Torture Corpse - Stop the Mind (Stunned Records CS)

Latest Stunned batch came in recently, which is always good news in my book. And it's a fat batch at that, filled to the brim with slow burners and stunners alike including a disc by Sparkling Wide Pressure that represents the last CD-R to be released by the label. Don't know whether that means they're growing up into real deal CDs and vinyl or sticking with the tape rundown, but changes are afoot it seems. Changes are afoot.

This one comes by way of Torture Corpse aka Robert Kroos, whose grim moniker pretty much sums up his approach. The album's title track gets the ball rolling with a suitably foreboding speech wose pulsing death march beat takes over and leads the thing down a pathway to the vents themselves. Twists and turns of steam and earth merge together, crushing one another and forming new elements in the process. Gnarly go that peters off and in and blows off steam. A real reverberated voyage that feels like a guided tour given on the sickest IMAX ride of your life. "Voyage to the Core of Earth's Crust: Demonic Fires Aligned," narrated by Sigourney Fuckin' Weaver. Love the part where the theater seats rumble and sway as you move through rubble and magma alike. Super heated vibes to be had here for sure, strips itself back, writhes itself forward, zones itself out.

Flip side offers a few more takes on this sound, with "Rock 'N' Rally" opening with a quick quote about the Nuremberg Rallies as rock concert before diffusing into a haze of salt and silt. Washes of texture amount to few phrases but plenty of phases, left to right and back to night. As gloomy as this stuff is--and it is gloomy--it maintains such a high level of sonic richness that it never feels overbearing or destructive. And it ain't really just drone either. More in the dark maximal ambient vein, but hardly so pretentious as such a title might infer either. "Full Responsibility" re-soups the thing with nice ebbs of shattered tone and moans from beneath. Bubbles of bromide that move somewhere between the space echo hollows of Robert Beatty and the field recorded worlds of Douglas Quinn. Lovely. Any safety zones found though are quickly ripped apart on the closing "Manjushri," whose warbling guffaws of blather move as gently as a hammer in a house of glass. The continued entry of vocal speeches is alarming and while I usually find this sort of thing pretentious and a bit of an over working, the careful placement and generally grizzly atmosphere lets it come and go with little detriment to the overall feel. A fine one from the Stunned camp, packaged fantastically as always.

The Uphill Gardeners - S/T (olFactory Records / Kill Shaman 12")

Managed to leave a bunch of reviewables in my girlfriend's car this weekend, including some Stunned / Holy Cheever / ECR / Bug Incision etc. so I've finally got a moment to dig back intot he final I've been sent along the way. This one comes courtesy of mid-90s No-Wave outfit Uphill Gardeners, a trio consisting of Jarrett Silberman, Nigel Lundemo and Bobb Bruno. All these dudes have gone on to big things, but this EP shows how on top of it they've been all along. Killer stuff fully deserving of issue (finally) here.

What we've got is a series of tracks that weren't used for their sole full length CD, but if these are the outtakes they sure don't read as such. Guitar, bass and drums as mobile as you get, full instrumental togetherness. Artsy to be sure, but with enough cajones to get the ball rolling wonderfully. Starting off with the excellently titled "Boner Music," the group displays right off the bat it's penchant for switching modes mid-go, crashing along before turning on a dime into some strange country twine balls that read far more like a Butthole Surfers track than a Mars one. Great mix of those two worlds though. "Goldenrod Sunrise" pulls off the same action, creaming its Gun Club style guitar lines with super nowhere glad-to-be-gone pummeling before "I've Got to Stop Getting Pregnant" slows it down a tad, rollicking in darker and dirtier waters as a two-note bass line and steady drum thud guides the guitar shreds and bellows atop. Electronics and synth are apparently involved here too, but it's tough to define them against the guitar (hell, maybe it's not guitar, who knows?). Slow and steady wins the mace till "Sounds" culls their inner AMM meets Ash Ra Tempel. A weirdo one to initiate flippage to be sure.

Flip side features only two monster tracks, "He is Master" being the first and representing a real rubber band band brawl. Brush it off quick, this one buzzes like bees before changing chords on a pin top and moving into discordant stunners and bummers. Real inner workings stuff that relies solely on its self made logic to guide the way. Slow burn ravaging with hums and strums and crumbs abounding. Gonzo for sure before drums come in and move it into nearly Zappa-esque absurdities that skitter outward with a humor and resilience you can't quite land your thumb down on. Perfect pulse offered from Lundemo on this one. "Diet Experiment" closes it all out with some rib cage bending bass twirps while Silberman's Arto impression pieces itself together atop some skitters and shimmies. Real lovely sounding to my ear, anti-rock with a firm grip on how to navigate such territory with cohesion, balance, and an ear for subtle frames of referential outlooks. Glad to grab, killer killer material. Seek it from the labels and see if they've got em.

