NO-CORE

Most of the postings here take the form of “Maybe you’ve never heard of this, but it’s amazing!” but now and then I think it’s helpful to post a little something of the form: “You’ve heard of this, but is it worth buying?” You know, a review! Crazy, right? So I’m going to assume you’ve heard of the Boredoms and know something of their history. Maybe you also know that they transformed into a 3-drummers and noises band called the Vooredoms (where the “oo” is supposed to be written as a sideways infinity symbol) which eventually reverted to the name Boredoms again. So along comes this album, the first release by the Boredoms that’s not a remix thing in who-knows-how-many years, and the first official release of the full-blown Vooredoms style music.

I have actually really been digging the Vooredoms sound, which I’ve heard by downloading recordings of live performances. It’s pretty much always the same basic performance with variations, one big piece with various movements. Band leader Eye plays what sounds like a big euphoric-sounding keyboard chord sped up and slowed down on a reel-to-reel. I don’t know if that’s what it is, but that’s what it usually sounds like. There’s chanting, truckin-along 3-drummer drumming, Yoshimi (the other founding member still with the band) sings, and the whole thing repeatedly builds to climaxes on top of climaxes with chill-out sections here and there to give you a break. It’s really not the kind of thing I would have listened to a decade ago, but I have discovered that it actually makes the PERFECT exercise music! Seriously, the ebb and flow works perfectly for a workout.

So Super Roots 9 is not quite a recording of what I just described! It’s almost the same thing, but most of the noise and synthesizer sounds have been replaced by a choir. At first I thought that the chord sounds had just been replaced by one of those “voice” keyboard settings with lots of reverb, but from studying the pictures in the enclosed booklet, it would appear that an entire real choir performed this. (there are also some sleigh bells at the beginning, since this was a Christmas Eve performance) I’m sure it was much more impressive in person. In fact, the entire premise of this line-up is much more about being cool to see live, which is probably why there has been no official release of this material until now.

Unfortunately, the choir is a bit of a let-down to me. I have a hard time with music that’s too nice, that’s a little too “correct.” The wilder sounds that usually make up this piece are far more interesting to hear, and when some harsher noises get mixed in and Eye let’s loose with a little screaming, that’s when things start getting exciting. That happens a little bit on this recording, but just barely. So the bottom line is this won’t replace my bootleg Vooredoms recordings in the workout mix, most of which is recorded just as well as this and sounds more exciting. It’s probably smart of them to make an official release of this, and I understand why you’d want it documented, but it’s not the best representation of this material.

Nice packaging though, with the full score included so you can sing along at home. On Thrill Jockey.

In my book, this is a noise record which does lots of things right. First of all, I like to hear a mix of organic and digital sounds, especially when the lines get blurred. This starts out with some guitar work that would sound like speed-metal scales if it weren’t so aluminum-treble shrill. This repeats, but quickly gets cut up, chopped and blended into coarse digital noise. Or maybe the digital noise is produced separately and it just sounds like processed guitar, because like I said, the lines quickly blur. There are sounds that might be that squealing harmonics sound that metal guitarists do, but it also might just be noise, or feedback, or who knows.

Another thing I like is that there are no obvious loops running. Sounds come back but they continually vary and get layered up in shifting combinations. I never feel like I’m listening to something on repeat. There are elements of musicality throughout, but there is never a song that appears. There is just one big track on this album, perhaps with different sections or movements, but all tied together by common sounds and textures. This definitely sounds like one coherent piece, while at the same time constantly changing.

CSection is the work of Alex Nagle, also the guitarist in the Philadelphia band Satanized, who is credited in the liner notes with playing “Guitar, CSound.” I found that CSound is a music programming language, but I’m not sure if it has another meaning. If this is actually some kind of combo of pseudo-metal shredding and ultra-nerdy computer programming, then I am seriously impressed. No idea if this could be performed live, but I would really like to see such a thing.

