Hipness as a Second Language

The Kill- Shower of Bricks EP

2012-02-20T00:33:00.006-08:00

A favorite old saw of mine is the ability of certain albums to evoke different things from a listener, like a particular mood, aesthetic, image or idea. Some feel cinematic, and bring to mind cyberpunk or horror films, while others recall surrealism or political uprising. Shower of Bricks, the latest EP from the Australian grind madmen in The Kill, recalls something more basic than any of these examples: this record sounds like pure violence.

After a four-second The Exorcist sample that serves as an intro, the band smashes out of the gate with "Trolley Pushing Zombies," a frothing minute of grind that embodies the speed, brevity and sheer relentlessness that I love about this band, so much so that it's probably going to be the song I use to introduce my friends to The Kill from now on.

The EP's eponymous track offers some of the few slower seconds on the entire MCD (and it's still murderously fast, if that tells you anything) in the brief sustained strum that begins the song and a few loping riffs that serve to keep the pacing interesting. It also happens to be one of the catchier songs, as I found myself recognizing it, especially the scream-shout vocals and circular riff pattern that occurs around the mid section, after a few blind listens.

Two songs, "Pub Brawl" and "Utterly Unimportant," appeared previously on the band's Blast Beat'n the Shit Outta PBS radio session album, though the improved production and volume on this record let the song shine in a way the other versions couldn't. While the drumstick count-off on the radio performance of "Pub Brawl" suggests that a click track may have played a part in the improvement, it doesn't change the fact that the songs are at their best in this crisp, higher quality form.

The one-two punch of a dramatic descending riff followed by a chugging stop-start riff, both slightly reminiscent of Discordance Axis, make "Passed Out" a perfect closer, with a brief runtime that means you'll be lunging to restart the album the second it ends.

The songs on this EP merge the "all fast parts" ethos Jon Chang perfected with Gridlink with the aural horror that Repulsion and Pig Destroyer ooze, underscored by an unpretentious attitude that classic grind fans will instantly gravitate toward. This is unquestionably the band's best effort to date, and while little has changed fundamentally in their snarling, blood-soaked style, it finds them at an unprecedented level of musical focus that would be a top-five year-end shoo-in if carried across an LP.

If my review of The Soundtrack to Your Violence a while ago didn't have you rushing to check out their material, let this be your mulligan, because The Kill is still among the best pure grindcore bands operating today and more than deserves your attention.

Listen:

"Trolley Pushing Zombies" (Bandcamp)

"Shower of Bricks" (Soundcloud)

Sete Star Sept- Revision of Noise

2012-01-13T00:32:00.001-08:00

“Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.” – Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

If any of you are at all familiar with my tastes by now, you know that if you but say the words “noisy,” “Japanese” and “grindcore” in the same sentence, I’ll start drooling quicker than Pavlov's pooches at a handbell concert. Therefore, it’s no surprise that as soon as I finished sampling my first Sete Star Sept track and reading some background info, I needed this record.

The band is a Tokyo-based two-piece currently composed of bassist/vocalist Kae and drummer Kiyasu whose sound rests squarely at the mid-point between noise and grindcore. This record serves as the sort of noisegrind gateway drug that Arsedestroyer and Gore Beyond Necropsy were so adept at producing, along with several helpings of traditionalist Japanese grindcore like Carcass Grinder and Gate.

Second track and album standout “Deadly Smile” (found on their Myspace, for those interested in a first listen along with their review) is an excellent introduction to their Japanese-grind-on-an-Arsedestroyer-binge sound, a thirty-six second ball of blasts and shrill, frantic screams akin to mainlining an energy drink in the midst of a bar fight.

“Pearl” opens with killer distorted vocals and proceeds to blast its way into your heart, until it makes the decision to sit on the floor a moment and have itself a breakdown. Thus refreshed, it hops to its feet and proceeds to blast away, except for a cool little riff section that unsurprisingly gets augmented by blasts to close the song.

At times, the noise seems to overpower even the band’s playing ability, certain songs seeming to fall to pieces as you listen. On “Killer,” the song fragments into a mess of feedback-drenched guitar, drum snaps and screaming that re-forms as a Dunwich Horror-on-a-stroll breakdown, gains momentum and rushes back to blurring speeds until it is again smashed apart by its own sheer velocity, this time succumbing to the force and crumbling into a closing half-breakdown.

The fact that the band constantly sound on the verge of losing everything is what makes this release so exciting, however, and although the frenetic blast/slow sustained part/frenetic blast formula can get, well, formulaic, it never gets anywhere close to boring.

While it’s probably not going to convince Rotten Sound/modern Napalm Death straight-arrows that a little noise in your grind never hurt anyone, this release is a perfect introduction to the dirtier, noisier side of grindcore without any of the over-experimental noise-and-yelling fuckery that derails some sloppier noisegrind offerings. It might not make much effort to redefine the genre as we know it (as some 2011 grind releases did), but it does make 15 damned decent arguments for the fact that it's not going anywhere any time soon, either.

Newer Sete Star Sept releases include Gero Me, a 50-track noisefuck with a beautifully grotesque Shintaro Kago manga panel as its cover, and a split with Satan (guess Big Red’s not too busy these days to help out the little guy). Upcoming material includes a split with Penis Geyser. The band have recently been playing shows with the likes of Wormrot, ACxDC and Bloody Phoenix, although a February 12th Japan show seems to be the only current date on the horizon.

Wormrot- Noise EP

2011-11-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

As soon as the words “corporate sponsorship” and “grindcore” appear in the same sentence, it’s natural for the punk in all of us to cry foul and start spouting some nonsense about “the Man,” “subjugation” and “ideals.” And to be honest, most of the time, said punk would be absolutely right.

The fact that I find an exception in the partnership between Wormrot and Scion A/V for this EP (as well as those with bands like Gridlink and Harvey Milk for their live series) has little to do with what I think of Scion or their parent company in any corporate terms, and fuck-all to do with the purchase or sale of automobiles. The sole reason rests with the fact that Wormrot (and other bands that Scion A/V has worked with) make great music, and the Scion folks recognize that and know enough to stay the hell out of the way.

One of the few criticisms that have been leveled at this year’s Dirge, Wormrot’s standout sophomore LP and yet another great year-end contender in a year of excellent records, is that there wasn’t a large amount of measurable growth from the band’s breakout 2009 offering, the much-lauded Abuse. Sure, their extensive touring schedule showed in Dirge’s tightness and polish, and there were riffs and blasts galore, but other than some production differences, you could play the two LPs side-by-side and more likely than not miss the changeover.

This EP bucks that trend by offering 5 songs that, while sonic kin to Dirge and clearly born from the jam-based writing style the band tried out on that record, come packed with a shifting bag of sonic tricks that make these some of the most chameleonic yet patently Wormrot songs that the band has released thus far.

Opening the EP is the feedback-soaked freight train punk of “Loathsome Delusions,” a fairly traditional Wormrot grinder that crams speedy, metallic riffage and one of the galloping, three-quarters time punk sections that the band favors into its structure without feeling cramped or forced. Careful listeners (or those who listen to the EP on repeat) will notice that Noise pulls a Finnegan’s Wake move, making the feedback from fifth track “Perpetual Extinction” Ouroboros onto the opening squall of “Loathsome Delusions” for a neat, cyclical effect that’s just one of the many well thought-out decisions the band makes over its 5 minute, 11 second runtime.

Middle track “Outburst of Annoyance” spews thrash-scented riffage all over you, then drops in a circle pit-forming breakdown so that vocalist Arif can get all Shawn Johnson on your ass. As the rest of the bands skanks away, Arif busts out vocal back handsprings and aerials, shifting from several varieties of shouted vocal to growls and highs, sometimes all with the same breath.

The band pulls out all remaining stops for breathtaking closer “Perpetual Extinction.” After a meaty, lightspeed opening, Rasyid and Fitri trick you into saying “Aw fuck, a breakdown?” before laughing their asses off and playing fast again, a trick they pull off in one form or another for a large portion of the song. Next, the band shit on your expectations once again by managing to navigate dropping a thrashy, Iron Maiden-esque lead solo into 30 seconds of the song’s 1:11 run time without a scintilla of cheesiness, which is something I’ve straight-up never seen before in this sort of balls-out grind.

The highest compliment that I can pay to a free release such as this one is to say that I wish that I could buy it, not only so that I could have a physical copy of another of Arif’s consistently amazing album covers (you can find more examples of his fantastic artwork here, including a drawing of H.R. Giger’s classic Alien creature) but because it just is that good. The continuing upward trajectory that the band is on makes me drool for what a third LP would sound like; if it even nears the level of this release, Noisear’s already-finished fourth full-length is going to have stiff album-of-the-year competition in the year to come.

For anyone who hasn't grabbed this slab of digital goodness yet, you can find it here at the Scion A/V site.

Defeatist / Triac / A.S.R.A. - 3-Way Split

2011-09-23T01:49:00.000-07:00

Band break-ups, like any other kind, almost never go as smoothly as it seems they will. [Note: You have no idea the willpower it took not to reference “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” in this lede.] After a band’s official break-up is announced, it’s not unusual to hear announcements for one last EP, or a farewell tour, or in this record’s case, even a split, a few months later.

In the case of A.S.R.A. this split has been more than a few months in coming (since they’ve been broken up, what is it, almost 3 years now?) It collects a set of 6 tracks the band recorded before splitting up, along with new material from NYC grinders Defeatist and Baltimoreans Triac for an explosive split LP that’s one part fond farewell and two parts vehicle for a pair of still-rising stars.

All 3 bands bring their most violent, noisy material to the party, making you glad that at least two of these groups are still making music.

Defeatist sound more spontaneous here than either the songs collected on Sharp Blade Sinks Deep Into Dull Minds or those featured on debut LP Sixth Extinction showcased, balancing their characteristic modernist grindcore technicality with a healthy dose of visceral bite to compliment the always-present anger and frustration. Songs like “At Fault” spiral around themselves, repeating guitar lines snaking above and below sections of desperate, extended screaming. The band is at their best here on “Eyes over Teeth,” the briefest and fastest of their contributions, stirring what starts as a grind-punk assault into an angular, many-jointed riff-fest that fans of Discordance Axis will feel right at home with.

The split also collects some of the best material Triac has released so far, showcasing both the band’s blasting grind side and unhinged, sludged-out, punky side (hell, even their blasting side is unhinged-as-fuck) in equal measure. Of the band’s four offerings, the band’s fevered “Police Story/Car Jack Ferry” medley (the Black Flag standard, followed by what I’m fairly sure is an original) and the throat-shattering grindfest “Grab Everything That Kills” hit hardest, giving me the best reason to date to look forward to a new Triac full-length. Part of digesting new Triac material, from first LP Dead House Dreaming to the Blue Room EP and their songs on This Comp Kills Fascists Vol. 2, has been tracking their growth as a band, watching an array of disparate influences and interesting ideas gel into a sound that can be called uniquely their own. With these songs, it feels like that arc has been completed, as I could listen to the noise-rock-indebted snarl and stutter collected here and know within a few listens precisely the band that I was hearing.

A.S.R.A, the band featured third on both sides of the split, sound more balanced here than on the predominately mid-paced doom-crust/Assuck-meets-DxAx mash on LP The Way of All Flesh or the pig-squealing, too-thick deathgrind soup featured on This Comp Kills Fascists Vol. 1. However, at some points A.S.R.A. still sounds like a band at war with itself; awkward pig squeals derail the last few seconds of the otherwise awesome “False Memories,” and other songs fall prey to strange transitions and other construction missteps that, while they can be chalked up to the fact that the band broke up soon after the recording of these songs, still somewhat detract from A.S.R.A.’s portion of the proceedings. Overall, it’s great to hear “new” A.S.R.A., even if every song isn’t perfect, and the fact that they’re now defunct makes it hard to offer more than surface criticism of their efforts collected here.

With perhaps the exception of the Triac songs, this is by no means an essential release. In the best light, this record can be view as an introduction, both to the back catalog of all three bands as well as the already growing number of future releases from the two still-functioning ones. This split is like running into old friends at a funeral: you’re glad as hell to be together, but just can’t help wishing that the circumstances were better.

Defeatist have just released a new LP, Tyranny of Decay, available at their bandcamp, and Triac’s latest release, the four-song Always Meant to Hurt You EP, is available as a 7” through a389 Records.

Psychic Limb- Queens

2011-08-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

Ask me. Go ahead, you’ve read the post title. Just get it over with. Ask me, “Nigel, how exactly does a limb go about being psychic?”

My answer? I haven’t a fucking clue.

Okay, phantom limb I can handle. Psychic friend I think I’ve got covered. But Psychic Limb leaves me at a loss. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a cool thing to name a band, but beyond an arm that can tell the future or a leg that can read minds, I have no clue what practical definition the phrase could possibly have.

Lucky for the band, however, the sense or lack thereof involved in their chosen name has absolutely no discernable bearing on the music they make (the lack of track titles suggests that naming things in general is sort of an afterthought for the band, similar to a certain noisy Swedish favorite of mine.) Said music, I might add, happens to be really, really good.

Psychic Limb play grindcore with a thick hardcore punk accent that will appeal as much to Converge fans as it will those of Siege or Phobia. The record’s opening track offers a fair template for the other eleven, as a squalling wall of feedback is broken by a series of crisp snare taps that launch into a mildly angular, hyperspeed punk snarl of a song (Queens’ second-longest at 1:08, a good 10 seconds of which is consumed by feedback and guitar strums.)

The band’s superb grasp of dynamics and pacing mean that not every moment in the album’s 9 minute, 35 second run is at light speed, but neither does it boast the now-clichéd sophomoric sludge number. Songs like track 2 shift seamlessly from punky dirge breakdowns to frenetic blasting and back again, while keeping the momentum perfectly balanced. Track 9, the album’s longest track (only a second longer than the first track) allows the listener another rare moment of breathing room with its similarly slow opening, only to gallop forward soon after into full-on grind mode, aided by echo-y, megaphone-esque shouting vocals near its middle.

Of course, my favorite tracks on the album are the ones that straight-up blast, but even those songs are handled in a varied and creative manner. An excellent stop-start breakdown opens track 7, which stumbles its way into a viciously paced hate-fest rounded out by a truly violent vocal performance, with the whole thing ending before you have time to catch your breath. Track 11 gallops forward on a circular opening riff, launches into full-out blast mode, downshifts into a finger-pointing mid-paced lope and then rides a bass break into a pit-inducing breakdown peppered with Converge-eque angular riffage that closes the track.

