The noisier the better, in my opinion. And things don’t get much noisier than this.
Right out of the gate Housewives are throwing around dissonant strains of fragmented guitar lines, severed rhythms, distorted crunchy stabs standing in for harmony and a voice that is swallowed up by the whole beautiful mess.
The early 80’s no-wave scene most certainly plays an incredibly important role in Housewives’ songwriting approach, though with a consideration for a bit more clarity and complexity. Take, for example, “Almost Anything” with its drastic tempo shift that is perfectly, perhaps mathematically, executed. A subtle prog-ish sensibility starts to peek out from behind all the art-rock boundary destruction.
Prog rhythms don’t end with “Almost Anything,” but instead continue to carry the palindromic titled EP closer “62426.” I don’t want to focus too much on these elements though, because the most exciting parts are the blasts of screeching feedback and angular guitar noise that will rip through your speakers without warning. Additionally, elements of minimalism are thrown into the mix with hypnotic cycles of rhythmic and melodic fragments.
While the guitars hold down the atmospheric swirling clusters of noise and chaos, the bass remains grounded in its thick, round tone that pulsates steadily underneath it all.
Housewives’ darkness tinged sound brings to mind Women, This Heat, and DNA. You can hear the release in its entirety at the Faux Discx bandcamp where you can also grab a physical copy on cassette, or simply as a download.
You can also check out the video for “Almost Anything” below.
Ultra distorted, lo-fi psych punk. That just about sums it up.
If you know anything about Purling Hiss, and Permanent Records that originally put this album out back in ’09, it’s that they are both synonymous with fuzzed out, lo-fi (sometimes to an extreme) psych/stoner garage rock.
This recording is overblown, in the red nearly the entire time, really capturing the energy and immediacy of a debut release. Since this album came out 5 years ago Purling Hiss has gone on to release tons of stuff on other labels like Woodsist and Drag City to name a few. Purling Hiss has gone from the solo project of Mike Polizze to becoming a full-fledged band, jamming non-stop on endless tours across the country.
“Almost Washed My Hair” lays out an 8 minute guitar solo over static harmony that explores almost every classic rock guitar idiom known to man while simultaneously slicing through squeals of feedback and an incessant wash crash cymbals. “Montage Mountain” takes the noise element up a few hundred notches, with guitars bleating and screaming wildly, trying to find their place. Both tunes stretch on for what seems like an indefinite period, again, just a noise, feedback jam session. And I didn’t even bring up the track “Purple Hiss,” the longest on the album, clocking in at 14 and a half minutes.
And now that we have a better idea of what Purling Hiss sounds like in their current incarnation-specifically a Sabbath influenced, stoner rock guitar riffage band-it’s interesting to be able to hear where that all started. Head on over to the Permanent Records site to grab one of the limited edition cassettes or vinyl while you can, as I’m sure they aren’t going to last very long. If you miss out, you can still head to their bandcamp and get in on the download.
Add another band to the list of “ungoogle-able bands.” They’re in good company though. I mean, Women is one of my favorite bands of all time and they are tricky/impossible to do a google search on.
So many thoughts and memories came rushing to mind as soon as I started listening to this Nothing album. Shoegaze is, to start off generally, one of the first and most noticeable characteristics of Nothing’s sound. But it’s not all just a My Bloody Valentine cloud of distortion. Inside that wall is a concentrated core that contains so many recognizable elements.
Hum, The Smashing Pumpkins, Longwave, all of these emerge from Nothing (the more I mention the band by name the more it sounds like I am making some lofty philosophical statement: “they all emerge from Nothing.” Or maybe it would be better to say “they all emerge from the sound of Nothing.”)
The hushed vocals, thick power chords, persistent focus on one long drawn out harmony like the band is carving a path through a thick, dense fog, all coming out of the shoegaze tradition. But, this isn’t a bad thing. No bands are out there really doing the same thing. I suppose We Were Promised Jetpacks is going for an approximation of the same aesthetic, but really the details are quite different. Nothing re-presents shoegaze in much the same way that Yuck re-presented grunge with their first album.