This is on cool Philly noise/etc label Malleable Records, and comes in a very nice gatefold cardboard case with silkscreened art. (by markpriceisafactory.com)

http://www.malleablerecs.com

http://www.myspace.com/thetruecsection

I have no idea if PRE’s bandname was inspired by the philosophy of “Pre-” championed by Tom Smith of To Live and Shave in L.A. His explanation went something like this: “Post-” music styles are always more cerebral, less physical, more “informed” and less “inspired.” See for example post-punk, post-hardcore, and (your best example) post-rock. “Pre-” music styles are all about original, instinctive expression. Any band that usually gets the prefix “proto-” affixed to their description probably qualifies also.

So, does PRE live up to that ridiculously high standard? Well, of course not, but they’re still good and I’d say they even embody some of that “Pre-” attitude. This music IS definitely more about physicalism than intellectualism. You’ve got 2 super-bouncy bass guitars leading things, plenty of punk speed, and yelped lyrics that sound like a looser version of Melt-Banana’s Yasuko. PRE singer Akiko’s lyrics are similarly English filtered through an accent that sounds like Japanese layered with British, which should make them almost totally unintelligible to American listeners. The whole thing sounds a good bit like Melt-Banana in fact, though without the laser-war guitar sounds. It may be a bit less unhinged, but just as tightly wound. Those tight rhythms are what really provides the energy here and plenty of credit for both energy and keeping things interesting should go to drummer Richard Bennett for resisting the easy path and not simply dropping a heavy disco beat on every song.

You get 14 songs, almost all 1 to 2-minute long outbursts. 2 songs are inexplicably twice as long, and next to the others they sound like your record is stuck in a locked-groove. They seem to serve no purpose on the record, but I’m guessing they’re useful in live performance, perhaps giving Akiko time to climb on things or remove clothing. This IS a live band after all, and even if you haven’t seen them you can tell that’s where this material is going to shine. Still, the record has plenty of its own energy and it’s nice to hear a noise rock band that was actually recorded in a studio and you can hear all the instruments distinctly and everything! Crazy… On Skin Graft Records as CD or vinyl.

http://www.skingraftrecords.com/pre.html

No, not THAT Kevin Shields. This is (obviously?) the one-woman noise project named “Kevin Shields.”

I’ve seen some debate over this naming choice bouncing around the internet. Is it brilliant? stupid? funny? deceitful? Apparently down at SXSW there were at least a couple of indie rockers who saw “This Kevin Shields,” thinking they were going to be seeing Kevin Shields, the My Bloody Valentine front-man. Is this a case of poking fun at indie rockers’ know-it-all attitude, or a case of trying to one-up their elitism? After all, to get the joke you have to not only know all about The Kevin Shields, but the more obscure This Kevin Shields too. While I am FOR confusion and anarchy in the music world, I do have to wonder if it’s setting low expectations for yourself to make the assumption from the get-go that your project will always remain obscure even compared to an already-rather-obscure (to 99% of the world) musician.

But that’s more than enough about that. This IS an album after all, so part of what matters ought to be how it sounds. Here we’ve got several slabs of good, solid harsh noise broken up with some quieter interludes to keep it all in perspective. Opening up with some light plunking on a keyboard, no doubt intended to trick you into turning up your stereo, you quickly get dropped into harshness territory. That thick stuff, Incapacitants-style perhaps, the rumbling and shrieking and grinding, borderline-white-noise kind. There’s plenty of changes happening throughout to keep noise fans listening (despite the title, “The Death of Patience”?), even if some of the moves might seem familiar. You’ve got your brief moments of high-pitched feedback tone, your pulsing buzzes, your waterfall-of-broken-glass sound.

It’s all rather nicely paced, with quieter moments of some more keyboard fiddling and what sounds like echoey contact mic fiddling breaking up the harshness. The fidelity is a little more cassette-tape quality than the digital brightness of Merzbow releases, but I think any harsh noise fan would be totally pleased to give this some listens. On CD and co-released by Deathbombarc, Entropic Tarot, and EMR Records.

http://kevinshields.tk

http://deathbombarc.bigcartel.com

http://entropictarot.com/home.html
http://www.emr-records.com/catalog.html

I know, there aren’t a ton of reviews here and already I’m writing about another release from Mincemeat or Tenspeed. I’m trying to be a bit more current though with these writings and I want to say something about this 12” release before absolutely everyone’s talking about it.