I’ve been struggling to find fault with this album since I started writing this review, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there just really aren’t any. Even the lame “I wish it were longer” excuse doesn’t work here, because even under ten minutes, it just feels complete. Fuck you if you call it an EP, as well; full-length is as much a state of mind as a length of time, and this just happens to be one of the best LPs released this year. I’m already hungry for whatever these talented, vitriolic Brooklynites have to serve up next.

The band isn’t on any of the usual social networking sites, but you can order this excellent LP here. If you’re one of those try-before-you-buy types, a quick Google search will find you a download; I usually don’t openly support piracy in my reviews, but I know that one or two listens will probably be enough for you to order a copy of your very own.

Grindcore/Extreme Music Radio Show 8/25/11

2011-08-25T18:06:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are the links to my grindcore/extreme music radio show (mostly grind and some doomy/black metal stuff thrown in for good measure) from midnight to 2 on Wednesday night. I'd originally uploaded them in .wav, but considering the fact that those uploads ended up totaling around a gig, I decided I had to re-up them as 320 mp3s instead. This will be my last metal show of the summer, and one of the last radio shows I'll do until I (I hope) come back and do a few shows over winter break, so I hope you folks like it. There's a couple of slip-ups that I apologize for in advance (like the part where the hard drive I'm using doesn't recognize the Noisear song I'm going to play and I have to play station liners for like 2 minutes until we fix it) but I had a whole lot of fun doing it.

pt. 1

pt. 2

Gridlink- Orphan

2011-08-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

“He played the most dreadful music that could possibly be imagined by the most fiendish mind of man. He deafened us with the sheer fabulous ugliness of his music. He made our flesh crawl and bristle with his noise. Mum’s face began to twitch. I kept jerking. A strange smell, as of a rotting corpse, or of a great animal in the throes of death, rose from the music, and occupied the room. It was incredible.”
-Ben Okri, The Famished Road (1991)

“At the moment the face is horribly distorted, especially the eyes. The whole body and the features of the face work with convulsive jerks and contortions. A terrible, indescribable scream that is unlike anything else breaks from the sufferer. In that scream everything human seems obliterated and it is impossible, or very difficult, for an observer to realise and admit that it is the man himself screaming. It seems indeed as though it were some one else screaming from within the man.”
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot (1869)

Had this been any other year, the fight for top grindcore album come December would’ve been a bare-knuckled brawl. A nearly unprecedented number of the genre’s modern purveyors released excellent LPs this cycle, and the Iron Chef-level of accomplishment on the best of them would’ve meant a hair’s breadth difference between the first, second and third place position, had Jon Chang’s elite grindcore commando squad not loosed this 13-minute, precision-guided salvo broadside through their hulls, rendering further discussion unnecessary.

Ever since my frenzied first listen some 4 months ago, I’ve known that 2011’s album of the year had already been chosen for me. Of course, there was at first some denial on my part; surely some other album could come in the next 8 months that would shake this grind masterpiece from its throne, relegating it to second or even third place? Yet as the weeks wore on, my enthusiasm for Orphan just never seemed to wane, and its unshakeable supremacy was further cemented as weeks and then months of listening allowed me to unpack more and more of the intricacies that compose this compact musical dynamo of a record.

Orphan seems essentially designed to ramp up every aspect that made 2006’s Amber Grey a masterpiece in its own right. Takafumi Matsubara, also guitar mastermind of Japan’s underrated technical grind powerhouse Mortalized, has upped the band’s guitar composition in both complexity as well as catchiness (an aspect oft-overlooked in grindcore songwriting,) crafting songs that perfectly marry the technical with the memorable instead of jumping off the deep end of wankiness as many “mathcore” and technical metal groups tend to do.

In response to the upgrade in songwriting, the other aspects of the band have been beefed up as well. Former Human Remains members Steve Procopio (who acted as touring guitarist for Discordance Axis when Rob Marton was out of commission) and bassist Teddy Patterson do an excellent job of filling out the band’s sound, adding punch without sacrificing an ounce of rawness or energy. Blastbeat wunderkind Bryan Fajardo returns to the drum stool with his chops cranked up to 11, and even he’s had to make some changes to cope with Matsubara’s frenetic fretwork. Formerly the king of the single-pedal blastbeat, he had to learn to play double-kick just to keep up with the relentless bpms this record cranks out. Even vocalist Jon Chang shows increased versatility this go-round, exhibiting his full range of techniques from shrieks to deathgrowls and to several surprising gradations in-between.

Ever a font of vitriol, from his work in Discordance Axis to the present, Chang has upped the anger, pain and frustration to a fever pitch on this release. Vocally, it’s rarely more visible than in the black metal-inflected, tortured-wolverine-spewing-acid delivery on “Scopedog,” one of many anime-indebted narratives to be found on the record (the song itself named after a character from the long-running VOTOMS series.) He also employs a clearer, almost barking technique for some lines, making lyrics like the title track’s “Somewhere in between we’ve lost ourselves” surprisingly understandable right from the first listen.

His penchant for violent revenge returns in full force on this record, perhaps most evident on standout closing track “The Last Red Shoulder” (named after a VOTOMS OVA and another of many anime references on the record): “I want to hear you scream until it becomes the flat drone of tinnitus / Until the ground is Pollacked with your offal and blood.” However, the lyrics boast more than just extreme music’s requisite gore; they also exhibit a pain and fragility more common to heart-on-sleeve singer-songwriters than grindcore lifers, exhibited in these lyrics from the title track: “I never wanted this distance / This distance between myself and the rest of the world / Unanswered voicemails[,] the cursor hangs anxiously / Waiting for words that never come.”

Lyrically, Orphan also boasts some of Chang’s most accomplished writing to date. Aforementioned album closer “The Last Red Shoulder” boasts particularly evocative, imagery-laden storytelling that weaves a violent, emotionally intense war narrative. While clearly influenced by the mech combat of some of his favorite anime, these lyrics, like much of his work, seem to carry a deeply personal undercurrent. These lines from the song’s opening genuinely gave me chills when I first cracked open the gatefold for a peek at the lyrics sheet: “Rotor wash stirs the desert / Only a shadow of myself / Covered in the grey powder that once was people / Gore spattered chassis are matted by acid rain.”

The record offers a surprise treat for grindcore purists in the fantastic “Cargo 200,” a blistering 7 seconds that will go down in history as one of the finest micro-songs ever written, in grind or any other genre. More than just primal therapy, the song proves that there’s still life in a trick that’s become something of a genre cliché roughly two-and-a-half decades after “You Suffer” blipped its way into our music-consuming consciousness.

While I could go on, dissecting all of the layers that make the album great track-by-track, it seems futile, especially after the excellent coverage it's received within the blogsphere and the surprisingly positive reception it’s received from some corners of the mainstream metal press. Additionally, considering the track record of Chang and the rest of the band, if you were going to pick this record up you most likely had the good sense to do it months ago, and anything I would have to say either for or against it would be fairly useless.

Instead, consider this more a love song to a record I've grown extremely attached to and should’ve reviewed months ago, as well as perhaps a re-introduction to me as a blogger, since now that I’ve completed my degree and am settling into post-college life I plan to start publishing reviews of grindcore records (as well as some from other genres) at least weekly. Midnight Wednesday evening I'll be airing a grindcore radio show from my alma mater's radio station, which you can stream here when the time comes, and which I'll also be posting a mediafire link for either early Thursday morning or later during the day on Thursday or Friday if you can't listen live.

Coolrunnings- Babes Forever EP

2011-02-28T08:53:00.001-08:00

I'm not quite certain what still draws me to skateboard culture. Despite not being able to land so much as an ollie, years of friends that skate, skate videos, skate-themed music, thrasher musicians and skate-related films (especially the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys) and video games (the cheesy-yet-endearing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series) have erected a special place for skate culture in my heart. This fondness is only compounded by images and accounts of the '70s and '80s, whose washed out stills and footage offer more to me in raw character than any modern high-powered camera could ever hope to provide.

In that case, it's no surprise that I instantly gravitated to the cover of Coolrunnings' Babes Forever EP; that naked, bronzed woman on her '80s-style board is, to me, the perfect image of freedom, and I'd tack it up on my wall if I could. However, before even setting eyes on the cover, I'd already fallen in love with Coolrunnings' sound, and all because of one song, the evocatively-titled “When I Got High With You.”

Opening simultaneously with a reverb-laden drum machine beat and a dreamy synth fade-in, “When I Got High With You” is the type of song that I instantly gravitate toward. Soon following the opening, the drum machine is bolstered by the beat's true heart, some looping, echo-y, harp-esque keyboard plinks that are forever attached mentally for me to the soundtrack to a certain cave level in Super Mario World, no matter their similarity or lack therefore to the music from the level itself. Vocals enter at about 25 seconds, and stay in close proximity for the rest of the song. The final barb of the hook is the lyrics, whose opening quatrain is “I don't know what I was dreamin' 'bout/When I woke up at two/Spent the whole night drinkin'/And just thinkin' 'bout when I got high with you.” It's that combination of triumphant slackerdom and pure nostalgia that really drew me to this song, and that same formula is carried through an EP's worth of sonically diverse and on the whole intriguing material.

The first noticeable thing about album opener “San Dimas Oasis,” is its difference from “When I Got High With You.” Sonic non-uniformity is sort of a theme amongst Coolrunnings songs, but an equally unifying thread running through the remaining five tracks could be “five songs that don't sound like 'When I Got High With You.'” “San Dimas Oasis” brings immediacy in place of the other song's slow burn, showcasing the band's unique keyboard-friendly post-punk meets surf rock style. Its lyrical themes remain familiar, with sleeping, relationships and wistfulness covered as heavily in this track as the former. “San Dimas Oasis” offers a better look at the rest of the band's talents, with jangly, tropicalia-meets-post-punk guitar lines reminiscent of Abe Vigoda circa Skeleton. The guitar work rounds out the band's sound, and the strength of “San Dimas Oasis” is enough to make it okay that the band didn't write the same (excellent) song over and over for the length of an EP.

“San Dimas Oasis” ends abruptly, and we smash-cut to the EP's eponymous second track. We're launched directly into a minute's worth of high-energy keyboard and drum work, until a left-turn sudden fade into an “Ooooooh, oooooh” vocal line that opens the song proper. The song loses most of the energy built up in the intro, and the opening lyrics “Don't want to think that I'm just a friend/It's not the way that I'd thought it'd end/Let's drink some whiskey, let's get fucked up/I'll fill your glass, you fill my cup” don't hit as strongly as others on the record. Further lyrics also reveal another quirk of Coolrunnings' style, a tendency toward strange, oblique storytelling choices such as “Do you remember we got so drunk/And I asked you to be too good to me.” The song's chorus, “I love you forever/I want to show you that I mean no harm/Babes forever/I want to show you that I mean no – ” along with more of those sweet guitar lines are the song's saving grace, forgiving structural oddities and lyrical quirks with pure catchy, head-nodding goodness.

The more down-tempo “Better Things” brings the EP back on track with a sweet, simple arrangement, setting the stage for the album's centerpiece, the aforementioned “When I Got High With You.” Strong opening guitar lines and an opening hook of “Things aren't what they seem/And nothing's real/I don't wanna feel – /Like I'm not bad enough to deal” cement the album's thematic elements and offers a common ground that makes its diverse structural and instrumental choices make sense.

Sped up fake drums and paranoid 8-bit keys open “Trippin' Balls at Der Wienerschnitzel,” a narration of a bad trip perfectly embodied by its instrumental counterparts. “Denied a ride home/Can I have a ride home?” goes its insistent chorus. While not the album's strongest offering, its themes of loneliness and substance use/abuse follow one of the record's main thematic threads, and its dark, fast feel propels the listener to “Slumberland,” the album's closer and one of several high notes.

With all of its quirks, Babes Forever is a great introduction/sampler platter for Coolrunnings' vibrant, tough-to-quantify slacker style. Since the band's full-length debut, Teenage Tennessee, is due in the next few months, now is the perfect time to get familiar with a band who, judging from their energy and prolific nature, just might be around for a while. A few tracks from the new album, such as the superb “Chorus,” are available for free from Dracula Horse, as well as Babes Forever and the band's other EP, Buffalo.

Standout tracks: “When I Got High With You,” “San Dimas Oasis,” “Slumberland”

Also check out: “Chorus” from Teenage Tennessee, “Road to Nowhere (Talking Heads Cover)” [Purchasable from the band's Bandcamp] and “Burnout” from Buffalo

Temporal Shift: Arsedestroyer- Teenass Revolt

2011-01-03T16:41:00.000-08:00

The sheer power of words baffles me. The act of simply supplying a name or a description to a thing has the ability to provide form and purpose to a previously nebulous space, a sort of linguistic birth-giving that wholly alters the thing's existence as long as knowledge of that name or description exists. Perhaps due to this phenomenon, language-using humans tend to fear or simply ignore the nameless or the indescribable. That which is impossible to catalog then, in a sense, ceases to be.

Teenass Revolt, the noise-friendly LP from the Swedish grind madmen in Arsedestroyer, seems to suffer a similar fate when brought under scrutiny by many discerning grindcore fans. Spanning 38 untitled tracks, this utterly unhinged offering rarely receives any sort of attention, save the few diehard proponents that assure that its ugly aural legacy will live on (Beau from Insect Warfare constantly name-dropping it in interviews and on the band's blog is the primary reason I decided to give this album a chance in the first place.) The fact that the tracks offer little or no reference point, unless “that one with the weird Swedish dialog sample” counts, and few aesthetic or ideological cues save the package art, the band name and the album's title, means that the assimilation process for the record is rather unconventional, and may serve to drive off all but the most persistent listeners.

Musically, this is not entirely unfamiliar grindcore territory. One basic reference point could be Sore Throat's Disgrace to the Corpse of Sid, though this is nowhere near the unabashed mimicry of that record that's evidenced on something like Agoraphobic Nosebleed's Altered States of America; song and album structure is entirely the band's own, and there are no blipcore throwaways in attendance here. Arsedestroyer suture a more urgent and destructive tendency to that template, with the assault of Jon Chang's projects at their most lethal and the blown-out production of Rise Above's essential I Love to Relax LP.