“Guilty of Everything” is dark in tone, which is unavoidable given the parameters. There is something slightly sinister, or at least ominous about that combination of relaxed, whispered vocals and a barrage of loud guitars. One can’t help but have a visceral reaction. You get pulled into the music listening intently to the vocal, which in turn results in getting lost inside the sound of that barrage of guitars.
And the quieter moments shouldn’t be overlooked. I’m reminded of some of the more introspective moments on “Siamese Dream” like “Mayonnaise” or the end of “Hummer,” throughout the titular track of this album. Moments that work to just pull the listener in with ringing open strings that cut through the wall of guitars; feedback that squeals uncontrollably for a few seconds in the background–it’s all here. Another distinct connection comes in the form of “You’d Prefer an Astronaut” era Hum that comes out loud and clear on “Dig” (listen to “Little Dipper” below to compare).
“Guilty of Everything” is certainly an entrancing debut that will resonate strongly with listeners who grew up listening The Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine, but I’m sure it will also manage to draw a new crowd that may have missed the chance to experience those bands when they were first around (and not a shell of their former selves like they are today). Nothing still has a few shows coming up in March, while their debut album is set for release on March 4th through Relapse Records. Check the links below to pre-order the album and to connect with the band all over the internet.
Brutal Truth/Bastard Noise – “The Axiom of Post Inhumanity”
It is no secret that I am a fan of noise music. I’ve written on the topic morethanafewtimes and I often find myself listening to varying levels of “noise” at home. For some reason I never think of it as anything other than something that is pretty experimental, and therefore in a genre of its own. I never have thought about the implications that noise music may have as a way of reinterpreting a genre, or as using those implications to align itself to a genre. It’s understandable that this could be a next step, having noise stand in where other older forms and music/semiotic indicators have grown tired and been wrung dry of any meaning.
Sure, it is experimental, and it is always going to be fairly experimental to present noise as music in and of itself. But if we are to re-imagine noise as yet another degree of abstraction (something I have also already talked about on here) then why can’t noise fit into the genre of, say, metal, instead of just being something that only comments on itself, or is merely interpreted as a challenge to everything else?
Late last year, on November 11th, two bands, Brutal Truth and Bastard Noise, compiled a split album entitled “The Axiom of Post Inhumanity” and it works to do exactly what I described in the last paragraph. Noise, on this album, stands in for brutal de-tuned guitar crunch and growled, grind-core vocals. I think that presenting music this way brings a whole new depth to both noise music as well as metal. The noise, for lack of a better term, means something before it’s even heard. And, presented in this context, the album is free to explore all of the many possibilities that noise has to offer, much in the same way that a metal album might be shaped. From all consuming intensity to sound that echoes across barren wastelands, the abstraction of sound is starting to bring itself back around to the point that it’s not heard merely as that abstraction. This is an interesting, and exciting, step in the evolution of metal.
There is definitely a lot of stuff to grab onto with this album. Many of the tracks are over 7 or 8 minutes long, but each of them is a gripping and intricate display of experimental noise as metal, or maybe it’s metal as experimental noise. Either way, this split is worth a listen. Check it out above.
As I continue to play through all of my favorite releases of the year, trying to put together some sort of end of year compilation, the release that I come back to almost every day is Twin Peaks’ debut LP “Sunken.” I think that I’m going to have to say definitively that that is my favorite release of the year. My one complaint about “Sunken,” though, is that it’s way too short, but I guess that this tiny little single can tide me over until 2014 with its expansive 4 minutes and 17 seconds of material. I’m just going to consider these two songs as “Sunken” bonus tracks.
Both “Flavor” and “Come Bother Me” are considerably more poppy, and considerably less washy/reverbed out. You can take a quick listen to both the tracks above, and then you can head over to the bandcamp page to drop $1 on a download, or send it as a last minute gift.