Mincemeat or Tenspeed (yes, that’s one band name) is Davey, a one-man table-top-of-pedals dude who makes noise that you could maybe actually dance to. Despite more than a decade of feedback-loop noise dudes, somehow none of them had yet hit upon the magic formula MMOTS uses to make his slamming, high-speed rhythmic noise jams. Or maybe they did and then they thought “Fuck this, this almost sounds like music!” Indeed it does. This doesn’t really fit in at all with the whole “serious noise artist” crowd, but it’s an excellent representation of what’s been brewing in Philadelphia’s low-brow party-noise scene.

I just saw a Mincemeat or Tenspeed show the other night and let me tell you, his skills with manipulating these sounds have become razor-sharp. This is evidenced on this new record too, which has 4 long-ish tracks. Most follow the MMOTS formula of starting with a simple, almost relaxing rhythmic sound. Track 3, “Root Furz” almost sounds like it starts with some kind of electronic banjo fiddling. Then out of nowhere some crushing distortion kicks in and we’re straight into headbanging territory. The rhythm shifts, slips and slides but keeps pulsing away. The last track is a bit more subdued, starting with some grainy electronic noises and building up to what sounds almost like distorted bagpipes playing a sad tune of escalating intensity.

This is a killer release from a real innovator who is finding new methods for making new kinds of music. Nice silkscreened art on the record sleeve too! Co-released by Big Monies Tapes, Malleable Records, and Deathbombarc.

http://www.myspace.com/mincemeatortenspeed

http://malleablerecs.com
http://deathbombarc.com
http://www.myspace.com/bigmoniestapes

I was thrilled to get this latest Unicorn Hard-On tape. This is the solo project of Val Martino, who has also done time in groups like the Laundryroom Squelchers and Gang Wizard and has a collaborative record with Leslie Keffer coming out in the future.

Unicorn Hard-On largely uses these devices called Electribes, which I believe were originally intended for making techno music. Here they are put to much better use, making sounds and music which is technically “electronic” but sounds and feels much more organic. We’ve got 2 long tracks on this tape, one per side. Side A is called “secret snarls” and starts off with a slow-motion, off-kilter beat and some unidentifiable buzzes and hums. Eventually a mid-tempo funk beat sneaks up on us and the ominous buzzing becomes background to some bird-call-like lead synth sounds. This is the part of the show where the audience would start nodding in unison, then maybe tapping their toes, loosening up little by little.

Side B starts out with some serious Dr. Who sounds with a heavy pulse-beat lurking in the background. Based on the slow-build style of side A, the side B track title (“all into it”) and that lurking beat, I though for sure this was going to spontaneously drop into some heavy, rave-style dance jams but it never quite did. Instead the echoey synthesizer sounds just keep heading further and further out into deep space. I’m sure at a loud, live show this would also compel people to start grooving in rhythm but on tape here it seems to play out more as a head-trip than a body-mover. The sounds of video games, laser battles, and alien swamp creatures calling to each other continually morph throughout the track.

This comes in a nicely tactile fabric wrap with some yarn, fur, and an attached title card. Very cool.

http://www.myspace.com/unicornhardon

I’ll bet most reviews of this album will call it “schizophrenic” or use the term “genre-hopping.” Heck, you might even be able to convince those “musician” friends of yours who think Mike Patton and Zappa are genii that this is good stuff. (If they make it past the piercing feedback in the song “Masters of Science Fiction”) But it just wouldn’t be right to compare Lazy Magnet to Mr. Bungle or Naked City or other genre-hopping type musical show-offs. Those bands are largely all about saying “Hey, hey, did you know we can play death metal! Oh, hey, we can play swing too! We can play Zydeco!” Give this album a couple of listens and you’ll realize that songwriting came first for Jeremy Harris, Lazy Magnet mastermind, and then he simply tried to make every part of every song sound as great as it could.

Lazy Magnet is largely Jeremy’s solo project, who lives and makes music in Providence, RI, though here he is joined by no less than 16 guest musicians who add violins, flutes, piano, voices, trumpets, etc. So we do get a wide range of musical influences that show up here, including but not limited to: punk, noise, country, prog metal, ye-ye, folk. But there’s an underlying style that holds it all together. This is closer in spirit and sound to albums by the Melvins or even Ween than the above-mentioned groups.