Like many of my favorite extreme music offerings, Teenass conjures up its own unique atmosphere of foreboding during private listening. It sounds like the musical equivalent of a grainy foreign snuff/torture VHS, and the strange Swedish vocal samples (the sample which opens the album sounds like it could come from an intensely creepy Swedish rendition of a Three Stooges routine, and later in the album, the band even manages to make a sample of people mewling like cats sound deeply disturbing) add to the linguistic disorientation (provided that you're not fluent in Swedish, I suppose.) What could, in another context, come off as tired gore tropes, are rendered here in skewed and almost impossible to replicate fashion, making this record a solitary experience among years of grindcore achievements.

This album is a shining example of the argument for grindcore-as-aggregate; while individual tracks can more than hold their own, the album as a whole renders that unnecessary. Even lack of songtitles, taken in the long view, seems less of a stumbling-block than a means to highlight the sheer nihilistic beauty represented in Teenass Revolt.

HaASL Winter Break Grind/Metal Show

2010-12-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

Just in case anybody cares, I'll be doing a grindcore/metal show every Wednesday from 10 PM to midnight at my university's radio station until winter break is over. Since it's not a late-night slot, I'll have to play some normal radio music in there as well, so feel free to give me suggestions. If you're so inclined, you can catch it tomorrow night 10 pm-midnight Eastern time at this link (just click the "Listen Live Now!" link in the upper right-hand corner:) http://www.susqu.edu/orgs/wqsu-fm/index.html

I'll try to post the playlists for those up, too; I forgot last week, and I didn't remember what songs I played off of the station computers, so I didn't bother just posting up my own playlist.

HaASL Radio Show 12/18/10

2010-12-18T21:44:00.001-08:00

1. Julianna Barwick- “The Magic Place”
2. Matthew Dear- “Little People (Black City)”
3. Toro y Moi- “Still Sound”
4. Neon Indian- “Children of the Revolution (T. Rex cover)”
5. Waskerly Way- “Energy Legs”
6. Games- “Strawberry Skies (feat. Laurel Halo)”
7. The Ruby Suns- “Dusty Fruit”
8. Blackbird Blackbird- “Sunspray”
9. Beach Fossils- “Calyer”
10. My Teenage Stride- “Message”
11. Campfires- “Chasing Planets”
12. The Jameses- “Fifth Dimension”
13. Monster Rally- “Rainbow Rd.”
14. Tough Troubles- “Radiation Sickness”
15. Soft Powers- “I Began to Cringe at Eight Ten”
16. Still Corners- “Endless Summer”
17. Cough Cool- “Sucker”
18. Metal Mountains- “Structures in the Sun”
19. Mutual Benefit- “Nite Bike”
20. Nightlands- “300 Clouds”
21. Foxes in Fiction- “School Night”
22. Sunshower Orphans- “Sunnyside Blues”
23. Witch Gardens- “Standard Poodle”
24. Beach House- “I Do Not Care for the Winter Sun”
25. Candy Claws- “Snow Bridge”
26. Tape Deck Mountain- “Blue Xmas”
27. Banjo or Freakout- “Frosty the Snowman”
28. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band- “Autumn's Child”

HaASL Radio Show 12/11/10

2010-12-17T18:02:00.000-08:00

1. Ducktails- "Killin' the Vibe"

2. Wet Hair- "In the Garden of the Pharoahs"

3. The Deeep- "Mudd"

4. EMA- "The Grey Ship"

5. Phillip Oskar Augustine- "It's a Sad World"

6. Mushy- "Too Far"

7. La Femme- "Sur La Plache"

8. Keep Shelly in Athens- "Fokionos Negri Street"

9. Computer Magic- "The End of Time"

10. Puro Instinct- "Stilyagi"

11. The Nightgowns- "Cosmic Clancy"

12. Tearjerker- "Noah"

13. The Babies- "Run Me Over"

14. Reading Rainbow- "Euphoria"

15. Galleries & Foxes in Fiction- "Borders"

16. Kissing Party- "Winter in the Pub"

17. James Blake- "CMYK"

18. Games- "My Plants are Dead (Remix of Blonde Redhead)"

19. Phone Tag- "Let it Go"

20. Young Galaxy- "Cover Your Tracks"

21. Pure Ecstasy- "Voices"

22. Aux Arc- "Round House"

23. Dent May- "Holiday Face"

24. Crystal Stilts- "Practically Immaculate"

25. Los Campesinos!- "Kindle a Flame in Your Heart"

HaASL Radio Show 12/4/10

2010-12-17T17:51:00.000-08:00

1. Perfume Genius- "Dreeem"

2. Jordaan Mason- "Invite"

3. Joanna Newsom- "Cassiopeia"

4. Woodsman- "Serfer"

5. Weed Diamond- "Honesty"

6. Grimes- "Zoal, Face Dancer"

7. Wet Wings- "Stockholm"

8. Candy Claws- "The Breathing Fire"

9. Young Magic- "Sparkly"

10. Millionyoung- "Soft Denial"

11. Blackbird Blackbird- "Erasers"

12. Forest Spirits- "Swiss Palm"

13. Baby Jazz- "Song for the Season"

14. Seapony- "Late Summer"

15. Air Waves- "Radio"

16. Teen Daze- "Beach Dreams"

17. Jeans Wilder- "Sparkler"

18. That Ghost- "To Like You"

19. Eternal Summers- "A Salty Salute (Guided by Voices)"

20. Sun Araw- "Canopy"

21. The Numerators- "Strawberry Dreams"

22. Jonny Telefone- "Doomed in Love"

23. Manic Attracts- "Death of Your Heart"

24. Kyo Itachi- "Noire (feat. StaHHr)"

25. Monster Rally- "Drip Drip"

26. Emay- "Human Bomb (They Know)"

27. Moe Pope- "Rock Me I"

28. Invincible- "Shapeshifters"

29. Hexsagon- "April in Paris"

30. Homebody Sandman- "Calm Tornado"

31. Camu Tao- "Plot for a Little"

HaASL Radio Show 11/27/10

2010-12-17T17:40:00.000-08:00

1. Destroyer- "Chinatown"

2. Memoryhouse- "Heirloom"

3. Tape Deck Mountain- "P.I."

4. On Volcano- "The Explorer"

5. Catwalk- "No Room for Love"

6. Wild Nothing- "Your Rabbit Feet"

7. Atlas Sound- "Terrarium"

8. Devendra Banhart- "When the Sun Shone on Vetiver"

9. Piresian Beach- "Tambourine Girl"

10. Radical Face- "Doorways"

11. Painted Palms- "All of Us"

12. Houses- "Talamak (Toro y Moi cover)"

13. Lord Huron- "Mighty"

14. Velvet Davenport- "Lemon"

15. Reading Rainbow- "I See Light"

16. Childhood- "Blue-Velvet"

17. Pill Wonder- "My Valuable Hunting"

18. Weed- "Release Party"

19. Rollerskates- "Boyhood"

20. Pure Ecstasy- "Alexandria"

21. Labyrinth Ear- "White Gold"

22. Warm Ghost- "Open the Wormhole in Your Heart"

23. Emily Reo- "On the Beach (Neil Young cover)"

24. Wonder Bear- "We Found the Egg"

25. We Like Cats- "Ruff-a-Lution Dub"

26. Indigochild- "Watcher"

27. BL§§D ØU†- "§PNNR§"

HaASL Radio Show 11/20/10

2010-12-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

1. VALLEYS- "The Cold Cold Skinny"

2. Home Video- "The Smoke"

3. Fox Hands- "Patella"

4. Cough Cool- "Sup Girls in the '60s"

5. Minks- "Cemetery Rain"

6. Velvet Davenport- "Get Out (feat. Ariel Pink & Gary War)"

7. Sun Araw- "Horse Steppin' "

8. Coolrunnings- "San Dimas Oasis"

9. White Fence- "Lillian (Won't You Play Drums)"

10. Matthew Dear- "Gem"

11. Yanqui- "Hiding Places"

12. Grimes- "My Sister Says the Saddest Things"

13. Miracles Club- "A New Love"

14. Tooth Ache.- "New Skin"

15. Pina Chulada- "Appropriate Stranger"

16. Com Truise- "Sundriped"

17. Toro y Moi- "Timed Pleasure"

18. Blackbird Blackbird- "Modern Disbelief"

19. Emily Reo- "I'll Never Live by the Coast"

20. Radio Dept.- "The New Improved Hypocrisy"

21. Power Animal- "Better Water"

22. Monster Rally- "Birds Pt. 1"

23. Gauntlet Hair- "Heave"

24. Tyvek- "Underwater To"

25. Kurt Vile- "Invisibility: Nonexistent"

26. The Tallest Man on Earth- "Like the Wheel"

HaASL Radio Show 11/13/10

2010-12-17T17:20:00.000-08:00

1. Glasser- "Home"

2. Dream Boat- "oOchre"

3. Teen Daze- "Watch Over Me"

4. Banjo or Freakout- "105"

5. Women- "Narrow With the Hall"

6. Weekend- "End Times"

7. Tree Hopping- "Tough Summer"

8. Diamond Rings- "Something Else"

9. ARMS- "Heat & Hot Water"

10. Wild Nothing- "Golden Haze"

11. The Radio Dept.- "The One"

12. Young Galaxy- "Peripheral Visionaries"

13. Memory House- "Running Out of You (Remix of Keep Shelly in Athens)"

14. Tennis- "Take Me Somewhere"

15. Seapony- "With You"

16. Pigeons- "Sunset Park"

17. Ducktails- "Dorm Room"

18. Dead Gaze- "This Big World"

19. Tonstartssbandht- "Shot to La Parc"

20. James Pants- "Darlin' "

21. Growing- "Rave Pie Only"

22. Animal Collective- "What Happened?"

23. Wise Blood- "Rot My Brain Away"

24. Bananas Symphony- "To Love Somebody"

25. Natural Snow Buildings- "Guns & Rifles"

26. Cemeteries- "Watching the Skies or Walking Home on October 31st"

27. Deer Tick- "Piece"

HaASL Radio Show 11/06/10

2010-12-17T17:10:00.000-08:00

1. El Guincho- "Bombay"

2. Chad Valley- "Ensoniq Funk"

3. Koralleven- "Honey Mine (ft. Victoria Bergsman)"

4. Panda Bear- "Alsatian Darn"

5. Avey Tare- "3 Umbrellas"

6. Phillip Oskar Augustine- "Only Bleeding"

7. Fox Hands- "Little Flutes"

8. Horse Feathers- "Drain You (Nirvana Cover)"

9. Coma Cinema- "She's a Dentist"

10. Seapony- "Dreaming"

11. Air Waves- "Knockout"

12. Toro y Moi- "Leave Everywhere"

13. Soft Healer- "Movie Light"

14. Porcelain Raft- "The Back of My Eyes"

15. LAKE R▲DIO- "I've Been Gone"

16. Beaty Heart- "COLA"

17. Warpaint- "Undertow"

18. No Joy- "Pacific Pride"

19. Weed Diamond- "Mint in My Mouth"

20. Weekend- "Monogaugh, WV"

21. Blank Dogs- "Blurred Tonight"

22. Outer Minds- "Until You're Dead"

23. Cemeteries- "The Owls Aren't Always What They Seem"

24. Two Bicycles- "The Holy Forest/Forever"

25. Headless Horseman- "KSSD HM"

26. Grouper- "Sick"

27. Blue Water White Death- "Grunt Tube"

28. Yuck- "Rubber"

HaASL Radio Show 10/30/10

2010-12-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

1. LAKE R▲DIO- "Magic Eyes"

2. Young Henry- "Paint Fumes"

3. Black Moth Super Rainbow- "Don't You Want to Be in a Cult"

4. Benoît Pioulard - "Sault"

5. Seamonster- "Bearsuit"

6. Phillip Oskar Augustine- "Leopard Thighs"

7. A Sunny Day in Glasgow- "Drink Drank Drunk"

8. Houses- "Soak it Up"

9. Perfume Genius- "Gay Angels"

10. Woodsman- "Insects"

11. SOARS- "Figurehead"

12. Michael Parallax- "Man, No"

13. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti- "Bright Lit Blue Skies"

14. Reading Rainbow- "Always On My Mind"

15. Shimmering Stars- "I'm Gonna Try"

16. Coma Cinema- "Tour All Winter"

17. Generationals- "Trust"

18. TV Girl- "If You Want It"

19. Waskerly Way- "Holly"

20. My Friend Wallis- "Be Free"

21. Blackbird Blackbird- "Dreams I Create"

22. Hooray For Earth vs. Twin Shadow- "A Place We Like"

23. Keep Shelly In Athens- "Running Out of You"

24. Luftwaffe- "Old Friends"

25. No Joy- "You Girls Smoke Cigarettes?"

26. Jeans Wilder- "Simpler Times"

27. Purling Hiss- "Don't Even Try"

28. Kinder- "Games at the Field"

29. Topaz Rags- "Crown Center"

30. yuk.- "greenflash(ritual)"

Temporal Shift: Natural Snow Buildings- Ghost Folks

2010-11-13T15:12:00.000-08:00

Warning: Neither this record nor this review contain blastbeats or any references to blastbeats. Those with bpm-related allergies should be advised to keep blastbeat-rich products close at hand while listening to this record or reading this review.

What is it about the end of the world that so fascinates us? Is it some innate sense of fatalism that our past few generations have been programmed with? Is it instead the sense of freedom from responsibility that the end of everything brings with it? Or even a simple sense of self-importance that makes us feel like the logical conclusion to humanity as we know it?

Maybe it's instead, as Sun Ra put it and Brutal Truth so emphatically agreed, “after the end of the world” that's the true focus of our fascination with the Apocalypse. Rather than waiting for the end of everything, we're waiting to be the golden ticket-holders left over when the rest of everything gets tossed in the Great Garbage Disposal of the Cosmos.

Whatever the case may be, that survival beyond the end is the focus of this collection of songs. Bookended by two songs about the post-nuke fallout, “Nuclear Winter (Dispatches)” and “Nuclear Winter,” rather than talk about the circumstances of its happening, the guts of this album instead focus on what goes on after the big one.

In terms of musical style, Natural Snow Buildings (a French duo made up musicians Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte) craft an ever-shifting amalgam of acoustic drone, folk and post-rock grandeur well-suited to their subject matter. Previewing one or two tracks is by no means a proper introduction to the group (even one or two albums really doesn't do justice to the full scope of their talents,) since they cycle through minimal, tone-based droning, slow, string-heavy post-rock and eerie, vocal-augmented folk throughout the course of an album, all the while keeping, for the most part, a respectably even pace.