Ättestupa - 1867 (DNT Records 12")

Another one from the vaults, this time hearkening from the DNT camp a ways back via Sweden. A little out of left field for the DNT label, this EP is by a mystery unit that in some way features (recently reviewed here) Sewer Election's Dan Johansson. Apparently titled after a year of brutal starvation in Sweden, this offering is a soundtrack of sorts, produced to ultra dismal effect in homage to staggering suffering and desperation.

Thing kicks off in brutal fashion on "Missväxt," whose clashing drum lines and guitar meld with deeply drowned vocals for a graveside call to arms. Total thrashing punk/goth/motorik material here that grinds on before dwindling out to wheezes and windz that blubber on long enough to drown it out. The following "Halshuggarnatten" goes heavy on the crud lurch with a nice funereal organ line mingling over top. Sounds like a morgue service next to a construction site, and the dichotomy is too good to ignore. Like kids playing hopscotch at the cemetery using headstones for humdingers while ghastly vocals dig dirges in the draperies. Real killer sound that's super dismal and down and out, the organ line just right above it all while the vocals are backstage screaming through an aquarium full of cyanide.

Flip side features the lone "Storsvagåret," which starts out nice and meddling as chairs are dragged over linoleum tiling and the hum of stench looms outward slow and steady. Really reads like a playground full of poltergeists taking over in the name of decay. Super steady slow mo degradation here. Industrial meets circuit twisting meets grind meets slime. Rusty as hell and going nowhere fast before it opens up with a hunkered down, face to the floor organ and drum line that wiggles itself free from the mulch. Sick, head banging and dilapidated stuff, ultra mechanic in its stuttered organics. Heavy ride all around, mastered by Yellow Swans own Pete Swanson and well worth the price of admission. Dig the stripped back presentation here too, with the typed up Swedish liners (I'm assuming) detailing the event in all its ugliness. Grab it before it turns to ash.

Various Artists - Serge Modular Users 2009 (Resipiscent CD)

This one's been waiting in the wings I good while, but it's turn has come. Was psyched when I got this disc, and not only cause the Serge is one of my favorite knob-twiddlers around (Richard Teitelbaum had one over at the Bard labs for us to tamper with) but because this is a hell of way to organize a disc. For all the synth-mayhem going around these days, it makes perfect sense to pick one and track it right proper under the hand of slew of fists. Haven't heard of half these guys either, which only adds to the allure.

Spanning fifteen tracks and a FULL disc's worth of sound, this thing is as packed with Serge sounds as you could hope, demonstrating over and over the endless array of possibilities from this thing as well as it's diverse potential depending on who's manning the controls. Thing starts off with Jan-Hinnerk Helms cordially welcoming you via a Serge created voice, friendly as all hell with its sing-song greeting before things dip into circuit mania on M/N/M/L's "Breath," which takes some oscillations and splays them into party cracklers and simmering timber. Super into CRAY (Ross Healy's project) and its "STRK," which bounces around like rubber bands shot through laser beams. Super kinetic and spasmodic for the frenzied fans. John Duval uses it to dip into some early 8-s basement synth material on "Distress Call," which reverberates like a sinking mine sending info to spy subs before self-detonating. Benge's "1972 Serge Modular" (apparently an excerpt from "Twenty Systems") is super minimal and glitchy, little cracks and runs writhing over one another with insect rhythm pulses. Quite grooving really, like some 70s cicada orgy scene soundtrack.

Could keep running straight through really, there're so many zones it's impossible to summarize; kkonkkrete's "Untitled I" lays out under the sun for a tad, charring over in dronesville while cebec culls a veritable techtonic Mutranium disaster on "Transformer Substation." Love the Hans Grusel sound too on "Quarantimes," which is as zoned and burned out as they come. Just rhythms and crashes and march band kitchen sink stuff. Killer. Electronic Waste Product's "Picket Fences" reads like a mid-60s Mimaroglu experiment while Carlos Giffoni's "All the Mistakes I made During the Caribbean Winter" blasts a whole straight through the walls with drenches of sewage before the roaches come crawling out 8-bit style. Maniacal as hell. And of course the rest of them are great too, but I'll let you dig it up for yourself. Hell of an instrument and far removed from any hypnagogic nostalgia sound--far cooler and more electronically motivated. The new sounds played on the old instruments, which were the new sounds then too. Go figure. Killer and likely still available.

