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: Cypress Rosewood "Isle of Wyrms" CD

This CD represents a live concert event performed for the opening ceremonies of the Summer Festival 2007 at Cathedral, a part of the Isle of Wyrms continent in Second Life.

So here we have an earnest, not-tongue-in-cheek document of hyper-reality in action. This is the parody-fodder James Ferraro drools over, if you could call what JF does parody... But this thing is of a completely separate mindset than the "Vaporwave" phenomenon, I think... Ultimately with out the ironic distance of the cassette-bound Neo-New Age set. Unencumbered by "Everything Time's" self awareness-worm hole. It is unafraid to not make a joke, and that is laudable.

The liners go on to state that the music is performed by Tony Gerber (profiled extensively here,) and features the "Native American flute".

An ancient instrument, thoroughly decontextualized by the virtual platform of hyper-modern role-play. In Second Life, authenticity absolutely just doesn't exist. It's a hang-up we can live with out.

The flute is swathed in reverb and not dissimilar to the flutes you hear while wandering around Gatlinburg-esque mountain-tourism centers, played by real mostly-Natives hawking cheaply produced CDs, paintings of eagles, leather vests and the like.

The flute is surrounded by arpegiating synths and effect pedal-coddled, often Ebow-ed guitars. The effect is ambient electronic/New Age music not unlike that of Nashville out scene-mainstays 84001.

This is sleepy, meditational and/or background music for the online presence. Office-working suburbanite avant garde. It's heart-felt experimentalism within the rigid constructs of a non-present other-world.

Low-res artwork on cardstock, factory printed disc. I can't quite recommend the music, but it's an interesting concept.

Music: Mass at Dawn "Trimutation" 3" CD-R

Ignoring the fact that the three-inch CD-R is easily the most insufferable medium on which modern "underground" music is released, and that this, like most Mass at Dawn releases, seems slightly guilty of placing vintage-gear-credibility ahead of actual musicality, this thing is really pretty good.

Soft distorted drum machine opens "Cycle of Movement", track 1, over which octave-arping, gently losing focus synths play, all unruly like. It's all head-nodding, out-of-phase club music for doctoral students in ethno-linguistics or post-Lacanian psychology. It's cold and unnerving, but human in its imperfection. The beat is sort of front-loaded, too heavy on the 1, which only becomes apparent by the end of the track. It's a creeping imperfection that's nice once you notice, eye-opening, even.

Track 2, "Demons of Fire" starts with a gnarly drone, passed down from that cycling analog octave-jump on track 1, but more muddled. Then beautifully distorted drums and Dylan Simon's psychotically distorted monotonal narrative enter and from here it's just a wrecklessly thought-out mess of of dirty 60s nightmare. Synth patterns are dominated by the slow-charging drums and it's head-back-Manson Family ICK.

Maybe it could be a little more dynamic, but analog purity gets the best of MaD. If well-mastered, this could be 7" of the year.

Nice packaging from Kimberly Dawn, but again, it's a tiny little baby CD, so have the foresight to rip it into iTunes before it gets lost under your couch.

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: Ayebawl CD-R

A few times, in my general day-to-day internet reading, I've come across the phrase "Active Rock". It's pretty context-less to me, having abandoned commercial (and mostly all) radio for quite a few years. I imagine it though: the vocals are all shouted or screamed, the sharp distortion on the guitars is alternately piercing and crunchy (as described by the ads for FX pedals I've never used or heard,) the drumming may or may not involve a double kick drum pedal.

Realistically, the "Active Rock" I've read about contains up to one of these characteristics, with none of the 'tude implied. I mean, realistically the "Active Rock" I've read about is about as corporation-contrived as, say, Backstreet Boys. "Active Rock" is an ugly phrase. But let's say for a minute that it isn't, OK? That it fucking means what it says it means.

Ayebawl is fucking active rock.

Like, Tom George and Lukin Nunn, trading off on vocals, Lukin's screach is especially nuts, but exacting still and double tracked (this whole thing has a real nice, clean studio-quality,) and the guitars, man. Matt Bach's just a killer lead player. Everything's so composed, controlled, but it rips hard. And as drumming goes, there's a lot of pounding, but the number of hits and the speed never betray precision.

It's an intelligent hard core album sort of. All the thrash with none of the bonehead bullshit. Its violence is more visceral than bludgeoning, (and it is pretty fucking violent.) If you think Motorhead are pretty good, but kind of old fashioned, check it out.

Nine crazy tracks. Crazy Ed Gein artwork. Crazy, man!

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: Dave Cloud and the Gospel of Power "Practice in the Milky Way" CD

A real problem with Dave Cloud recordings is that they always sound like Karaoke. His voice is just too bizarre/unfitting for any accompinament, however technically absorbing and/or "rockin'" the accompinament may be.

Or is it just poorly mixed? Maybe Dave has a complex where he has to hear hisself way upfront.

At any rate, this is some solid shit where Matt Bach's lead guitar and arrangements just slay trope-based/Tradition-based rock and get into real Steely Dan-territory, as far as really brainy-perfectionist composition style.

But all the "learned" instrumentation doesn't undersell the "Outsider" apeal, whether "knowing"/"unknowing". That's the weird thing about the record: these dichotomies are presented: irony/sincerity, deranged/non-deranged, but then it's mostly up to you, ya know?

They play a Sexton Ming song: "Rockin' After Midnight". It's the only cover. The originals are just as lyrically "outsidery" there's: "On your knees, in supplication," sez Mrs. Crumb in "Mrs. Crumb", the track-7 psych-out masochist-jam that serves to reinforce Cloud's preoccupation with high-literary sexual perversion.

"Before I Give You Up" is a groovy, lightly trotting Rhodes-jam. Imagine the Partridge Family let their drunken, leering uncle sit in on vocals on evening. And really this thing is all over the map style-wise
Like, the deeper into the album you get, the slightly-less freaky it gets, maybe you're just more used to the mix, or more catching the slipping referential-wave.

Solid disc of outer space-feelings from Nashville's favorite barroom conspiracy theorist. Fire Records.

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: 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!