According to the bandcamp site the single was released on cassette via Tripp Tapes this past Friday, December 20th with a 7″ via Jeffery Drag Records coming soon.
You can buy “Sunken” over here on CD, vinyl, or as a digital download. Check out the video for “Stand In the Sand” off of that album below.
Murderedman is another band that can slide between experimental rock to metal quite easily without changing anything about their sound. Just by focusing on an element and bringing it out, highlighting it slightly they can completely change the context that their music may be heard in. Referential sound, and by that I mean that they are using their own style and keeping everything within that sound to make allusions to a genre that runs parallel to their own. But, at the same time, this makes Murderedman a band without a genre.
Their sound already comes pretty close to metal, which can be heard in the track “Shadow Survived” especially well. The band describes themselves on their bandcamp page as “a mixture of gothic love songs and hard rock death songs that are sure to leave you breathless.” But, when I think of gothic I usually think of The Cure, or a band that tends toward the equally moody. Murderedman is nothing like The Cure, though the gothic tag is apt in the overall dark and foreboding sound of the vocals that reverberate somewhere in the background, under the sharp sound of the guitars.
Murderedman’s “Love in Danger” release (is it an EP? Is it an LP? Does that even matter anymore?) starts out with the aforementioned dark and foreboding atmosphere in the track “Sleight of Hand,” with spastic energy and crazed vocals. Sudden guitar blasts punctuate the vocals before everything loses its footing and collapses under its own weight into a noisy pile of rubble. “Sleight of Hand” is the perfect opener, as it pretty much sums up their entire sound, setting up the template off which those delicate shifts can allow for genre jumping.
“Halve the Mind” is another demonic, dark song with distant vocals and a minimal, cyclic guitar line. The sound in general is reminiscent of The Wipers, while the extreme leaps of range in the guitar remind me of another band that I wrote about just recently, Bbigpigg. When blastbeats are added to the mix, such as in “In Love While Sober,” an element that you don’t even realize is missing until it happens, manages to catch you completely by surprise one second and then making total sense within the overall aesthetic the next.
Short bursts of odd time signature off-kilterness as in “My Catastrophe” complement some of the more fleshed out tracks. Though, in my opinion sometimes the shorter tracks seem as though they work better than the 3+ minute tunes. The shorter tracks showcase one idea and don’t include any development where they really don’t need any. Sometimes, though, the sound of the band, because it is so singular and characteristically original, it begins to come off as a bit redundant. That’s why the shading of the sound is such an important aspect, it allows them to experiment within their structures, to find a sound, to try out a bunch of different things.
I always enjoy hearing albums such as this that show a band that is exciting and willing to try new things while being able to present these exploratory albums. You can head over the their bandcamp to hear the whole thing, or check it out above. And according to the band’s website though they are on a break for the Winter, they will be back in the Spring with some new tracks. You can also head over there for some other downloads.
I have a few different things that I’m working on right now that are going to take some more time to write than I have right now, but luckily I have an inbox full of music that I am trying to get through. I figure that now, toward the end of the year where new releases are getting fewer and farther between that I would do some housecleaning and share with you some of the very worthwhile stuff that I have been checking out.
First up is some heavy garage rock coming from our friends at Permanent Records in Chicago and L.A. The band is Basic Cable and the release is titled “I’m Good to Drive.” Officially released just two days ago “I’m good to drive” is the 39th release on Permanent Records’ own label. The track is a lot cleaner in production than other garagey offerings coming our way from the P-rex crew, but still delivers all the noise and reckless abandon that anyone could hope for. Take a listen to the track “Blonde Ambition” below.
Next up: what kind of a week would it be if Thee Oh Sees didn’t release something. The stream of non-stop ass-kickers continues with “What You Need (The Porch Boogie Thing),” reminding us that the band has released their 3rd singles collection, available now from Castle Face, there are still a few copies of the Pepto Pink vinyl left, as well as CDs. Listen to the track below, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Thee Oh Sees, and they are never ones to disappoint. Oh, and while you are over there at Castle Face, why not pick up a copy of the new White Fence Live in San Francisco recording, and I should add that I picked up the Fuzz EP live from the San Francisco Eagle, and that record (recorded direct to tape) sounds amazing. Guitar crunch and gut punching bass for days.