Towering Heroic Dudes - Bad Old Daze (Obsolete Units CD-R)

Good news in from Foxy Digitalis:

Call it what you will, but Towering Heroic Dudes has managed to create quite a stirring little piece with this, the follow up to their invincibly titled “My Morning Jackoff” off on Abandon Ship. And with a title like that, who could argue? This release, on stellar label Obsolete Units, features three separate live sets, each about 20 minutes long, featuring the combined degradation of members Neil Vendrick, Nate Rulli, Paul Haney, Andrew Posey and Mick Merszaros. And while the group members might make this appear to be some mid 80s English mod-revival group, the sonic results speak to something quite oppositional to that sort of assumption.

The first set, performed at the legendary Cake Shop on 11/4/08, finds some discombobulated zones and shifts them around to make even less sense. Thick clatter and drone and feedback ring around one another with garbled glee and not a magic bus in sight. The clan sure knows how to raise a ruckus, allowing everything to build and create its own patterns in the grain. To this end, the members are merely physically allowing the billows to happen, erupting outward in torrential shards. Must have been a hell of a show... The following number occurred at Tommy’s Tavern about four months later, and this two grows viciously, albeit in a far steadier, more deadened fashion. No sudden blasts here, just dirt infused simmering till the frog turns to putty. The unit seems to have properly internalized a lot of the L.A.F.M.S. catalogue (namely Airway and Le Forte Four) and reconstructed it to suit their own expansive needs. The last track, recorded at Lil Lounge on 9/17/08, is a buried battering of fuzz and crumble, hushed and mushed and steadily crushed into some phased bandwidths of lowly radio samples and synth statements and hiss scuzz hiss aesthetics. It’s all washed out real nice, so the last 30 second track can blast you straight to Deliriumton. Nice stuff, lots of energy and movement and destroyed right proper as a document.

Luminance Ratio - Like Little Garrisons Besieged (Boring Machines / Fratto9 Under The Sky CD)

First one of April, and it's already shaping up to be a hot month. We've already had a couple good scorchers now, which I'd say bodes well after the winter dumping we got this year. Bring it on. Thought I'd ring in the new month/seasonal feel with a release I got a ways back from Italian-based labels Boring Machines and Fratto9 Under the Sky. Nice little operations here, both focusing on electroacoustic/improv stuff but going a ways broader than that--dig the recent Digitalis feature on Boring Machines for a more thorough run through of their agenda if you care to. If not, proceed per usual.

Hadn't heard from this group before, but from the look/sound of it the trio has a different take on electroacoustics. The trio, made up of (WARNING--great porn name approacheth) Andrea ics Ferraris (guitars, cymbals, electronics, field recordings, brushes, contact mics, pedals), Eugenio Maggi (drones, electronics, turntables, field recordings) and Gianmaria Aprile (objects, editing, mix and mastering) may have a lineup that reads like your standard drone/psych unit, but these guys follow much more in the vein of classic electroacousticians, with real live play on their selected sources that has a slow and tender, compositional vibe. In addition, Paul Bradley steps in to have his way with it after the fact, so the whole live/improv thing gets thrown off a bit. Just see the opening title track, whose clattering digital glitch slips right into the moist burrows created by various drops and bends and crackles. Ultra lowly environs captured in the finest hi-fidelity. Lovely stuff that lets a lazy guitar line slip right over before expanding patiently into some spaced control of spare parts ruminations. Glick gluck glack.

The album moves nicely as a whole, drifting from precious gnome home obtrusions to ominous belly of the lake glides (see "Sullespalledellepietre"). "Sunday is Grey" is even more shifting and conniving. Lay low while the fog creeps past style stuff. "Armada" approaches the wind vent hollows of Graveyards from a more droney slant, laying down canvases of texture over which delicate motions are offered. Enter the monastery and step proper, you hear? The last track, epically 20 minutes long and epically titled "Paul Bradley Remix" (well, there's his part I suppose) seems to take a lot of the stuff from parts of the album and stretch it all out on itself. Sounds very much like the group sans remix, but he's clearly lacing some stuff together quite carefully here. Beautiful duel release here on both label's parts, so keep your eyes peeled there.

