show establishment known as Jazz 948, and you might even find him onstage at Green Hills Old-Money watering hole, F. Scott's.

And OK, I understand the attraction to playing that kind of music... It's technically demanding/satisfying and you can make a buck.

But JW at least has one ear pointed toward the "avant" on this release, a collection of mostly-slow burning "pretty" free jazz that occasionally hints at ambient music.

Every track is a duet with either trumpeter Edwin Santiago, or electric pianist Tyson Rodgers, and while Westberry's playing is uniformly subtle and in the pocket, the two other musician's contributions are variously effective and... not.

Rodgers' frantic playing on "Unfinished Look" and opener "Sprint" compliment JW's swift hands perfectly. This is about as good as free improv gets in Nashville. On other songs ("Build", "Abstract") he lets his Rhodes melt into ring-modulator and delay effects while Westberry deftly adds color, playing on the toms and accentuating different tones, pings and hisses from his cymbals, pretty badass. But on other tracks like "Light", the piano playing is so simple, white-keys-only kinda stuff, that you can hardly believe dude has a degree in performance from a major university, which I can only assume he does.

The ambient-piano isn't always bad. Take for example, "Stuttering" which features light-modal playing at first that eventually catches on itself and loops like a CD skipping at a particularly pleasant moment. It's like glitch-jazz, and that's pretty cool.

Similarly, Santiago's dark-toned, unpretentious trumpet-playing sounds beautiful and rich sometimes ("Conversation Piece B", "The Unwritten Rule"), but he sometimes flounders into obvious arpeggios that harken to well-worn standards, and these feel too much like accidents, like he doesn't know quite where to go next and is treading water. On moodier material like "Conversation Piece C", he seems to attempt Coltrane-Minor-seriousness from his horn while Westberry conjours similarly at the kit, all rolls and crashing cymbals like Love Supreme's "Resolution".

Westberry may have the technical chops, but he's not quite convincing in this mode of "heavy" Jazz. He's too polite. But then album-closer "Abrupt" may be the most "challenging" track and one of my favorites and it cuts off mid-riff. I wish it lasted longer!

Classy looking, totally-recycled sleeve and insert. Self-released.

Music: Submission Skills "I Bought Lance Armstrong's Colostomy Bag" tape

I wanted to not like this tape, OK? Hell, I was told not to like it, but damn it all if I don't kind of love it.

It's stupid. I get that, and it's a joke sort of tape, obviously, with that title. The fragments of lyrics and song titles (drummer, Rob Bekham shouts the titles before counting off each song,) are all nasty jokes about anal rape and finger fucking. Sophomoric, to say the least, it's a bit like an Adam Sandler movie for the noise set. But if Diarrhea Planet once set the bar for sophomoric humor in Nashville punk music, well that's just been obliterated absolutely. (And, by the way, they didn't. There used to be a band called Asschapel for Christsakes.)

The music is ridiculous speed-punk. The guitar is so distorted it becomes just a big cloud of noise. The drums are all bashed, two hands at a time, never changing. Singer, Kevin Cunningham's vocals are off-key raving and never as audible as Bekham's unamplified voice, screaming the song names. And everything's about as unlistenable as this description makes it sound. But it's a lot of fun.

Shit-quality recording and dubbing, (in between songs, bits of random, mostly awful-sounding pop can be heard, presumably having been recorded over for the release.) And yes that's a woman drinking from what appears to be a colostomy bag on the cover, but I'll have to see some kind of documentation of proof before I believe it's actually Lance Armstrong's.

Definitely pick this up if you come across it.

Music: Deluxin' "Smelly Kelly" single

Here you have it: the back-to-blood-basics punk-as-hell Deluxin'. Gone are the arty asides, near-falsetto singing voice and intricate arrangements of "Chocolate Jam", which to be fair, also had its bruisers. This is just fucking bruising along man.

"Smelly Kelly" is the kind of crushing, no-frills punk that's real blatant but not like that stupid fucking plebian-Hans Condor shit. It eviscorates yr shit like a whip. The hook is massive and filled out nicely by the new double-guitar lineup; it's pretty heavy but skips along to Glenn Coburn's swift-handed drumming. Rad break down before the single-note ascending guitar solo thing.

"Sick Lick" on the B-side is another head-wiper, just maybe not as catchy. Still when Nathan's simple high-note guitar lead (really similar to the A side,) kicks in the thrash hits home hard. After a stuttering refrain, the song dumps into a slower tempo grind. It doesn't last long and when the regular Lick returns it's pretty much all over as far as keeping your shit together goes and there"s this other part with a really frantic vocal, and then it does most everything again. This song is pretty long.

Props to Kevin Dietz for the awesome artwork: some kind of Man-Eagle scalping a traveller in the desert(?) on photocopied letter stock, in keeping with the Hag Bloom aesthetic. Pretty sick record all around. Recomended!

Music: Sparkling Wide Pressue "No Need for a Meaning" tape

We can probably mostly agree that Neil Young's soundtrack for the film "Dead Man" is pretty effective, even if it sounds like Neil layed it down in an afternoon, just noodling around and abusing his whammy bar. And that's kind of the feeling I get from most of this tape. It's kind of lazy-style guitar-picking, but with heavy atmospheric elements, distant drones and birds chirping and the like. Rendered casually but pretty impactful in context, and with layers far to rich to have been really layed down in a day.

Gradually electric bass presents itself and the casual acoustic strums give way to some consonant electric scratching. But the music takes its time and never tries to do too much. Gutteral feedback and cassette recorder breaking down a bit and everythings played like with out too much purpose. Sunny-afternoon-stoned vibe. It's "jammy", no doubt about that, but whatever catharsis frat boys get from listening to Phish, the underground set can get from listening to this.

Atmosphere is happening big time. When the drones and verb settle down toward the end of side 1 and we're presented with a somber finger-picked guitar, it's the light crackling of dust on the tape head and snippets of reversed e-guitar that give it some weight. But even at its hissiest and droniest, this thing is pretty approachable. Familiar fragments of various guitar-based stoner genres (If anyone tells me that Frank Baugh doesn't smoke pot every day I'll be shocked,) keep this thing well under most of your thumbs.

Pretty groovy January 2012 release on Fadeaway Tapes. Nice little Ab.Ex.-style J-card, non-recycled.

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: Pineapple Explode "Cooke City" tape

Kind of dreamy, kind of lazy ambience. The parts where it's like a feild recording inside a house and you can hear walking around and setting down objects and picking them up are sort of obnoxious.

Side 2 is mostly dreamscape-style. Some underwater sound effect rhythms and quiet drones. It's probably pretty good to sleep to music and I suppose I could say you won't miss much if you do fall asleep.

PE are pretty good at the folk pop game, making music that takes a little effort to make. I dunno, this one's pretty aimless.

Self released. 85% recycled J-card.