And now for something completely different. The Delay in the Universal Loop is from Benevento, Italy and they just released an album this past week entitled “Disarmonia.” The track below is “Spasmodica,” a song which starts off delicately enough, but takes a few twists and turns in the course of 4 minutes. The 17 year old Dylan Luliano is responsible for every aspect of the album, playing all the instruments, singing and writing all of the songs. More information and tons of links can be found here. “Disarmonia” is available worldwide right now. And you should maybe act fast because apparently there are an extremely (30?!) limited number of physical copies available. Head to the bandcamp page to check it out.
Enjoy those, and follow the links to some of the other stuff available from the Factum Est and Permanent Records soundcloud pages. Lots of worth stuff there.
On some levels it might seem like the easy way out, to record an album fully of acoustic guitar-based songs. It’s simpler, faster, maybe cheaper, at least that is what I think most people think. But, in actuality, it’s exactly the opposite. Recording such an album is pretty much the ballsiest thing that you can do. There is nothing to hide behind. Any mistakes made are going to shine through and be there forever. The stripped-down-ness of the entire affair, in actuality, complicates everything. Every aspect of a song needs to be given the same amount of thoughtful attention, because if anything is let to slip not only is that going to be noticeable but it’s going to drag down everything else in the mix.
By this point you can probably see what I’m getting at, and that thing is that Dim Peaks’ “Time of Joy” is, yes, a stripped down acoustic centric album that places all that it has to offer into a bright light, center stage. Before we even get to the lyrics we should talk in detail about just the sound of the album. The lone acoustic guitar is pushed way up front in the mix. No reverb, and no punching in (from what I can tell). The way that it’s recorded it’s possible to hear fingers against strings, strings against fretboard, sometimes a faint snapping of the lower strings as the thumb plucks out a bassline. And in the opening track “Rest Well” a piano adds a little lightness against the plucked strings and vocals.
“Rest Well” works perfectly as an album opener with its short and simple structure, terse lyric and gradual building up of the texture. Leading into “Control” and “Let the Bidding War Begin” introduces a few more instruments that periodically lay down some atmosphere to the background, again, shading the overall mood every so subtly.
Listening to the album I can’t help but be reminded of a few albums that I’ve spent some time with. The intimacy of the songs and the style of the guitar playing makes me think of Luke Roberts’ “The Iron Gates at Throop and Newport,” while sometimes the somber mood (for example on “Control” or “Slumberland”) reminds me of The Burning Hell’s “Happy Birthday” album. The occasional use of slide guitar, always a great addition when used properly, makes me think of Joel Plaskett’s solo debut “In Need of Medical Attention.” And I’m not saying that this album is derivative of those, not at all. What I am saying is that this album makes a great addition to those and I will forever link all of these releases in my mind.
The immediacy of recording an album that focuses primarily on intimate sounds is, I think, a huge advantage that this music has over so many others. What could get closer to harnessing the full affective powers of music? That is what all music is trying to accomplish after all. The rawness and realness of “Time of Joy” rings through in the title track. While the opening guitar line repeatedly traverses its infinitely descending melodic line one can hear guitarist/vocalist Niilo Smeds altering the dynamic of the lowest voice, with the tempo ever so slightly wavering before the entire band enters. It’s these tiny elements that make the songs sound so much more human, and again so much more affecting.
Each song is treated to its own individual arrangement. Instruments come in for one song never to be heard from again, which I think adds a personal touch to each track. Dim Peaks’ masterful uses of a fully fleshed out band in the title track contrasts with the equally thoughtful and efficient use of smaller forces in “Yellow Mountain.” This is not to mention the genre straddling that is going on throughout “Time of Joy.” Some songs lean a little bit heavier onto the folk elements, while others, like “New Orleans,” hint at a blues/country tradition, though they never stoop to using stock melodies and tricks. “New Orleans,” adding to the element of immediacy, sounds as though it’s being sung amongst a circle of friends and at any minute the entire crowd will bust out singing the chorus “I wish I was in New Orleans…” Meanwhile Niilo’s vocals are laid just as bare as the guitar across the album, and doesn’t falter one bit.