After the short noise/drone opening “Nuclear Winter” (which always sounds to me like it's going to lead into a Pig Destroyer album rather than one filled with post-rock and folk) come a pair of tracks, “If I Can Find My Way Through the Darkness...” and “...I Came Down Here,” which set the blueprint for the album's post-rock-leaning tracks with slow, orchestral instrumentals that echo and chime, moving ever forward like the protagonists in Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

What are by far my favorite tracks are the two vocaled folk tracks, “Sun” and “Guns & Rifles.” Don't make the mistake of assuming that these two are my favorites simply because they've got vocals; rather, they're my favorites because they've got damned excellent vocals. The first of the two, “Sun,” is a dark, eerie acoustic guitar track that's kept lovingly bare-bones, showcasing the humanity inherent in fret noise and the emotion-rich vocals of Ameziane. The fact that the arrangement doesn't move beyond letting the second guitar chime in atmospherically lets the lyrics hit that much harder, making sure that a line like “This fucking sun keeps staring at me” leaves you shivering. “Guns & Rifles,” on the other hand, takes longer to build, opening with strings and only revealing itself as a folk tune halfway through. This allows the band to further show their range, proving that they're more than a band that can just play several disparate styles of music. Because of its slower build, “Guns & Rifles” is a fuller song, with piano, strings and guitar all stacked onto the track before the unstable, heavy-hearted vocals make their appearance. When Ameziane says, “I remember many colors, many tortures,” we can't help but believe him, because we've been hearing it in his voice the whole time.

Similar to the album by the Body that I reviewed last month, Ghost Folks has no shortage of sampled-based tracks. “With A Stolen Red Lipstick Bible On Her Side” sports a lengthy piece presumably taken from an interview in which an old woman details her childhood wagon trip across America, complete with stories of encounters with Native American warriors and the murder of a farmer and his daughter. One track, “The Haunted Falls (Let Us Now Praise Harry Powell),” is entirely built from samples, and its 1:26 run time seems to be built entirely from gospel singing from The Night of the Hunter (Harry Powell being the sinister preacher who is the central character of that film, and who inexplicably announces himself, constantly, by singing gospel tunes.) Another sample, plopped near the beginning of “...I Came Down Here,” finds its speaker shift between detailing all of the things she'd change in the world (“I'd take every single hungry person and feed 'em, I'd take every single rich person and take away their money”) to discussing her own mortality (“After Kent State, I realized I could put on a cheerleader's sweater and an 'I Love America' pin and if he could even shoot, if he could even aim it wouldn't do me any good.”) These other voices lend humanity to the proceedings, peopling our post-apocalyptic world with more than the usual dust and echoes of post-rock and drone territory.

The one track on the album that I can't help but label a glaring misstep is the one simply titled “...” Barely classifiable as music except for the fact that it's bookended by tracks that are indeed music and it can't be seen to serve any other purpose, the average experience while listening to this track will be 3:21 spent trying to decide what's going on (and if you illegally downloaded the album, that time will be spent trying to figure out if the version you grabbed was somehow corrupted.) The only audible sounds seem to be recorded through the wall of another room, or on a hill in a brisk wind, and the only explanation for the track's inclusion on an album would seem to be either that the band was pressed for time in finding an eleventh track or that the recording itself had such a special significance to the band that they felt the need to include it despite the fact that it's barely listenable and that you'll probably think the album has stopped entirely if you're not listening through headphones.

This is by no means a perfect album, and it may frustrate those without the patience to sit through a 65-minute drone/folk/post-rock survival course, but it offers such a unique experience, as well as one that I keep coming back to, that I highly suggest an examination of the full range of its charms before you deem it not your cup of rare, scavenged Tetley tea bags.

Doom/Drone Metal Top 5

2010-11-06T16:53:00.001-07:00

I feel compelled to write an introduction to this, 'cause it'd be a little weird to just inject you into this list with no explanation, but c'mon; you've read the title, is there really that much more that I can say? Every once in a while it's healthy to not listen to something fast, just like some of that grease in your McDonald's artery-clogger is actually necessary to your diet. Mmm... doom metal grease.

5. Moss- Sub Templum [Longest track: 35:31]

“Ritus,” this record's opener, all ebb-and-flow guitar throb, shimmering, candle-lit keys and arcane whispering, sets the stage nicely for an album full of Victorian, Satanic-leaning drone that's rife with foreboding from front to back.

The second, and second-longest, track on the album, “Subterraen,” realizes the fear and horror that the first track hinted at, like the 20 minutes of exposition in the beginning of horror film finally broken by the audience's first taste of blood. The band howls like some shadowed, lumbering Elder God, with the moments of drone adding to the tension like the details always artfully absent from H.P. Lovecraft stories. He always tells us it's for our sanity, but the wondering makes it work sort of the opposite.

“Dragged to the Roots” continues where “Subterraen” left off, if at a slightly increased lumber than the latter track. The album's unease is brought to a head with “Gate III: Devils From the Outer Dark,” which begins with a weighty guitar crush and builds on the already dark vibe with a spoken incantation similar to that of “Ritus,” the vocalist's British accent heightening the horror. Several minutes into the track, that incantation seems to have borne fruit, with the unearthly howls of the vocalist seemingly channeling the song's title devils. This song more than any realizes the band's Satanic drone vibe, and at 35:31 is the most gratifying on the record.

Of the other albums on this list, none can convey the constant sense of dread and unease that this album does, even with the genre's proclivity for producing unsettling sounds. Whether your perfect soundtrack to an October evening alone with Lovecraft, or just a drone record for when you've got an hour and fifteen minutes to kill, Sub Templum is a perfect example of doom metal done right.

4. Earth- Earth 2 (Special Low Frequency Version) [Longest track: 30:21]

If you haven't heard Earth's first LP, Earth 2, and can't or don't want to spend the money or time to buy or download it, I've got a solution for you.

Find an old rotary telephone, hook it up to a landline (preferably a poor one, for maximum effect,) and call up a friend who has recording software. Once the call connects, make a series of deep, long buzzing sounds with your mouth like “bzzzvvvvvvvv, bzzzzvvvvvv, bzzzzvvvvv” and have your friend record them through the telephone. On another track, have your friend record you screaming, with several seconds of space between each. Next, have him or her loop your buzzing over 15 or 20 minutes, and have your screaming come in at around the 7 minute mark and last for around 1 minute intervals, returning every 3 minutes. Drive over to your friend's house and play the track with the computer's subwoofer at maximum volume, and you have just created your own Earth 2 (Special Low Frequency Version).

Joking aside, this is a great album. It's just not one that's always particularly easy to listen to. Its run time totals 1:13:00, its track listing has only 3 songs, and its musical content, as described in the introduction, consists of only electric guitar and voice. Being one of the pioneers of the drone doom style, this record's strength doesn't come from its variety, but rather from some spiritual and emotional quality created by the tone and repetition of the guitar, cauterized by the screamed vocal interjections. As the album nears its middle, one feels as if one is deep in some intense form of meditation, both ready to speak in tongues and reach perfect Zen consciousness.

Like some of the greatest films of 40 years ago, this album is best experienced through a healthy suspension of disbelief. As long as you don't go in to the experience demanding a perfect album, you'll find something arguably better: a great one.

3. Sleep- Dopesmoker [Longest track: 1:03:32]

This album holds the dual honors of being both the most melodic record on this list and the least melodic record that Sleep have ever produced. While it may sound fairly tame on a list bookended by the piercing, Lovecraft-inspired Satanic howl of Moss and the extreme, deathgrowl-vocaled crush at the heart of “Sangre/Humanos” from Corrupted's Llenandose de Gusanos, this record singlehandedly derailed Sleep's career, seemingly on an upswing since the success of Sleep's Holy Mountain.

Their label redlighted the album because of its length, lack of multiple tracks and sheer extremity compared to their previous efforts. Even re-cut as the inferior Jerusalem, the label wouldn't accept it, and the band, refusing to compromise further, retreated into inactivity and eventual disbandment. Bootlegs of the Jerusalem cut of the album surfaced in metal circles, but it wasn't until 2003 that the album received a proper release as Dopesmoker, packaged with the bonus of a never-before-released live track called “Sonic Titan.”

It's a tragedy that this album took so long to release, not only because the band might have continued making records if Dopesmoker had been well-received, but because it's a damn good album. It trades in all of the melody and most of the Black Sabbath worship of Holy Mountain (still the band's finest moment) for even slower riffs, a droning vocal delivery that's admittedly jarring on first listen, and a silly-yet-triumphant narrative about a stoner exile mirroring the biblical Jewish one which follows a caravan of “weed priests” in search of a stoner Holy Land (hence the alternate title.)

It takes a listen or two to get used to this incarnation of Sleep's sound, and one can understand why a label would initially balk at releasing it, but upon further listens it becomes apparent that Sleep were on to something. The tragedy is doubled by the fact that none of the members' post-Sleep output compares to their former band's catalog (sorry, High on Fire fans), and one is left only to wonder how awesome, stoney and droney a fourth Sleep album might have turned out to be.

2. Boris- Absolutego [Longest track: 1:05:35]

I'm not one to mince words, so we might as well get one thing out of the way: There's more Earth worship on this record than a picnic full of druids. Due to that fact, it might seem strange that Earth 2, a major inspiration for this album, is all the way at the four spot, while this record is one position away from number one. However, there are a few things that this record boasts of which Dylan Carlson's album is in short supply. Two of the more important of those things are drums and Japanese people.

Absolutego also carries a sense of importance and propulsion that keeps your interest better over one hour-and-five-minute track than any of the fifteen-minute to half-an-hour pieces on Earth 2. The feedback-flooded droning spaces are well tempered by peaks of discernible riffs, pounding drums and cathartic howls.

The real surprise, however, is that while you'll be pleased every time the band's playing reappears on the track, this is the rare minimalist metal performance where you're not just waiting for it. Boris' strength on this album is the ability to convey emotion through both negative and positive space, exuding as much energy when they're letting their guitars feed back as they are when they're playing them.

1. Corrupted- Llenandose de Gusanos [Longest track: 1:13:55]

What makes an album the best doom metal release ever (for purposes of this list, anyway; you can't really expect me to choose)? The longest, slowest song ever written? One single riff, repeated over the full playing time of four discs? Real honest-to-God monks, chanting in the key of that riff for half of one of those discs? Guest vocals from serial killers?

It's undeniable that all of those things are cool, but unfortunately that was a trick question; the truth is, the real secret is that the band making the record has to be Corrupted. Corrupted's mixture of sludge vitality and doom creep, all cut liberally with a streak for drone and the avant-garde, make them the perfect group to achieve a proper balance between doom metal and its relative genres without sounding boring or self-serving.

Despite that balance, the album itself opens on what many headbanger dictionaries would define as a boring note. For the first five minutes of “Sangre/Humanos,” we as listeners are given nothing more than plaintive piano-plinking. At around the five-and-a-half mark, that plinking is joined by a low-register mumbling. Those two rather un-metal neighbors keep each other company until the near-maddening point of almost the 17-and-a-half minute mark, when finally, serendipitously our old friend feedback makes an entrance, ushering in the belles of the ball, doom metal riffs themselves. When those leaden riffs begin to land, it's like the entire fragile world built by the last fifteen-plus minutes is beginning to disintegrate in clouds of smoke and feigned ambience. The cathartic entrance of these elements makes the preceding 17 minutes, which on paper seem incredibly tedious, become absolutely essential to the gravity of the rest of the composition.

Thus begins the doom metal track proper, as much time as it took to appear. What continues to impress me, no matter how many times I listen to this and other Corrupted recordings, are the vocals. Corrupted's vocalist's style, in contrast to that of other bands on this list, seems more suited to a death metal or goregrind recording than the genre the band plays. However, the vocals complement the somber, oppressive atmosphere, creating an occult vibe not unlike Moss's entry at the number 5 spot. The vocals seem carefully weighted to mesh with the piano, guitar and drums on the track, never letting over-emotion or unnecessary aggression draw away from the aggregate.

After the 50 minutes of “Sangre/Humanos” has completely drained the blood from your body, the ambient, 74-minute “El Mundo” hovers over it in disbelief, conveying in pure wordless feeling what the former track did with doom metal and piano.

Overall, what makes Llenandose de Gusanos a cut above the rest of the albums on this list is the ability to distill and amalgamate such a variety of styles and sounds into one cohesive package. While other albums on this list may contain similar components, none live up to the presence and sheer power of vintage Corrupted. If you disagree, then go ahead and tell me what other doom metal band shared a split with Discordance Axis and 324. No, seriously.

HaASL Radio Show 10/23/10

2010-10-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder that my indie rock radio show, the one I'm posting these playlists for, happens every Saturday night from Midnight to 2 AM Eastern time, so listen in here: http://www.susqu.edu/orgs/wqsu-fm/index.html

I should be back with reviews and such in a few days, it's just been a kind of busy few weeks. I'm going to try to get a few more indie rock-leaning reviews up here, because I've kind of had a grind bias in terms of reviewing in the last few months (and not to worry, grinders, I have a sufficiently full plate of metal offerings to post about, as well.)