Street Drinkers / Källarbarnen / White / Attestupa - Utmarken (Release the Bats 10")

Hot off the presses at Foxy Digitalis:

Here's a nice offering. Release the Bats have been going at it for a ways now, and this 10” compilation represents their 50th release, a milestone for anyone but one that is especially noteworthy considering the consistantly high level of material the label's associated itself with. This one's no different, presenting four acts residing in Gothenburg, Sweden and claiming the Utmarken storefront / performance space as home. With sounds like this, let's cheer for the venue's continued success (as well as the label's, who I believe just released their last CD... end of an era?).

The first track belongs to Street Drinkers' (the solo moniker of Viktor Ottasson) “Daily Bread,” a splashing synth tune with reverberated vocals splayed out over the pointing skyward tones. Finds it's voice somewhere between Peaking Lights and the Gel Tapes material, I suppose, but without sounding like a mimicry of either. Highly charged stuff here. Källarbarnen, a duo consisting of Sofie Herner and Matthias Andersson, offer “Trängd,” following up Ottasson's drift with a more industrial take on the mood. Guitar slaps and minimal beats lay out the kind of waste zone that the Swedes have always done so well, and while it's winter material to be sure, the number's never without a certain heady internalization of No Wave motion sickness.

The flip side opens with the insect buzzing of White's “Defiance of Good.” The solo work of Dan Johansson, the track reads like crossbreed of Suicide sneer and stripped back kosmiche stretches, defying all but its own slow pace and buzzing logic. It reads like the soundtrack to accompany the most desheveled, leather-clad gangs in the area. Amazing. Attestupa, a quartet consisting of the aforementioned Johansson and Ottasson as well as David Eng and Jesper Canell, offer up the monstrous “Änglamakerskan,” whose heavy keyboard vibes and focused slop deliver a crushing search party line that must destroy live. Grooving like an assassin with a limp, the track is well worthy of closing out this impressive document. Another winner from Release the Bats to be sure, and one that opens some much needed doors to an oft neglected outpost across the pond.

Afternoon Penis / Eskimo King - Split (Abandon Ship Records LP)

Wowsers bowsers, this one's been resting easy for WAY too long. Came in a while back from Abandon Ship and so much of my vinyl has been tucked away in my apartment while I've been on the move that it just ain't as easily get-at-able as I'd hope for reviewing purposes. Necessarily takes a long enough sit down at the home nest, which means a moment's needed, so sorry for the delay on it. Not a moment too soon though, thar she blows.

So what is this whale of a platter? Why, it's the two members of Mouthus, legendary band who I need not discuss, splitting their efforts across two sides. Love this approach, opens things way up when it's done right, and here it's done so super right, as Nate Nelson opens things up with his "...Jack of Hearts" number. I remember seeing Nelson do his Afternoon Penis thing way back at No Fun Fest '08, which was totally bomb and way different than the presentation here, much more textural percussion exploration style stuff. Here, the dog opts for about the most feel-good little number you're likely to hear this side of Mercury. And it's still fully percussive to be sure, but the accordion takes center stage on this three chord ditty with a great vocal melody snippet about, you guessed it, the jack of hearts, thrown in to keep things moving. Side long excursion here that bristles about, adding and removing and grooving and bruising all the way home. Tough to discuss really, but suffice it to say it's so littered with Skittles it's likely to make the rainbow nauseating for a while, AKA it's a totally killer dance party glom prom go of it. Really a special zone here.

And there's a flip to boot. Brian Sullivan (the Eskimo King himself) hammers one home on his opening "Gjoa," a glitched out morsel that sways nice and easy, its smudged smearings of colorful lines gliding out and about behind pointillist poindexterous moves nestled somewhere in between Tomutonttu, Skaters, etc., but with a real comic book, dancey vibe going. Whole thing takes a turn for the jungle eventually though, heading into the ferns for a jostle in the thistle to explore the crud in the mud on "Born Again" (I think, it's tough to decipher the plot points in these chapters). No dud, for sure though. Gets bare enough even that the thing all but stops, delivering this little psych melody with nary a blitter about it, real spaced out, recuperation stuff that sounds like it's right out of the asylum, even more so when the vocals lay out their sorrowed and sullied outlooks. Tough to believe it started out so rosy, this is straight zoner loner material. Never one to stay still though, the thing yanks itself up by the collar and moves into Progsville (blackout era) without a hitch before settling into guitar splicing jammer epicness for a tad. Next stop = Amazonia again, or rather Saharan globules of oasis huddled gliders on "Dry Strike." Seriously, there are so many zones here it's tough to find that Jack of Hearts' mug in the mix, so let's call a spade a spade and just say it rules.

