NO-CORE

I’m sure this has already been posted all over the internet, but I still can’t resist putting up this video. Brian “Narwhalz (of sound)” and Jonathan “Shams” (also a member of infant-core band Adult Moan) face off against some Baltimore scene kids, including Kate Levitt of Teeth Mountain, on TV’s JUDGE JUDY. (By the way, looks like Shams plays this Saturday in Brooklyn at Death by Audio!)

No need to feel bad watching this, I have a strong feeling that no cats were actually killed in the making of this case. (I can believe that some TVs were smashed) And check out those nice, new leather jackets that Narwhalz & Shams are sporting! The actual show sequence is a little slow, Her Honor Judy doesn’t allow for much improv (Narwhalz tries) but the closing interviews are great.

You’ll want to check out the comments too, some of which are also hard to judge as real or fake. Highlights include:

“They are a tribe of sickos and should not be allowed to have a cat, and definitely not televisions.”

“Quit trying to promote your stupid band, and find a new acting coach”

and of course: “DEWD SHES HAWT. UR GAY LIEK THOSE DUDES LOL”

Captain Ahab: the Captain Ahab of, um, music?

Since this falls vaguely in the same category (weirdo musicians appearing on TV shows) I thought I’d throw it into the same post. Except that this news item, cool as it is, is completely appropriate and UN-strange, considering how uber-PRO-fessional Captain Ahab are in their approach to music. Captain Ahab, who are on the Deathbomb Arc label and are like some kind of Ween of electronic music, have a new song of theirs prominently featured in the latest episode of the SciFi (I refuse to call it “SyFy”) show Caprica. I’m embedding the clip below, but if it gets taken down, you can watch the full episode HERE.

You can also hear the track and download it free from Captain Ahab’s Bandcamp page. (Haven’t I heard that beedley-deep-beep sample in another Ahab song?) A little browsing on Youtube also reveals plenty of examples of Ahab tracks appearing in other shows.

Alright, I may as well close things out with a classic, which the above Judge Judy unavoidably brought to mind. Joe, (ex- of The Fugue)’s closing comments on the People’s Court. Enjoy.

* Okay, okay, I know neither Narwhalz nor Shams are really “noise” but I enjoy bugging serious harsh-noise dudes by polluting “their” genre with goofballs.

I’m down in Miami at the International Noise Conference, and some more photos and video will follow, but as a little sneak preview, here’s the Laundryroom Squelchers set from Thursday night, Feb. 11th. This is shot in portrait format so you may want to go fullscreen for viewing. I think the David Lynch style lighting helps capture the madness.

Realicide - Detroit 2009

Everyone loves free mp3 albums right? So maybe you’ve already found these, but it can’t hurt to spread the good word. The gabber/noise/omni-core group Realicide have made a whole bunch of music available for you. They’re frequently compared to Atari Teenage Riot, which is not far off the mark, except they often make ATR sound like, I don’t know… Jesus Jones?

Anyway, you can get no less than THREE collections of stuff, a mega-mix of samples from the latest album with live stuff and b-sides here:

http://www.lunaticfringe.org/~schizoid/dtrashrecords/digitaldownloads/135.html

and a 20-minute tape of misc. live material turned digital release, directly linked here:

http://ia311020.us.archive.org/1/items/Wild063-Realicide/Wild063-Realicide-DigitalScraps2008.zip

and basically a whole live album, with interviews and photos! This one’s pretty awesome. Here:

http://www.digitalvomit.com/dvr048

Rose for Bohdan

And next up, Brian of Foot Village/Deathbombarc pointed out in the comments to another post that his band Rose For Bohdan’s last album was made available as a free download, but since I figure few people saw it there, I’m reiterating it here. 3 members of Foot Village, recently reviewed, were also in this band. Get it here:

http://deathbombarc.com/sound/r4b/creepingmoraldecay/creeping.htm

It was a bit of a chore, but I’d been meaning to get this done for a long time. The No-Core podcast has officially been moved from the podomatic.com free hosting site, here to no-core.net – The new address is:

http://www.no-core.net/podcast

It now matches the blog and everything, and maybe the best thing about this is that there are no longer space restrictions, so all episodes are now available for download! (except for number 9, I couldn’t find the file) There is also a brand new podcast up right now. It’s a half-length one, but I wanted to get it done and out there.

I’ve been saying this everywhere, but: If you’re subscribed to the podcast and you think it might be the podomatic version, un-subscribe and go here to get it fixed-> http://feeds.feedburner.com/no-corepodcast

The site is starting to shape up here, and more features will be added over time.

The last time I wrote something about the infamous 4-drummer/vocalist band Foot Village, I said that they reminded me of one of those weekend project bands that would normally play one show and be forgotten. Somehow or other I had in fact forgotten that I actually WAS in a percussion-and-vocals-only band called The Old Joe Smiths. It was formed on a weekend and did play exactly one show.