Real Estate- “Out of Tune”
Millionyoung- “Calrissian”
Happy New Year- “Twins”
Velvet Davenport- “Run (feat. Ariel Pink)”
The Nightgowns- “Narwhal Aerobics”
Magic Places- “Through the Map Room Door”
The Declining Winter- “Killer”
Chao- “Baked Apples (Demo)”
Houses- “Reds”
Sun Airway- “Your Moon”
Sweet Bulbs- “Kissing Clouds”
Slow Animal- “Saturday Mourning”
Fergus & Geronimo- “Harder Than it's Ever Been”
Weekend- “Coma Summer”
Guards- “Swimming After Dark”
Kurt Vile- “In My Time”
Deerhunter- “Memory Boy”
Shimmering Stars- “Sun's Going Down”
Eternal Summers- “Salty”
Sleep ∞ Over- “La-Rose”
Cloudy Busey- “Pound Your Town to Hell”
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.- “Nothing But Our Love”
Heavy Hawaii- “Sleeping Bag”
Outer Limits Recordings- “I'm an Alien”
oOoOO- “Burnout Eyess”
Clive Tanaka y su Orquestra- “Neu Chicago”
Philip Seymour Hoffman- “Duckfangs Tickle My Ankles”
Winter Drones- “Between the Leaves”
Wild Eyes- “Death Mouth”
Suuns- “Arena”

HaASL Radio Show 10/16/10

2010-10-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

Times New Viking- “No Room to Live”
Eternal Summers- “I'll Die Young for Rock 'n' Roll”
Surf City- “Kudos”
Fair Ohs- “Hey Lizzie”
Spectrals- “Chip a Tooth (Spoil a Smile)”
Foxes in Fiction- “Bathurst”
Gauntlet Hair- “Out, Don't...”
Blackbird Blackbird- “Summer Heart”
Small Black- “New Chain”
Saharan Gazelle Boy- “Halfhair Girl”
Dada Trash Trash Collage- “Two Eyes”
Procedure Club- “Art of Ignoring”
Narwhal- “Galapagos”
Yellow Ostrich- “Libraries”
Fox Hands- “Nosebleed”
Valet- “Fire”
of Montreal- “Enemy Gene”
Porcelain Raft- “Tip of Your Tongue”
Coma Cinema- “Greater Vultures”
All Saints Day- “You Can't Be Alone”
Women- “Eyesore”
Beach House- “White Moon (iTunes Session)”
Wet Wings- “Sleep-Tight”
A Sunny Day in Glasgow- “So Bloody, So Tight”
Kurt Vile- “Ocean City”
Coolrunnings- “When I Got High With You”
Avey Tare- “Heather in the Hospital”
We Like Cats- “Money Dubby Money”

HaASL Radio Show 10/09/10

2010-10-22T07:13:00.000-07:00

Salem- “King Night”
School of Seven Bells- “Heart is Strange”
Museum of Bellas Artes- “Watch the Glow”
Husband- “Love Song”
Slow Animal- “Godz”
Deerhunter- “Revival”
Velvet Davenport- “Warmy Personal Routine”
La Sera- “Never Come Around”
Tennis- “South Carolina”
Coma Cinema- “Her Sinking Sun”
Thee Oh Sees- “You Are in My Glass”
Twin Sister- “All Around and Away We Go”
No Joy- “No Joy”
The Proper Ornaments- “Recalling”
Avey Tare- “Lucky 1”
My Bloody Valentine- “Soon”
Otouto- “W. Hillier”
Perfume Genius- “Mr. Peterson”
Xiu Xiu- “I Luv the Valley OH!”
Ólöf Arnalds- “Innundir Skinni”
Devendra Banhart- “Pumpkin Seeds”
Why?- “A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under”
Parenthetical Girls- “Young Throats”
Small Black- “Photojournalist”
Beach Fossils- “Face It”
Ponchos- “This World is Not My Home”
Stoned Boys- “Dead Friends”
Beggars in a New Land- “The Barnyard”

HaASL Radio Show 10/02/10

2010-10-22T07:12:00.000-07:00

Deerhunter- “Helicopter”
Procedure Club- “Dictionary of Psychology”
Fox Hands- “Branches”
School of Seven Bells- “Face to Face on High Places”
Gem Club- “Sevens”
Computer Magic- “Victory Gin”
Candy Claws- “The Sun is My Girl”
Dead Gaze- “Take Me Home or I Die Alone”
Dan Deacon- “Snookered”
Neon Indian- “Sleep Paralysist”
Botany- “Feeling Today”
CVLTS- “Microrangers”
Twin Sister- “The Other Side of Your Face”
The Antlers- “Kettering”
Best Coast- “Boyfriend”
LCD Soundsystem- “Losing My Edge”
Baths- “Hall”
Lullatone- “The Bedtime Beatbox”
Das Racist- “Puerto Rican Cousins”
Shabazz Palaces- “Barksdale Corners”
Aesop Rock- “Coffee (Clean)”
Shad- “Yaa I Get It”
Brown Study- “Just Be”

Temporal Shift: The Kill- Soundtrack to Your Violence

2010-10-10T14:08:00.000-07:00

Biases are one of the many things wrong with modern society. They fuel unnecessary and corrosive racial, political and social hatred, promote segregation and division, and keep us from becoming fully realized and well-rounded individuals. If you let them, they also keep you from enjoying some damned excellent bands.

A few years ago, I fell prey to a bias of my own. In this case, it manifested itself in the belief that no good music came from Australia. To my understanding, Australians were incapable of taking themselves seriously, and from AC/DC, to shitty radio rock offerings, even as far as their grindcore was concerned, it seemed like all Aussies wrote about was hanging out, sitting around, being lazy and getting laid. While that's since been rendered moot by the likes of Warsore, my first introductions to bands like Captain Cleanoff left me feeling unfulfilled (most likely from being spoiled by the sophisticated lyrical fare of Discordance Axis and Pig Destroyer and the diverse topical contributions of Napalm Death and Brutal Truth.)

Like every good sudden conversion of opinion, of course, it was sparked by a chance encounter. In my case, that encounter was with the Kill's 2003 album Soundtrack to Your Violence, the very slab of grind ferocity before us today. After hearing “We Want Blood” on the band's Myspace, I was impressed enough to download the album, yet the song titles kept me at arm's length. Looking up the lyrics on Darklyrics (really the only place you should be looking for metal lyrics, anyway) confirmed my suspicions: “Dead Babies” was about liking abortion, “Fuck Emo” was about (you guessed it) disliking emo (although the song's suggestion that emo bands start playing grind instead is, was and ever shall be fucking hilarious, world without end, amen), and I can tell you the full lyrics to the 1:03 “Tracksuit Pants Are Thrash” from memory: “Tracksuit pants are thrash / We are white trash.” Not exactly Garcia Lorca, if you ask me.

Yet the music kept me coming back. The album was two minutes long of being Amber Gray, and it assaulted with a more thrash take on the same ferocity. The guitars buzzed like Insect Warfare with a kernel of interest in songwriting, and the vocals made up for the fact that they weren't delivered by Jon Chang by being truly unhinged in their approach; I couldn't help but picture the lyrics being bellowed in my face with each syllable.

What's more, I began to stop minding them. That's not to say that my ideology changed; I'm not about to write lyrics about liking wrestling (“We Want Blood”) or fat men who would probably beat the shit out of me (“Gore”), but the songs suddenly became funny instead of annoying. Buying the rare vinyl collection of a heroin addict? Hilarious. Writing songs about track suit pants being metal? Pretty hilarious too. Babies looking like aliens? Also actually pretty funny.

Realizing how awesome Soundtrack to Your Violence really was made me look back at albums like Symphonies of Slackness and admit that lyrical silliness couldn't alter the fact that they were, musically, pretty amazing. Eventually I'd branch out from Aussie grind, realizing that even something like lack of song titles (Arsedestroyer's Teenass Revolt) or writing utterly offensive, mindless material (Anal Cunt, anyone?) doesn't have anything to do with whether you can grind or not.

If you're just going to judge a band on whether their lyrics could stack up to Nabokov or not (honestly, if those were your lyrical standards, you'd listen to exactly zero bands), you're going to have to ignore the musical talent of a good percent of pretty great groups. Same goes if you judge them on members' gender, sexual preference, race, or national origin.

The Kill's Soundtrack to Your Violence is an album that pulls no punches. It grinds you from the first note and doesn't let up until its 13:28 runtime is up, with a sense of grinding purity that's really quite elegant. No instrumentals, no bullshit boring doom track to close the album, and even no need for dialogue samples, something that would only dilute the experience. Simply put, if you don't have a copy of this record either on your cd rack, in your digital music library or in your vinyl crates (does this thing even come on vinyl? I sort of doubt it), you've got an ugly, irreverent Aussie-sized hole in your grind collection that needs filling ASAP.

HaASL Radio Show 9/25/10

2010-10-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

Dan Deacon- “Wham City”
Gowns- “Feathers”
Guided by Voices- “Expecting Brainchild”
Best Coast- “Sun Was High (So Was I)”
The Hold Steady- “Your Little Hoodrat Friend”
Blue Water White Death- “Song for the Greater Jihad”
Devendra Banhart- “Poughkeepsie”
Grouper- “Heavy Water/I'd Rather be Sleeping”
Dirty Projectors- “I Will Truck”
Here we Go Magic- “I Just Want to See You Under Water”
The Ruby Suns- “Oh Mojave”
The Microphones- “Headless Horseman”
No Age- “Glitter”
Real Estate- “Younger Than Yesterday”
No Joy- “Heedless
HEALTH- “Die Slow”
Memory Tapes- “Plain Material”
Animal Collective- “Safer”
Jordaan Mason & the Horse Museum- “Avalanches”
Junip- “Rope and Summer”
Washed Out- “Belong”
Mi Ami- “Echonoecho”
The Mae Shi- “Massively Overwrought”
Arches- “Behind Close Blinds”
Twin Sister- “Meet the Frownies”

The Body- All the Waters of the Earth Shall Turn to Blood

2010-09-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

Some doom metal is called such for merely clinical reasons, i.e. its unsettlingly slow tempos, seismically heavy guitar tone, and dark lyrical themes. Other doom metal genuinely sounds like the end of the world.

Providence, Rhode Island doom/sludge cultists The Body occupy prime real estate in that latter category. In an age where virtually every event has musical accompaniment, if the world does decide to end in 2012 (spoiler alert: not betting on it), I wouldn't be surprised if somebody licensed The Body's newest LP All the Waters of the Earth Shall Turn to Blood as its official soundtrack.

The seven minute choral introduction to album opener “A Body” is like a rapturous, heavenly light, bathing us one last time before the band, a punishing duo of guitar and drums, opens the earth to swallow us whole for the remaining two-and-half minutes of the track. This song sets the stage for the rest of the record, coupling destructive, anti-social, truly doom-laden metal with unusual, atmospheric and unsettling sonic partners.

Third track “Empty Hearth,” for example, chops up actual doomsday cult chanting (from this collection, for those who just can't get enough doomsday cults) into a glitchy, inhuman counterpoint to the duo's industrial crunch that, once you get past the chanting's creepiness factor, is actually kinda catchy.

The chorus from “A Body” return multiple times, to near-transcendent effect, first on more straight-ahead doom song “Even the Saints Knew Their Hour of Failure and Loss” and again on the jaw-dropping closer “Lathspell I Name You.” Elsewhere, on “Song of Sarin, the Brave,” a straight-outta-Jonestown fanatic (or possibly William S. Burroughs or somebody, who knows) rants about pain and suffering over the band's mood-setting metallic creep, bowing out from time to time to let them storm back into the foreground.

That isn't to say that this record is great simply because of its non-metal aspects. Yes, the way those parts are integrated elevates the record, and they're certainly excellent additions that create a compelling listening experience, but the true praise goes to the band themselves. This LP would be nothing without the excellent principle performers, as well as their sense of aesthetic and considerable curatorial skills. The expressive vocal howls and heavy yet diverse guitar work lend body to The Body, and the outstanding, creative drum work propels this apocalyptic, nihilistic obelisk of an album to sludgy, outsider doom metal genius.

All the Waters of the Earth Shall Turn to Blood is similar in many ways to last year's surprise metal masterpiece, Liturgy's black metal/shoegaze bar-raiser Renihilation (which if you check back to my year-end list for 2009, you'll notice that I tragically slept on, waiting until Zmaj's year-in-retrospect kicked me in the ass enough that I went and got it) in its transcendent, almost religious quality, rendering classic-quality metal alongside atmospheric touchstones that combine to create a wholly new experience in their respective genres. Also like that album, All the Waters of the Earth Shall Turn to Blood is a strong contender for album of the year, and barring a rush of genius in the next three months (i.e. Orphan or the new Pig Destroyer record) it should rank heavily on many metal year-end lists.

HaASL Radio Show 9/18/10

2010-09-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

Animal Collective- “Leaf House”
Lower Dens- “Blue & Silver”
Pill Wonder- “Wishing Whale”
Why?- “These Few Presidents”
Small Black- “Weird Machines”
Growing- “Green Flag”
Light Pollution- “Good Feelings”
Dan Deacon- “Paddling Ghost”
Tickley Feather- “Sorry Party”
Cloudland Canyon- “Mothlight pt. 2”
M83- “Run into Flowers”
Guards- “Long Time”
Joanna Newsom- “ '81”
Beach Fossils- “Youth”
tUnE-yArDs- “Lions”
Thee Oh Sees- “Ghost in the Trees”
Gauntlet Hair- “I Was Thinking...”
The Tallest Man on Earth- “Walk the Line”
We Like Cats- “Meow Hear Me Roar”
Waskerly Way- “Cat Alert”
Reading Rainbow- “Wasting Time”
Toro y Moi- “Blessa”
Cornelius- “Drop”
Neutral Milk Hotel- “Song Against Sex”
Weed Diamond- “I Can't Understand You, Girl Bear”
Ólöf Arnalds- “Englar Og Dárar”
Gang Gang Dance- “Nomad for Love (Cannibal)”
oOoOO- “Mumbai”
Eternal Summers- “Pure Affection”
Beach House- “D.A.R.L.I.N.G.”

Agathocles- Peel Sessions 1997

2010-09-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

John Peel kinda ruled. He basically served as the main media force in promotion of grindcore as a fledgling genre*, giving Napalm Death, Carcass, S.O.B., Extreme Noise Terror, Bolt Thrower and myriad others radio support that, let's face it, wasn't going to come from anywhere else any time soon. For many of these groups, their Peel Sessions serve as a priceless artifact of a level of energy and ferocity soon forgone for other goals (most of the above-mentioned grinders' next stop was by-and-large something akin to death metal, although the exact definition of that term varied by group) and by some not matched on other studio releases.

Enter Agathocles. After 25 years, it hardly even seems fair to bother with an introduction. For almost the whole of that time period, they've been faithfully producing socially and politically targeted grindcore LPs, splits and 7”s with varying degrees of punk, death metal and experimentation mixed among them, characteristically recorded in varying degrees of low fidelity.

This session, as Peel's almost always do, finds the band riding an energy and songwriting peak. Two years prior, the group had released what I consider their career statement in terms of LPs, the diverse, 44-song lo-fi grind opus Razor Sharp Daggers. Thus, many of the cuts come from that record, along with 1997's Thanks for Your Hostility, whose “Be Your Own God” offers the highlight performance from Peel Sessions 1997.

While Peel's Sessions were all exclusive performances for radio, they were less live performances than exclusive demos, since the bands took most of a full day to record them. For that reason, this album offers the best-recorded performance we've ever heard from Agathocles. Coupled with the fact that these songs were performed and largely written during a portion of the band's most creative period, it makes this record perfect for everyone from the die-hard completist Agathocles acolyte, the sometimes Agatho-fan who feels like there's always been something missing in their understanding of the group, and the newcomer who's always been too daunted by the pages-long discography to even know where to start.