med.Hammer - Stepping Back from Two Halves (Existential Cloth Recordings CD-R)

New batch from Existential Cloth Recordings in and ECR on ECN is always SIK (sick/so incredibly killer) in my book that I had to get right down to it. Given that my tape deck's on the fritz--I might make it back over to the apartment today, where the fully functioning one always waits--and given that my Mac computer doesn't have a tray that supports 3" CDs (blasted set-up there) I had no choice but to go for the straight up, full sized discs, of which neither artist I'd heard from before and on who I can find barely a scrap of info. Not that this here blog's known for divulging much info of any kind, so I guess it'll keep me right where I usually find myself. Uselessly helpful? Helplessly useful? Neither? Right then.

So one of the discs that Matt unloaded on me was from Siddhi, whose lineup and myspace I can at least resort to. But this one was a bit more interesting to me at first, and the lack of info out there on this group is astounding, especially in this internet age of availability. Far as I know these guys have two releases, both on ECR, and that's it. That's all I know. Recorded in New Britain, Connecticut. Welcome to New B, I guess.

So what the hell is it you ask? Well it's one fucking mammoth slab of drenched and damaged drone goodness, I answer. One track, over 50 minutes, and as billowing as you could ask for. It's a soupy set here, but there's some real focus, and whether or not there's one or six members of this group, they work in close conjunction throughout, no one ever shooting past the others in strong armed flexing moves. Rather little moments come and go, with tinkling bells entering to change the landscape, or vocals, or guitar lines, or monk rituals laced with rutabaga and and sent off toward Neptune. Lots of looping to be sure, but it never reads like an architecture class, foundation on. Things come, things go, things speed up and slow. Dr. Seuss style, you know? They bubble and flubber and mutter and glow. Always switching directions but maintaining the generally controlled feel, as lines intermingle and bend across each other in lapses of memory/judgement that feed right into the experience. Forces you to get in their head space, which is always a nice form of fascism--"just sit back, cause I'm taking you there" stuff. Deep sounds, still can't tell who's in it--might be just one now that I think about it. But how many are in one anyway? Oh boy. TOO DEEP. Ends on a Monopoly Child babble out too. Grab it quick, only 25 copies and I've got 4% of em.

Padna - There are so many fish in heaven, Pt. IV (Tape Drift CD-R)

Nat Hawks' releases on Stunned this past year have been super swell, so I was psyched to see that Eric had managed to corral a Padna release for the Tape Drift imprint. This little disc contains only one track, but at 45 minutes it's a real opus of sorts, moving through zones in a totally insular, cryogenic defreezing logic.

The setup is basically this: a few years back, Hawks recorded the first "There are so many fish in heaven" track which, apparently, was little more than a guitar/e-bow number. Found a scratched copy later that he dug so he reworked it and released it is numero dos. Next thing you know the guy's so scratch happy (who does he think he is, Flava Flav?!) that he went ahead and cratched that one, reworked it, released it, and then dood it again for this one. So basically this is a reworking of a reworking of a reworking of an original, which means by now he pretty much has this tactic down pat. Whew.

So what's it sound like? Well, there certainly are scratches, but the thing moves so many spheres that it's tough to pin down any real angle here. It opens with a vocal thing that splatters about as it's diced into pieces, but that soon diverges for lusher, more atmospheric areas. I'm not sure exactly how he's getting these scratches but they work wonderfully, taking each sound and splitting it from its source and destination moment by moment, a tactic which has the effect of placing things quickly in the foreground, background, and foreground again, like some prismatic mind warp of sonic inversion. In this way, each sound is coerced to reveal previously deciphered lines that Hawks manages with a deft and tender touch. Never sounds nearly as glitched out as it could really, but rather sways to and fro in psychedelic glimmerings. Real beautiful stuff that goes and goes, guided by little other than the snap, crackle, pop of the scratches. Amazing how these scratches manage to reveal new things about the piece, sometimes cutting it into fantastically spare blurts and bristles while sometimes playing vibrato and just humming about atop. When it ends, escaping with a blathered drum beat and vocal, its absence is all to clear. A real neat one for sure, and likely still available.