But wait, this is not one of those self-absorbed reviews where I just talk about me, I have a point about Foot Village. As soon as the Old Joe Smiths band concept was born, it immediately expanded to include multiple odd percussion instruments, including glass bottles with varying amounts of water to make a crude xylophone. Foot Village on the other hand, has a much stronger purity of vision. If someone tells you that a band is made of 4 drummer/vocalists, you might picture some kind of world music group with bongos, bells, vocal harmonies, etc. Heck, even other multi-drummer noise-rock groups like Aa or current Boredoms go in for this stuff.

Foot Village? None of that. Four matching rock drum kits. Kick, tom, snare, hi-hat, crash. Times four. Pounding and screaming. That’s what you get. They allow themselves exactly one additional “instrument” – the megaphone. I suspect the tone in “Death of the Endless” is megaphone feedback and the sirens in “National Jamthum” and “Chicken & Cheese 2″ are a default sound created by the same megaphone. In addition to these restrictions, Foot Village also operate within an established concept – they are building their own nation. This album, “Anti-Magic,” is vaguely about their first war, with the forces of mysticism and magic. The album art shows Foot Village tribe members – all nude – fighting wizard types with sticks, spears, and bombs. I thought this concept might be about the battle between superstition and rationalism, but if so it comes across vague and playful, not political.

You might think the tight restrictions would make things boring, but no. It just forces Foot Village to push the creativity of their composition and interaction. There is one small deviation from this plan, the half-way point track “Grace’s Death” which is mostly vocal, then veers into some kind of remixed/electronic segment. A nice little break, then back to the drums. Also, the album closes with the track ”Chicken & Cheese 2,” which turns into a relay race of rad underground bands covering the song, one after the other. The results are extremely varied and it’s a super-fun way to close things out. In fact, each edition of the album: CD, vinyl, cassette, and digital – has a different collection of bands doing the covers.

One last thought: It is really hard to capture multiple drums in a recording. I don’t know if it always sounds like there are 4 drum kits here, but it almost always sounds like there’s more than one. The drum-layering works best when there are lots of fast rolls going on, like those in “Reggae War Zone.” The “heavy” all-together pounding moments sound much more impressive in a live setting, which is really how you ought to experience Foot Village. Still, none of that changes the fact that this is a great and super-entertaining album. (But maybe they should put out a Dolby 5.1 version too).

Free mp3 sample download: Foot Village – Reggae War Zone

Foot Village website
Foot Village on last.fm
album can be bought here

Social Junk are an experimental duo (often with collaborators) originally from West Virginia and recently located to the ever-growing fun-noise capital of Philadelphia. What I admire and like best about them is how they can’t be easily pegged into one narrow niche. Sure, you could call them “experimental” like I just did, but they’ll only fit into a broad category like that. In our modern era of hyper-compartmentalization and scene fragmentation, Social Junk seem like boundary crossers.

They mash up lo-tech industrial clang, delay-loving moan-wave, organic noise-folk, Wolf Eyes-style creep and scrape soundscapes, and pin it all together with occasional white light/white heat noise-rock. The central and title track on this album, the 15-minute “Born Into It,” is what you’re most likely to get at a Social Junk show. It starts with some indistinct, watery, reverb noises and electronic squeaks. The volume builds as echoing crashes ring out. Then as that part dies out there’s a second hushed part, echoing voices joining. Screeching and howling feedback noise starts to overwhelm things and for a finale the drums roll in with the noise still rising to a dense mess and ending abruptly at the climax. Pretty much a perfect 15-minute I.N.C.-style performance. The other tracks explore different parts of this sonic terrain, sometimes harsher, sometimes more free-form, sometimes more blissful and vocal-focused.

I’ve dropped some terms in describing Social Junk that would normally make me shy away from a band, like “noise-folk” or “moan-wave.” These tags are usually applied to groups that are just a bit too cute and mild for me to appreciate. Social Junk might appeal to fans of that stuff, but haters won’t want to dump them in that crowd, because Social Junk always have an edge, the sounds are never 100% nice, there’s always some lurking tension and you know things could start sounding downright ugly. In the best possible way. These guys just finished a tour with other awesome noise jammers Dick Neff and Mincemeat Or Tenspeed, and they’ll probably be heading out on tour again before you know it.

Social Junk on last.fm
Social Junk on MySpace
Order from Digitalis

I think I promised some photos from this show quite a while ago. (click for slightly bigger files) The Silent Barn is a DIY venue in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and the closest thing you’re going to get to a house show around here. First up, Hot Guts play some hi-NRG garage rock through gobs of effects. It actually sounds kind of like this image:

Hot Guts at Silent Barn

Gay Beast played in the middle and I think I’ve raved about them enough, right? It’s twice as great live as on record. Brain-melting nu-math no-wave.