What truly makes this album, beyond even the prowess and cult status of the band, is Peel himself. His banter opens and closes the album, and though both are brief, it lends a certain magical, 25th-hour quality to the record that says, “This is a moment in time. This will never happen again, so enjoy it.” Peel's sheer enthusiasm for grindcore, coupled with his refined, British radio voice, give an authenticity to radio broadcasting that seems unable to be matched anywhere, in any country today. Take, for instance, the professional, NPR-announcer way in which he introduces the band on the album's first track.

“And uh, finally tonight we have a session for you from AGATH-ocles, as they must be called, rather than Aga-THO-cles. Brief pieces, by and large. This is --”

And instantly, the Belgians finish Peel's sentence, spewing forth the beginning of Razor Sharp Daggers' “A Start at Least” with characteristic vitriol and in blissfully uncharacteristic fidelity. That instant when the refined form of Peel's announcing voice and the pure form of grindcore meet rockets the listen forward, and Peel lets the band carry that momentum from there. Carry it they do, offering a tight, rewarding set whose recording and mix leaves the requisite grit and riverbed-muddy distortion intact, but ensure that nothing ever cuts out or gets buried, and that the drums are mic'd well enough to actually be discernible, instead of being the wall of kick drum and flailing cymbals some of their recordings are reduced to. The band is a ball of energy throughout the set, and even the rare moment where they actually slow down a bit, the 4:10 “Kill Your Fucking Idols,” the pacing and volatility of the other songs is maintained admirably.

Neither credentials from the Agathocles or John Peel fanclubs are required to enjoy this offering, but filling out applications for one or both by your first couple listens wouldn't be unusual, either. In either case, Agathocles' Peel Sessions 1997 is best taken as an artifact, a passport to a time before Peel's tragic passing in 2004 and a time when Agathocles were still receiving recognition as a grindcore band, rather than the record-churning, LP/7”/split machine many genre lifers have reduced them to.

*[Ed.: Not to mention countless other amazing groups of disparate genres, the names of which I can't even begin to enumerate here; the show's raw guest list includes every letter of the alphabet, plus numerals, most entries in double digits.]

Hipness Through the Static: HaASL Radio Show

2010-09-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

So, I've been terrible with posting since school started, but do have a bunch of mostly finished entries that should be up in the coming weeks when I have either a weeknight or weekend that I'm not doing work or engaging in debauchery.

However, this semester I picked up a practicum with my school's radio station, applicable as credits since I'm a communications major, and landed one of six coveted "underground" slots (hours from midnight to 2 AM reserved for specialty shows, in which the DJ(s) responsible can play whatever they please, assuming it's clean and within format.) My proposed format was an indie rock show, and since my first broadcast was this past Saturday, I'll be posting tracklistings and trying to link free mp3s/streams/videos when available so people can grab any new stuff that they like. I've got class in five minutes, so I'll keep this brief. Here's last week's tracklist, and don't forget to listen on www.wqsu.com Saturdays midnight-2 AM Eastern standard time.

of Montreal- “Suffer for Fashion”
Tame Impala- “Solitude is Bliss”
Memoryhouse- “To the Lighthouse”
Guided by Voices- “Kicker of Elves”
Tennis- “Baltimore”
Real Estate- “Beach Comber”
Cloud Nothings- “Can't Stay Awake”
Thao With the Get Down Stay Down- “Bag of Hammers”
The Morning Benders- “Cold War (Nice Clean Fight)”
Neon Indian- “Deadbeat Summer”
Xiu Xiu- “Gray Death”
Galaxie 500- “Strange”
Josephine Foster- “Stone's Throw from Heaven”
Black Moth Super Rainbow- “I Think it is Beautiful That You Are 256 Colors Too”
Memory Tapes- “Bicycle”
Wet Wings- “Whisper Always”
Los Campesinos!- “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time”
Devendra Banhart- “Aperpareplane (Early Recording)”
BARR- “The Song is the Single”
Twin Shadow- “Slow”
Ice Cream Shout- “Tattooed Tears”
SLEEP ∞ OVER- “Outer Limits”
Best Coast- “When I'm with You”
French Kicks- “Abandon”
Wild Nothing- “Chinatown”
Hotel Lights- “Norina”
Candy Claws- “Silent Time of Earth”
Sunset Rubdown- “Idiot Heart”

Hip-hop Meets Grindcore Top 5

2010-07-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

I've said it once, and I'll say it twice: grindcore is tough to pin down. As formulaic as the genre may seem to the untrained eye, no formula can explain anomalies like the inclusion of burly industrial experiments or poetry intros on Agathocles' Razor Sharp Daggers, the bouncy pop-punk/grind hybrid “Ten People” from Damage Digital's Moss, or the closing track to Slight Slappers' A Selfish World Called Freedom, “Vanette,” which segues from swirling noise into a sweet, keyboard-driven ballad dripping with 50s-style charm. And don't get me started on Brutal Truth, Exit-13, or Total Fucking Destruction. Grindcore's a genre that bands aren't afraid to let their other influences roam free in, too, and so it's only natural that hip-hop appeared in the mix by-and-by. The ways that these five selections employ hip-hop and grindcore are diverse as the genres themselves, and serve as a “For Dummies” guide of the way the two styles can be artfully melded together on a record.

5. S.O.B.- “Tukikage”
After their '80s glory days, S.O.B. lost more than a little of their thunder. The 1999 album that this track comes from, Dub Grind, features disappointingly little of either dub reggae or grindcore, although it does manage to pull off a nice experimental trick or two. This minimalist, dub-tinged hip-hop track is one of the brighter spots on the record, and hints at what this album could've been if the band took half of the risks they should have taken in making Dub Grind.

4. Catheter- “False Sense of Judgement”
Sporting the smallest amount of hip-hop of any song on this list, this track serves as an example of the hip-hop appearance as accent, rather than as introduction or “Oh man, can't believe they did that!” hook. The brief, sparse beat that serves as this song's outro is one of those passing things that really doesn't ever get an explanation, serving to illustrate the sort of comfort with the genre grindcore bands have found in the 2000s.

3. Genocide- “Intifada”
Coming from the Mexican group's We Rape the Sky, We Rape the Hell LP (find it here at Cephalochromoscope if you don't have it on your harddrive,) this track is one of the most surprisingly well-produced on this list, and easily the best-sounding thing on Genocide's entire record. The other surprising thing about this track's brooding, Middle-Eastern beat is that it's so good, I'm almost disappointed when the grindcore section inevitably kicks in.

2. Magrudergrind- “Heavier Bombing”
Magrudergrind have always seemed to me a sort of more agile, neo-Spazz, and this reworking of This Comp Kills Fascists track “Heavy Bombing” (possibly the world's first grindcore remix, barring things like disc 2 of Agoraphobic Nosebleed's Altered States of America) does nothing if not prove that fact. Surly, metal-inflected beats build for most of the track, while an MC chants “It's getting' down to the grind/Magrudergrind” before the band explodes onto the track for roughly 30 seconds. Their supremacy doesn't last long, however, as the track gives way to hip-hop again, this time in the form of a dark, 90's style G-funk outro (think Snoop Dogg's “Murder was the Case” or “Serial Killa”) that encompasses the last 20 seconds of the song.

1. Spazz- “Camp Chestnut”
This is the track that started it all. When you think of combining grindcore and hip-hop, this should be the song that immediately comes to mind, sort of the “Bring the Noise” of hip-hop/grindcore pairings. A weird, trashy vocal-loop beat serves as the springboard for what might be one of the strangest collaborations in metal history. Several seconds in, Kool Keith appears on the track and starts shouting out Spazz. And then your mind explodes. Immediately after the explosion of your head, Spazz appears to grind what's left of it into powerviolence-scorched little bits. The full story of how the collaboration came about, as well as the “Autopsy, Def Leppard and Spazz” line from Dr. Octagon's “I'm Destructive” can be found here in this fascinating blog post by former Spazz guitarist Dan Boleri, which illustrates further the strange sort of overlap the two seemingly disparate genres have with each other. No one can quite explain why it works as well as it does, but melding hip-hop beats and grindcore fury seems to be a secret art that certain adventurous grinders are probably going to keep tucked away in their arsenal for the rest of the genre's history.

Junip- Rope and Summit EP

2010-07-15T16:59:00.000-07:00

When first hearing Junip's “Rope and Summit,” title track, presumable lead single, and opener of their newest EP, I'm not ashamed to admit that I thought, and possibly spoke aloud, the words, “HOLY SHIT I CAN'T WAIT TO HEAR THEIR ALBUM.” Yeah, I liked it that much.

This, before hearing that Junip is the project of José González, an artist I've always been sort-of indifferent to, almost to the point of dismissiveness.

This, while not knowing that the release the track is featured on is a mere four-song EP, not the full-album offering I'd been hoping for.

As a reviewer, forgive me if I focus on one track exclusively over others, but Junip's “Rope and Summit” is a track that's both refreshingly familiar and surprisingly inspired. Its tentative, folk-tinged openings and instrumentation build into a sparse, yet krautrock-energized, track that invites repeat listens by combining the former genre's plaintive guitars and the latter genre's insistent keyboards and drum patterns into an alluring combination of drive and mystery seldom heard in modern music. I can tell you it reminds me vaguely of Fleet Foxes and Yo La Tengo, although, truly, it probably won't sound like either of them when you listen to it. This is either the mark of an incredibly poor reviewer or an adept artist. I for one beg for your choice to err on the side of the latter, although the final decision is up to you.

The track that follows, “Far Away,” attempts to capitalize on the opener's momentum by beginning with an almost prog-rock jam as introduction, and while the motorik beat and suberb vocal contribution by González come close to living up to their tracklist predecessor, “Step in front of a runaway train/ Just to feel alive again” doesn't hold a candle to the stuck-in-my-head-ability of “Rope and summit, rope and summit” repeated over and over again, even though I STILL don't quite know what that track could be about, other than mountain climbing.

As for the third track of four, the eight-minutes-and-change “At the Doors,” if Yo La Tengo learned this song and decided to include it on their next record, one would be forgiven for insisting to friends that González and Co. had covered YLT and not the other way around, chronology be damned. For all its hypnotic, krautrock drive, the song fails to rise above its influences, and could've been written by any kraut-inspired indie group from the last two decades.

Closing track “Loops,” all softness and repetition, sounds like it could be exactly what the title implies, a palatable series of guitar and drum loops which vocals were applied over, despite its opening plea to “disconnect all loops.”

Ultimately, this EP is a prime candidate for the argument of single vs. longform. While offering an excellent single on the part of the title track, the rest of the album, for the most part, renders itself as only quietly enjoyable to the point that it might be soundtrack music. Rather than bringing into question José González and the two other obviously competent musicians who comprise the band, one wonders whether the current pressures of the music industry itself might have stunted this clearly promising offering, causing it to be released as a free download rather than a full-price album.

First Baby Steps Out of Blog Entropy

2010-05-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

So, yeah... I've been kind of a deadbeat blogger lately. In my defense though, I've had a busy past few months, what with finishing finals for my junior year of college, and then after that being mostly consumed with my new summer job interviewing people for the U.S. Census bureau. Still, I promise, dear Internet, that I will change my wicked ways.

I've got several grindcore posts in the works, and hopefully a couple indie rock reviews (which I'll also be submitting to the beautiful people at Hipster Garabe) and maybe some other stuff. If you're patient, I promse we'll be seeing more of each other very soon.

Awesomely Liberal/Feminist Grindcore Top 5

2010-04-15T09:31:00.001-07:00

[AKA Five Kick-Ass Things That Seth Putnam Would Hate the Shit Out Of]

This is a list I've been kicking around for a while because I'm a huge fan of issues of equality, especially in regards to gender and sexuality. I've been meaning to write it up for a while, and with April being National Sexual Assault Awareness month, and today (Friday) being my university's Take Back the Night event, I figured there wasn't a better time than now to put this list out. I've loved the idea for this list mainly because it goes to prove the diversity of a genre most outsiders often misinterpret as single-minded and unintelligent. Personally, I relish the fact that grind is a genre where bands like Regurgitate can release completely thematically abhorrent, gore-drenched slabs of noise (and I mean that in the best way possible, especially in regards to Deviant,) bands like Looking for an Answer and Disrupt can get all vegan and animal rights on us, and Discordance Axis and Pig Destroyer can prove that metal can be smart as hell and still rip you a new asshole. After that sorta lengthy, rambling intro, here you go: my top five favorite liberal and feminist things in grindcore.

5. Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation

Formed as an all-female grindcore quartet in Tokyo, Japan, there's a number of reasons F.I.D. are awesome, not the least of which is their music. Slightly more important to this list, however, is the fact that they're women willing to make uncompromisingly extreme music completely unrelated to image. Sure, there's been plenty of all-female bands in the past, but in a culture such as that of Japan, where visual presentation is paramount and oversexualization of the female form is encouraged and almost expected, it's not as simple a choice as all that. Adding to their lack of preoccupation with image, and smashing the misconception that F.I.D. is just some all-"GRRRL" novelty band, is the fact that when guitarist Kyoko, whom they recorded their self-titled LP with, quit the band, the girls were unafraid to bring in a male guitarist, an upstate-New Yorker by the name of Ben.

As vocalist Makiko blogged when they first announced their new member's identity: "Some people would think F.I.D. with a boy sucks and is not good anymore. If you think so, it means that you did not appreciate us as a band, that's about it."

Ben echoed this sentiment in a post introducing himself on the band's Myspace: "I had some reservations at first but, thinking about it and we all agree, if you just liked F.I.D. for being an all-female-Asian band, and don't like us now, then obviously the music comes second for you. So long, see ya, we'll keep on thrashing."

F.I.D.- "Visualized"

4. Warsore's "You Rape, You Die"

This one's pretty self-explanatory (as the Youtube video for the song also states.) For a number of very personal reasons I abhor rape, possibly more than any other crime on the planet. However, its sensitive and graphic nature makes it not a topic most people are comfortable discussing, both in their personal lives and, most of the time in their song lyrics. That's why I'm so refreshed to see one of my favorite genres of music tackle the subject in such gloriously simple terms: You rape, you die. I normally style myself as a pacifist, but in my eyes, some crimes just don't deserve a second chance. Now if only these Aussie grinders were lawmakers...