Take a listen to the songs that are up on soundcloud and bandcamp, as they are all very much worth it. “Time of Joy” was released earlier this year, in September through Gold Robot Records. Follow the links below for all the good stuff. The vinyl, by the way, is limited to only 500 copies, though the album is also available digitally.
Hard hitting 2 song 7″ from Olympia, Washington’s Survival Knife. The “Divine Mob/Snakebit” 7″ will be released through Kill Rock Stars on October 15.
The band consists of Justin Trosper and Brandt Sandano from Unwound, Meg Cunningham from Blues Druid and Kris Cunningham from Western Hymn.
The quick one-two punch starts with the slightly sinister sounding riff of “Divine Mob,” that turns out to actually be upbeat, only to turn again after the addition of the vocals (and with the help of some palm muting). The great thing here is the way that the band shows themselves finding ways of adding to the basic initial idea. A contrasting guitar line is added as the song opens up, eventually landing in an extended bridge. The overall sound of the track is heavier than hardcore punk, bordering on metal.
The heaviness is brought out even more in the second track, “Snakebit,” which has Meg Cunningham taking over vocal duties. The choppy cut of the guitars moves to angular dissonant sounds, alternating throughout the verse. The highlight, for me, is the extended coda that takes us through the last minute of the song. Noisy, driving, and energetic.
Those three words actually nicely sum up the 7″ as a whole.
Check it out above, and then head to the Kill Rock Stars bandcamp page at the link below to pre-order the download for $2. Vinyl pre-orders are expected to begin shipping the week of October 15.
It looks like that Viet Cong post is the gift that keeps giving, as one of the members of that band comes from another Calgary band, Lab Coast.
Their bandcamp page currently has their tape “Editioned Houses” streaming, and for purchase. The tracks on this EP include hard-to-find 7″ numbers, sneak peaks from their latest album “Walking On Ayr”, early versions of tracks from that album, and a couple exclusive to this tape, including the side-long B-side jam.
Most of the tracks on here sound like little sketches, or miniatures. Ideas that needed to be worked out, though they still work well on their own. There is a fine layer of chillwave ambience present on all the tracks, no doubt a result of producing straight to tape. The echoed, swirling “Better Than Me” reminds of of the sound of the Paul A. Rosales fronted Wonder Wheel. The guitar attacks just sort of disappear behind the ambient sound, turning everything into a whirling cloud.
All but two of the songs clock in at under 2 minutes, plenty of time to get through at least one catchy melody. Take the breezy, hook laden “Guessing Anyhow,” or the folk-blues of “Don’t Want to See You” that manages to pile catchy melody onto catchy melody and even build up to a guitar solo and backing vocals in under 2 minutes. Shaping a song to include all of those elements in such a short amount of time is quite the task.
The track below is the album opener for their latest, “Walking on Ayr.” “As Usual” has a similar early rock, catchiness to it as the tracks on “Editioned Houses.” The main difference, of course, is that the songs on “Walking on Ayr” are more polished, but similarly concentrated into 2 minutes or less.
The entirety of “Walking on Ayr” can be heard above and on the bandcamp page for Mammoth Cave Recording Co. If you are into garage-y, catchy and laid back rock (reminds me a lot of The Fresh and Onlys – another band you need to familiarize yourself with if you haven’t already) then this is an album that should be in your collection.
Suddenly the sound of Viet Cong is making a lot more sense. Head over to Labcoast’s bandcamp for “Editioned Houses” or head to Mammoth Cave Record Co.’s bandcamp for “Walking on Ayr.” And, if you haven’t heard Fresh and Onlys, I suggest you get on that too.