Gay Beast at Silent Barn 1

Gay Beast at Silent Barn 2

Satanized closed things out with an intense and sweaty set. They play harsh math/noise-rock, often leaning toward the technical. This night things leaned toward the heavy and pounding.

Satanized at Silent Barn 1

Satanized at Silent Barn 2

Satanized at Silent Barn 3

Awesome. Sorry about the slow blogging, but things will pick up here. And hey, if anyone thinks there is a Brooklyn show that I really shouldn’t miss, be sure to shoot me an email!

I have a personal, mental joke about Sonic Youth album reviews. They all must follow the following formula: “Sonic Youth used to be innovative, but with this record they have begun to repeat themselves.” I think this accusation has been thrown at them since “Goo,” uh, something like 18 years and 9 albums ago. Then the next record comes out and the reviews say the same thing. Heck, someone’s probably been saying that since “Sister.”

Precisely on cue, I ran across some newspaper review of this album which said (almost word for word) “for the first time in their long career, Sonic Youth offer up nothing new.” Either these reviews are written by people who have heard of Sonic Youth and then are surprised that the music is rather pleasing and the songs are mostly standard rock songs – or – hindsight allows people to see that actually Sonic Youth have always been tinkering with their formula.

So I shall now offer my very different review. Here is what’s new about Sonic Youth’s music. These changes have been brewing for a few albums, but here’s what’s happened. About a decade back, they brought in a 5th member, Jim O’Rourke, to play keyboards. That actually resulted in one of my least favorite albums, “NYC Ghosts and Flowers” which I find kind of rambling and directionless. But after some messing around with this line-up, O’Rourke switched to bass guitar.

This brought in a significant new element. First of all, with Kim Gordon on guitar, the guitar-work could be even a bit denser and more intertwined. More importantly, O’Rourke’s straight-up musicianship added a stronger melodic element to Sonic Youth songs. They now have a new bassist (Mark Ibold, previously of Pavement) but he continues very much in the same style. Note the bass playing in the middle and end of “Anti-Orgasm” on this album, which uses these fast little (I think those are called) scales - comletely unlike anything Kim would play. The bass is also played clean, so these additions are subtle, almost subconscious, especially with those trademark guitars up front.

Another change is that Sonic Youth have officially moved beyond their song-noise-song pattern. Instead of a song that goes along for a while, then turns into a storm of noise, then returns to the song (or you can change up the order), the noise and music is now fully integrated. Guitar noises work in service of the songs.

This formula was mostly in place with “Sonic Nurse,” a couple of albums ago. It got stripped down a bit with the lighter-sounding “Rather Ripped,” and now some more grungey chunkiness has been mixed back in and we get “The Eternal.” Everything you’d want from a classic Sonic Youth album is here in this new, refined form. Some unsettling moods, rock’n'roll moves, teenage poetry, some breezy and genuinely pretty tunes, a couple of great Lee songs, a few good guitar squalls. A solid, satisfying album. Different too. Subtly, but different. Like always.

CD and LP on Matador Records.

www.sonicyouth.com

And I’m not even kidding. The foreshadowed event also marks the first time that someone has emailed me asking that I blog about a show! I have no idea if that was a widely spammed request, but strangely, I think they hit their mark here. In particular, fans of heavy drone/psych/ambient will want to mark their calendars.

You read that small print correctly. This will be an attempt to break the world record for largest msuical saw ensemble. And it takes place inside a church. I think you can be guaranteed that this will sound AWESOME. Unfortunately they’ll be pairing the saws with a bunch of normal musical instruments, but I still bet the world record group would sound mighty cool.

In fact, I think that any readers of this blog would agree that this event blows the competition clean out of the water. That would be the Siren Music Fest at Coney Island, which largely features a line-up of tame indie rock acts (well, I’ve heard that Monotonix rocks) and also takes place this Saturday. Yawn.

Hit up their website for more info. I really, really hope it’s recorded.

http://www.musicalsawfestival.org/

How can you “visit” a blog and podcast in the real world?

Glad you asked. This Saturday, July 11th, I will be at the NY Eye and Ear Fest record fair! I will be selling some real records (and tapes and CDs) in person, of the type that might appeal to No-Core listeners and readers. Plus I will just be hanging out and chatting with anyone who is willing to do so. Maybe even handing out business cards.

This goes down at 92YTribeca in NYC (200 Hudson at the corner of Canal) and the record fair starts at 4PM and is FREE. There are also bands and films which cost money and the whole event goes until midnight. There are also shows Friday and Sunday (you already missed Thursday). Details here:

http://www.nyeyeandear.com

The brand new No-Core website just might be ready in time… and it looks like you already found it!

See you Saturday!