Warsore- "You Rape, You Die"

3. Brutal Truth's "Anti-Homophobe"

This is the perfect centerpiece for the list, since it's the one item on the list that we know for certain that Anal Cunt vocalist/guitarist Seth Putnam does actually, as I so charmingly put in my subtitle, "hate the shit out of." In interviews he's been quoted bashing the song for its "political correctness," but I'm going to counter that and applaud the track for its honesty. In a genre that can sometimes get stereotyped as overmasculinized, and for a band with such a thick, rough sound, it takes a lot of cajones to say things as baldly as they do, with no regard for sounding cool or tough. Yeah, maybe it's not the "coolest" subject matter, but hell, give me something that really matters over the same old gore lyrics since Repulsion any day (not that I don't love Repulsion, mind you.)

Brutal Truth- "Anti-Homophobe"

2. Napalm Death's From Enslavement to Obliteration LP

Lee Dorrian is one of my favorite things to happen to Napalm Death, ever. Not only did he pretty much perfect the deathgrowl/grindshriek vocal trade-off, but he wrote some of the most progressive grindcore lyrics in the genre. Okay, so it's not all poetry, but From Enslavement to Obliteration, far and away my favorite thing Napalm Death has ever done (especially the cd release, which completes the record with the companion EP "The Curse") tackles political and social issues in a manner seen too scarcely in any genre. Lyrics all over the record discuss issues of race, class and gender; not surprisingly, however, the feminist lyrics strike the biggest chord with me. Classic "Cock Rock Alienation" addresses the sexism inherent in hair metal and arena rock, while "It's a M.A.N.'S. World" discusses modern culture's chauvinist gender biases. And, with possibly my favorite lyrical topic on the album, "Inconceivable?" takes a look inward at how easy it is to ignore one's own sexist tendencies in personal relationships. Add to that one of the most competent and original bands in grind, and you've got what I'd rank as probably the best grindcore record until Discordance Axis, Pig Destroyer, and others took the bar set by ND and Repulsion and raised it into the stratosphere.

Napalm Death- "It's a M.A.N.'S. World"

1. Cretin Vocalist Dan Martinez Becomes Marissa Martinez

Transgender issues are incredibly difficult to discuss in any setting. So, when the vocalist/guitarist of a band who I've often described as the Last House on the Left of grindcore reveals that he's undergoing gender-reassignment surgery for his transition to a woman, one kind of takes notice. It's a colossal decision for anyone to make, and for someone whose fanbase thrives on gore classics such as Cannibal Holocaust and Herschell Gordon Lewis films (read: possibly not the most accepting people in the world) to discuss this decision in an open and frank manner is even more surprising. While it might have alienated some fans, Marissa's strength has only served to make me respect these Repulsion acolytes even more, and is only a grain of sand in my pile of evidence that grindcore is the greatest genre on the planet.

Blabbermouth Article

Marissa With the Band

Cretin- "Daddy's Little Girl"

Coffinworm- Great Bringer of Night

2010-04-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

I'll be frank: I like doom metal that isn't afraid to do more than just move slow.

That's why I've been jamming Coffinworm's self-released 'Great Bringer of Night' demo so damn much. Besides being doom-as-fuck, it brings a blackened sense of dread that bands slapped with the doom metal descriptor don't always deliver. From opener "High on the Reek of your Burning Remains" (mp3 below), it's clear this isn't a beauty contest, but that fact is a refreshing counterpoint to the polished, overproduced offerings most major metal labels are releasing. At the point that modern recording technology has gotten to, it's refreshing to hear a band still committed to this kind of raw, stinking, ugly metal.

These three angry, distorted chunks of blackened doom metal meat are just a taste of what the group has to offer, as these and three other tracks (including the equally excellent "Start Saving for Your Funeral," also below) can be found on their debut LP for Profound Lore, 'When All Became None,' a record I eagerly await listening to. Don't sleep on these guys as much as I have, 'cause metal like this doesn't come around often.

Coffinworm- High on the Reek of Your Burning Remains

Coffinworm- Start Saving for Your Funeral

Unwatchable is the New Watchable

2010-03-31T01:02:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm the kind of person who likes to spot trends where there are none to be found, but I've seen a bit of an upswing in indie/internet-based bands releasing dirty, gross, or just plain unappealing/unwatchable videos.

I'm not talking about stuff like the "XXX" version of Girls' "Lust for Life" video. Yeah, there's lots of nudity, but unless you're a homophobe or really don't like happy, naked people, there's nothing really to get to up in arms about. The video is tastefully done, and if anything, the uncensored version's lack of inhibitions bolster's the song's theme of simple, unbridled happiness.

No, I'm not talking about videos that add to one's enjoyment of the song, but rather ones seemingly separated entirely from the idea that music videos are supposed to be for enjoyment. The first example I came across was Xiu Xiu's new video for the title track from Dear God, I Hate Myself (which is, ironically, their poppiest record to date.) Instead of a storyline, some random psuedo-artsy images or performance footage, Jamie Stewart and new member Angela Seo opted for a very different approach. Instead of these usual music video trappings, the clip is painfully straightforward -- the entire video consists of Seo and Stewart sitting in front of a checkboard background, Stewart (half-obscured in the frame) contentedly chewing on a chocolate bar while Seo self-induces vomiting via fingers down the throat for the entirety of the 3:06 runtime. Yeah. That's it.

Now, I have a huge love for Xiu Xiu, Stewart, and all the painful weirdness they drag along with them. These are the kinds of things I expect from Xiu Xiu, a band whose lyrics deal with the kind of things you wouldn't tell your shrink or your mother. Yes, the band is most likely (but not definitely -- sometimes they just choose not to make any sense at all) trying to either make a point about eating disorders, one's freedom to inflict pain, or something similar. But to drag it out for three minutes? At that length, any point they were TRYING to make mostly gets lost, and the video turns more into an endurance test than a musical showcase. Though this is a band who constantly deals with tough issues (like gender, sexuality, loss and domestic violence) in a bald and darkly comic manner, and whose lyrical repertoire includes such head-turners as "Cremate me after you cum on my lips" and "Why would a mother say such things?/Why add tongue to a kiss goodnight?," this simple video of a diminutive Asian girl throwing up for three minutes might be the most confrontational thing they've ever done.

Another video with similar grossout aspirations comes from Drew, author and co-author, respectively, of popular webcomics Toothpaste for Dinner and Married to the Sea. His video for "Expert Chef," lead single from his surprisingly awesome new hip-hop/electronic/sorta-comedy project Crudbump, from the album Na$tyjam$. After jokily panning over random objects like an old woodstove and an animal poster, it seems like the video is going to simply follow the song's bizarre chef theme, as Drew combines such incongruous foods as Cheerios, baby corn and sunflower seeds in a large glass. Since the song itself heavily evokes the girl-centricity and out-there boasting of early Kool Keith solo efforts, this seems pretty innocuous at first. As the foods start getting grosser (and older,) though, we start getting the joke less and less. Once Drew starts cutting off large chunks of his hair (and, we notice, accidently cuts his head open in the process) we stop getting it almost entirely. Then comes the car-crash-inevitable part where he starts shoveling huge chunks of the stuff into his mouth. And, as if following Angela Seo's lead, he then projectile vomits the orange-brown mixture, which one of his dogs begins to lap off of the floor (what doesn't remain in his beard, that is.)

I know questioning someone's artistic decisions in video-making seems unfair, especially coming from someone who ranks Eraserhead and Gummo as two of his favorite movies. Aside from being kind of mad that two songs I really like have unwatchable videos, though, it more becomes a question of the artists' true motives in making these videos than of their artistic merit. In an environment where scat porn abomination "Two Girls One Cup" and the ass-gaping .gif known as "goatse" gained such a level of notoriety, I have to wonder whether a large part of the decision to make these videos and ones like them stems more from hopes of gaining some level of grossout virality, like other non-musical exercises in non-taste have, than true artistic motivation. That's what I find fault with more than anything, the possibility that these videos are more marketing scheme than labor of love. The difference between something like John Waters' grossout opus Pink Flamingos and PETA's animal slaughter videos, on a base level, is that PETA is trying to sell you something (in their case, an idea.) Waters, on the other hand, is doing it simply 'cause that is the kind of movie he likes to make; even if nobody ever came to see it, I guarantee that wouldn't have stopped him from making more.

I guess, to sum it up, I have this to say: If you want to gross me out to tell a story, for the sake of art or even for the sheer dadaist "fun" of it, then I suppose be my guest. In the end, I can't argue with art. And if that's what these videos are truly aiming for, then, (although I'm certainly not going out of my way to ever watch them after my initial viewing,) I hope the people creating them make videos like these to their heart's content. I just ask that they do it for the right reasons.

[Note: I considered including the videos so you could make up your own mind, but decided that for the sake of good taste I'd leave them out. If you'd like to search these videos out, the info here will be more than enough to find them. But be warned that they're every bit as gross as I've described them, and if you watch them, you do so at your own discretion.]

Light Pollution- 'Apparitions'

2010-03-31T00:33:00.000-07:00

This has probably been my most listened album in the past week or so besides the Morning Benders' new one, Big Echo. Both albums share a similar almost-summer vibe, which has helped fuel my wishful thinking for ever-increasing warm weather. Unlike that record, though, this one really hasn't garnered a ton of attention yet. That's not to say it won't -- the tracks on here are of such a quality that I doubt it's going to be ignored for very much longer.

To describe it by musical touchstones, one could say it's a combination of the lo-fi, blue-collar indie of Real Estate, the blissed-out, psychedelic drone sections that Animal Collective and Panda Bear frequently indulge in, those Beach Boys harmony sections that are all the rage recently, and even some anthemic, drum-led sections almost reminiscent of Arcade Fire. That's kind of what makes this so compelling, the band's ability to apply a variety of styles across a record and still come up with a style that sounds like theirs.

While there's certainly nothing on here anywhere near dead weight, if I had to pick standouts I'd go with opener "Good Feelings" and the swirly, mid-album "Bad Vibes," both of which exemplify the variety of styles on this album (the former a better example of the similarities to Real Estate and the latter a great example of the Animal Collective comparisons.)

I hope I'm not the only one excited about these guys (or the only one prematurely excited for indie rock summer albums, something which I'm a huge fan of.) Don't be surprised if, by the time that hot weather rolls around, this album is pulsing from the crappy laptop speakers of indie rock slackers everywhere.

[Best of 2009: Repost]

2010-03-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is a repost of my Best of 2009 just so I have it here, and I guess so you can feast yr. eyes upon it, too, if you so choose. I'll get to posting more soon, I've just been busy these last few weeks.

[Okay, I know it's traditional to have these lists done BEFORE a year ends, and I know most of you who do these have had yrs. done for a while, but this damn thing has had me more obsessed than an Ayn Rand protagonist. The list part was easy, but the blurbs were the part that killed me. Not writing them, mind you, but finding the time. With visiting relatives and trying to spend time with people before they and I return to parts unknown, plus that little turning 21 thing, I'd write a one, forget, write another, forget, until I just sat down the last three mornings/nights and banged the rest out. I'm sure mine and yours vary incredibly, and don't forget this whole thing is totally my opinion. But, for better or worse, here it is:]

My Top 15 Albums of 2009

15. Magrudergrind- Magrudergrind

Magrudergrind have been around for almost a decade, but before this year, it felt as if they'd never released their defining statement. Enter 2009's Magrudergrind, a sludgy, fierce grindcore album produced by Pig Destroyer guitar mastermind Scott Hull. This release expands upon the unchained powerviolence of 2007's Rehashed and their split with Shitstorm, creating a sound that settles somewhere between the punk of Spazz and the piercing, controlled assault of Discordance Axis. Bolstered by smart, funny-yet-relevant sampling and a hip-hop tinged sequel to This Comp Kills Fascists track "Heavy Bombing", this record is a sonic "fuck you" that places Magrudergrind amongst grindcore's finest practicioners, and marks them as one of the premiere groups still performing in the genre today.

14. Dan Deacon- Bromst

So, what was the next step for hyperactive Baltimorean composer Dan Deacon, the man who wrote 2007's sugar-high, relatively uncomplicated Spiderman of the Rings, and who in the past has written songs with such absurd titles as "I'm So Gay With the Boner" and "Shit Slowly Applied to Cock Parts"? If Bromst, his layered, gorgeous, and still patently ridiculous 2009 album is any indication, it's to prove to us that a grad degree in music doesn't mean you still can't act like a kid. The high-energy, minimalist composition on his last album has given way to a much more textured album, featuring excellent live percussion performances and more sonic complexity than was thought possible of a Deacon album. This is still Dan Deacon, however, and whether listening to the melancholy slow-burn of "Snookered" or the ecstatic silliness of "Woof Woof", it's pure electronic bliss. As long as his health permits, (Deacon's high-energy, communal performances tragically sent him to the hospital with back injuries in '09) I've got good money on further twists and turns throughout the years in Dan's ever-expanding catalog.

13. Animal Collective- Merriweather Post Pavilion

I'm gonna be honest here: Despite Pitchfork's protestations to the contrary, this record ain't gonna change the world. It is, however, probably the first Animal Collective record you can play all the way through around your parents without your knowledge of the definition of 'music' being repeatedly drawn into question (although if this video is any indication, old people still hate the looping electronic drone the band has retained: http://vimeo.com/7906930), as well as the first album that can be considered, at least by Animal Collective standards, truly a pop record. This latest AC incarnation is the bubbling, tribal-percussion-aided, Beach Boys-vocaled, electronic slab of joy that it seems like most casual fans were just aching for them to make. While adorable wife-and-kid love song "My Girls" has been dominating the interwaves practically all year, my personal favorite has to be bouncy closer "Brothersport". At first listen I was disappointed by the lack of acoustic guitar and occasional screaming and vocal histrionics I'd come to expect from their last several efforts, but in the end I've come to a conclusion more listeners to the group than ever have come to this year: Animal Collective have made a very, very good album.

12. Khanate- Clean Hands Go Foul

Let's get things out of the way, shall we? This is one fucking ugly record. There is not one happy millisecond, over all four tracks and the entire 60:09 runtime of this album. The blackened, droning doom metal that this band creates really has no parralel; the late Burning Witch offers some sort of reference point in the tortured (and torturous) vocals, and the painfully slow tempos and minute-stretching reverb have some due to Sunn O))). Yet the sheer hatred, the consuming ugliness over the course of Clean Hands really can't be compared to anyone. It's tragic that this is Khanate's final effort, since this is probably the best thing they've yet released. However, such a dark, unforgiving slab of noise is a fitting swan song for a group of this caliber. It deserves a "not for the faint of heart" disclaimer, but has got a lot to offer for those who've got the patience (and earplugs) to handle it.

11. Washed Out- High Times

Your mission: Buy some old disco 8-tracks (and an 8-track player, unless you've got one lying around your dorm room anywhere; I guess I just forgot mine at home). Borrow a friend or relative's Lincoln Towne Car and leave said tapes lying exposed in the car's backseat window for a summer. Collect the tapes, submerge in cooking oil, and insert in your tape player. The method just described is pretty much the only way you'll hear music comparable to the woozy, sedated tracks on Washed Out's High Times, latest in a crop of diverse artists saddled with the "chillwave" title. Whatever you want to call it, once this record gets to you, you'd better believe these songs will get stuck in your head like an 8-track in a car tape deck for months to come.

10. Wormrot- Abuse

When I think "Grindcore Central", I'll be quick to admit that Singapore is not exactly foremost in my mind. However, if these Singaporeans (as well as their skilled compatriots in Magnicide) have anything to say about it, all that could be about to change. Wormrot deliver a gritty, angry, and punk-fueled blast of a record that's a perfect distillation of classic grinders like Extreme Noise Terror, Napalm Death, and even the late, great Insect Warfare (who more than a few writers have drawn comparisons to in reviews of this record). This disc is a perfect representation of what I love about grind, even going so far as to include a brilliant, tongue-in-cheek cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Rich". After almost 25 years, bands like Wormrot continue to prove that grindcore isn't about to disappear any time soon.

9. ABSU- ABSU

Wanna know a secret? Black metal is (still) awesome. ABSU proves it with this, their fifth (and in my opinion, best) LP to date. Instead of the tried-and-true Satanism of most bands in the genre, drummer/vocalist/lyricist Proscriptor draws from Sumerian and Mesopotamian mythology and ideas, keeping the mystery and occultism while giving us some stories we maybe haven't heard twenty times previous. It's hard to say enough to cover this album; sure, the blistering drums, tortured vocals, and crushing guitar are all here in full force, but so are mellotron accompaniment, sung vocals, acoustic guitar, and even some prog-rock synthesizer, though the album never strays far from the death-sprint pace set on the :02 mark of opener "Between the Absu of Eridu and Erech". What you're left with is a dense, atmospheric, energetic and technically excellent record that will appeal both to genre afficionados and plain ol' metal fans and doesn't lose any of its excitement or force on repeat listens. Also, a track is called "In the Name of Auebothiabaithobeuee", which is what I've decided I'll call my firstborn child, if only someone can clue me in on how to pronounce it.

8. Raekwon- Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... II

A decade ago, the words "Wu-Tang Forever" seemed less than likely to prove true. Two years after having released their baffling disappointing sophomore double album of that same name, the most the Clan had turned out were two underwhelming releases by two of their three worst MCs, U-God and Inspectah Deck, and a Mortal Kombat-style fighting game called Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style. To think now that Raekwon, Ghostface, RZA and company have turned out a sequel to one of the group's best solo records that ACTUALLY lives up to the hype heaped upon it, to think nothing of the fact that it's almost 17 years after the group's formation, is reason enough to stop and take notice. If you're familiar with this album's predecessor, you know exactly what to expect: gritty, Mafioso-style story-raps, heaps of dark, tense orchestral and piano-accented beats, and Rae and co-host Ghostface trading sharp, witty and often politically incorrect verses along with ample help from Clan members and associates. The biggest surprise here, however, is not only that Wu-Tang's resident beatsmith the RZA only supplied a handful of the beats for this album, but that his contributions are hardly the best of the bunch. This album is overflowing with superstar producers and guests, such as Dr. Dre, Pete Rock, the late J Dilla, and Slick Rick, (along with confusing additions like Jadakiss and Beanie Siegel), but the guest assistance bolsters rather than sinks the effort, with Raekwon's lyricism remaining the focus througout. This is an album rap fans have been waiting for for years, and it doesn't disappoint.

7. Real Estate- Real Estate

Full disclosure: I almost missed the boat on Real Estate. The truth is that my total ambivalence about guitarist Matt Mondanile's Ducktails project meant that my expections were extremely low once I heard he was also a member of this group. Luckily, a chance encounter with a track from their (also superb) Reality EP made me sure that I needed this record. The album's lazy, sunny, blue-collar vibe feels like a perfect soundtrack to a suburban New Jersey (where the band hails from) summer: cookouts, cheap beer, old lawnchairs, beach visits and all, rendered in lo-fi, indie-slacker glory. Since the afformentioned EP debuted only a week after this record hit shelves, if things keep up we can expect a lot more Real Estate to come in 2010.

6. Neon Indian- Psychic Chasms

With all of the turmoil in the US this year, it seems fitting something as escapist as the blogger-coined "chillwave" movement enjoyed such relative success. While questionably even a proper subgenre, the term describes thick, lo-fi, 80's-style electronic music, of which this summer and fall saw more than its share. Alan Palomo's Neon Indian project is a perfect distillation of this sound, and one of the pseudo-genre's strongest contributions. Songs such as "Deadbeat Summer" and "Should've Taken Acid With You" hide their outsider longing under upbeat synths and pounding beats which feel borrowed from warped VHS and cassette tapes, creating a pulsing blanket of childhood comfort that I'm eager to wrap myself up in again and again.

5. Mos Def- The Ecstatic

While certainly not hip-hop's most prolific year in recent history, 2009 was the staging area for multiple return-to-form albums from excellent rappers who either disappeared for an inordinate amount of time (see this list's #1 slot) or took an inordinate amount of time to release an album consistent with their former glory (see this entry, entry #8). Mos Def is, to most fans, quickly classifiable in the latter category; while sophomore effort The New Danger holds its own merit on repeat listens, its experimental song structures and chuggy rap-rock beats made it a challenging follow-up to 1998's classic Black on Both Sides. In the years following that record, Mos followed up with the lackluster, abortive True Magic and the equally flat Mos Definite mixtape, making it hard not to be wary of subsequent efforts from the once ridiculously on-point rapper. That's why this record comes as such a revelation; diverse, evocative beats from Madlib, Oh No, Preservation and others, combined with Mos' signature rapping and singing styles, as well as carefully selected guesting by Slick Rick, Black Star partner Talib Kweli, and Stones Throw-signed singer Georgia Anne Muldrow, make for not only Mos' best effort since his solo debut, but one of the freshest hip-hop records in what seems like much too long.

4. Jordaan Mason & the Horse Museum- Divorce Lawyers I Shaved My Head

A word of warning: If you dismiss this record as just some sloppy Neutral Milk Hotel ripoff, you'll inadvertently be bypassing one of the strangest, most inspired and engaging folk records you're likely to have heard all year. Mason and Co. blend NMH's signature horn-accented, confessional folk with the disturbed family tales and vocal stylings of Parenthetical Girls into a unique, unsettling and unforgettable batch of experimental folk songs. Divorce Lawyers is a sprawling narrative record about hermaphrodites, sex, marital problems, horses, shotguns, alternate-reality wars, and, who would've guessed, the Apocalypse. The lyrics and delivery are what really make this album: Mason's not afraid to open the album with the words "My mouth was filled with his ovaries". He's also not skittish to begin another song with the sung proclamation "You fuck like a racehorse", or make the suggestion "You can swallow shotguns if you want to" (from the same song) into a catchy sing-along. Mason's lyrics can be just as sadly beautiful as they are bald or grotesque, such as, "We borrowed their old clothes, and then we undressed / We stole a trampoline and made it our mattress",

and the oddly triumphant lines that lend the album its title:

"Divorce lawyers, I shaved my head / She shaved her head / We are new".

This record leaves plenty of questions unanswered, but if you perservere past all the confused timelines and genders, you're guaranteed to discover one of 2009's true hidden gems.

3. Memory Tapes- Seek Magic

From Memory Cassette/Weird Tapes (get the name now?) recluse Dayve Hawk comes this fantastic dreampop/shoegaze/electronic hybrid of an LP. This is the kind of record that just sucks you into its world; I feel a passenger on the drunken bike ride at the heart of "Bicycle", a witness to the relationship drama of "Stop Talking", lost in whatever the hell is happening in the gorgeous Galaxie-500-esque "Plain Material". The songs employ diverse instrumentation and hazy production that practically build their own worlds in the spaces between your ears. Whatever words you want to heap on it, this record creates the perfect lullaby for a generation of lonely, post-modern college kids. Things may not ever be okay, but at least we've got records like this to hide that fact from us.

2. The Antlers- Hospice

Emotionally, this year, it seems as if there wasn't too much middle ground in indie rock. Either a record was full of escapist bliss or honest, crushing sadness, depending on the artist's coping mechanisms. This record, with its semi-autobiographical lyrics (detailing a failing relationship with a dying cancer patient) and whispy, orchestral musicianship, clearly took the latter route. Yet there's something freeing in the sadness of this album that has compelled me to revisit it time and again.

1. DOOM- Born Like This

MF DOOM is a villain. How else to explain interrupting a bumping hip-hop intro with a silly, cartoonish supervillain skit, or the track "Batty Boyz", where he accuses practically every male superhero in the DC Comics lineup of homosexuality? How about shortening his name to DOOM, for no reason other than he felt like it? Villainous, no question about it; but he's also probably the best thing to happen to hip-hop since the 808. After 4 years of near-silence, one of the beginning of the decade's most prolific (and consistent) rappers returns with an edgy, raw, short (40:28) and inspired collection of tracks that, in true villain style, has divided as many fans as it's gained. Some have dismissed the album's quirks as weaknesses (some of the best songs clock in under two minutes, and some of his best beats feature guest performers rather than himself), but if you keep listening, these oddities end up instead feeling like demented strengths. Also, the aforementioned guests don't hurt either; two of Wu-Tang's finest, long-time partners Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, each leave their mark on "Angelz" and "Yessir!", respectively, while elsewhere Atmosphere's Slug and a relatively unknown female MC named Empress Sharhh, both drop solid rhymes which make coming back to the album easy due to constant new discoveries. DOOM's even crazy enough to sample poet Charles Bukowski on album centerpiece "Cellz", a move which makes clear this is a lot more than just some jokey hip-hop goof-off. The album's darkness is what sets it apart from some of Daniel Dumile's (DOOM's birth name, for those not in the know) other releases; the endlessly tight and constantly referential lyricism has more to say than your average Top 40 rapper could even imagine. Mos Def has even gone far enough to say in an interview "I'd put a million dollars on DOOM against Lil' Wayne", a bet I'd make in a heartbeat, as well. Now that he's back, the self-proclaimed "best MC with no chain you ever heard" shows no signs of stopping, with a Ghostface collab album and a sequel to 2003's amazing Madlib-produced Madvillainy both possible to be released in 2010. I don't know about you, but I'm damn glad the villain's still going to be doing his thing for a long, long time.

Most Anticipated Albums of 2010:

1. Gridlink- Orphan

2. Xiu Xiu- Dear God, I Hate Myself

3. of Montreal- False Priest

4. Los Campesinos!- Romance is Boring

5. Ghostface Killah, Method Man & Raekwon- The Wu-Massacre

Best Songs/Singles of 2009 [No Order]

1.Memory Tapes- "Bicycle"

2. Rainbow Bridge- "Big Wave Rider"

3. Mos Def- "Quiet Dog"

4. The Flaming Lips- "Watching the Planets"

5. Wilco- "Bull Black Nova"

6. Animal Collective- "What Would I Want? Sky"

7. Neon Indian- "Deadbeat Summer"

8. Ghostface Killah- "Stapleton Sex"

9. DOOM- "Gazillion Ear"

10. Dirty Projectors- "Cannibal Resource"

11. Black Moth Super Rainbow- "Iron Lemonade"

12. Atlas Sound ft. Noah Lennox- "Walkabout"

13. Dan Deacon- "Snookered"

14. HEALTH- "Die Slow"

15. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart- "Young Adult Friction"

Top 5 Pop Singles of 2009

1. Lady Gaga- "Bad Romance"

2. Miley Cyrus- "Party in the USA"

3. Jay-Z- "Empire State of Mind"

4. Rihanna- "Russian Roulette"

5. La Roux- "Bulletproof"

Chilling, No Wave Required

2010-03-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

Strawberry Incense by TheProphetBlog

This ballin' new Madlib-produced Erykah Badu track, along with that new (and ALREADY removed from YouTube) Flying Lotus track "...and the World Laughs With You" with Thom Yorke, seem to indicate that our summer's going to be filled with even more chilled-out psychedelic jams, this time of the hip-hop, rather than indie rock, variety. I, for one, am very down.

Top 30 Hip-Hop Albums... Ever

2010-03-17T23:16:00.000-07:00

First off, I fucking love listing things. This is kinda a repost of a Facebook note I made, but I realized I'd left out five truly excellent albums, so I had to expand it to 30. I love all genres of music, from indie rock to grindcore, so hip-hop's certainly not going to be the only thing I'll cover on here. No matter what genres you listen to, though, hope you enjoy it.

My Top 30 Hip-Hop Albums, Chronologically

Ultramagnetic MCs- Critical Beatdown (1988)
Beastie Boys- Paul's Boutique (1989)
KMD- Mr. Hood (1991)
A Tribe Called Quest- Midnight Marauders (1993)
Snoop Dogg- Doggystyle (1993)
Wu-Tang Clan- Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
Nas- Illmatic (1994)
Notorious B.I.G.- Ready to Die (1994)
Big L- Lifestylez ov Da Poor & Dangerous (1995)
GZA/Genius- Liquid Swords (1995)
Raekwon- Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... (1995)
De la Soul- Stakes is High (1996)
Dr. Octagon- Dr. Octagonecologyst (1996)
Company Flow- Funcrusher Plus (1997)
Black Star- Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star (1998)
DJ QBert- Wave Twisters, Episode 7 Million: Sonic Wars Within the Protons (1998)
Lauryn Hill- The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)
Outkast- Aquemini (1998)
Mos Def- Black on Both Sides (1999)
Deltron 3030- Deltron 3030 (2000)
Quasimoto- The Unseen (2000)
Cannibal Ox- The Cold Vein (2001)
Antipop Consortium- Arrhythmia (2002)
Viktor Vaughn- Vaudeville Villain (2003)
Madvillain- Madvillainy (2004)
MF DOOM- MM..Food?? (2004)
Clipse- Hell Hath No Fury (2006)
Ghostface Killah- Fishscale (2006)
J-Dilla- Donuts (2006)
Dälek- Abandoned Language (2007)