Time was, an album like this would make a guy reasonably famous. I have no idea if we still live in a time like that but hopefully this at least puts Lazy Magnet on the map within the underground/weirdness scene. The full title of this album is: “He Sought For That Magic By Which All The Glory And Mystic Chivalry Were Made To Shine – or – Is Music Even Good?” I’m convinced that the first title-sentence is literally true of this album, and in so doing Lazy Magnet has proven that music IS actually still good.

By the way, the CD includes a live bonus track with a chorus of “Fighting to survive, when it’s cold outside.” I have visited the land of heating-free Providence factory-dwellers during a very cold time of year, and I can tell you that this statement is also quite literally true. So, you know, buy a copy and help a brother out. Vinyl version comes out in July I hear.

http://www.corleonerecords.com

Lazy Magnet MySpace

The Mugu Guymen are a noise-rock duo who may or may not actually be from Nigeria. (If you’re curious about the origin of the band name, see this Wikipedia article.) Here are the facts I can give you though: They use contact miked drums and drum-triggered sounds run through effects, as well as some mangled guitar and hollered vocals to create some high-energy, chaotic noise-rock.

The drums are usually either pounding out rock beats or building up to that point, and the noises are largely harsh, swirling analog sounds with laser sounds well-represented. As you might guess because of the similar methods used, this probably comes closest in sound to Mindflayer, although the Mugu Guymen sound is much more varied. You might call this psychedelic, although definitely not “nice psychedelic.” The fact that it’s improvised and the techniques in use are quite literally experimental means you get moments that were probably just as much a surprise to the band as to the listener. During one song there is a sudden surge in guitar volume and a totally evil crashing sound washes over everything. I’m guessing it was a fluke but it sounds perfect at the same time.

This tape is full of those kinds of moments. It must be some combination of genius, dumb luck, and smart track editing. There are 4 tracks on side 1, which are all pretty hard-hitting, then one long track on side 2 which gives you some slightly more low-key moments in between the cacophonous moments and also provides more evidence for the “genius” assessment since it’s consistently awesome. Some really funny stereo things happen on side 2 also which might make you wonder if your tape deck is chewing up your tape. If you hear something like that, don’t take a chance, make sure your tape is okay! You’ll want to give this one some repeat listens.

http://myspace.com/muguguymen
http://www.soundsfromthepocket.com/catalog.htm

Here’s the set-up. Craig Comstock is the one-man-band This Is My Condition. He plays guitar and drums and sings, all at once. I’m not talking about playing a bass drum strapped on his back, I mean he plays a full drum kit and plays a guitar, balanced across the snare and floor tom, with his drum sticks, as he plays. And honestly, if you just listened, you would never believe what was happening, which I suppose is why this is a DVD and not a CD.

So that sounds like an interesting gimmick, right? But how does it sound? This will rock your face off. Serious. At the risk of going on and on about all the bands I saw play at the INC in Miami, This Is My Condition stirred up the fiercest mosh action there, complete with dudes stage-diving off his kick drum! (because he was playing on the floor, see?) Unfortunately, this DVD documents some shows with more sedate audiences, but This Is My Condition still gets them moving.

Because the guitar is being played with drum sticks, it mostly sounds like noisy finger-tapping (again, a bit like Lightning Bolt) or noisy slide guitar, rather bluesy even at times. At times the guitar is sampled and looped, but usually this is just so that a second guitar part can be played over the top. And in between all the high-energy stuff, there are just enough quieter tension-building songs (that really work!) to make the rock really hit you. The footage is clear and steady, with some relatively non-distracting effects here and there, and the sound is good. At times the camera microphone is overblown, but it still sounds great. It’s pretty captivating to watch this music being made, but the music is also good enough on its own that I wish it came with a CD of just the audio.

Comes in a nice recycled-LP sleeve, on Sounds From The Pocket.

http://www.thisismycondition.com/
http://www.myspace.com/thisismycondition
http://soundsfromthepocket.com/catalog.htm

Everyone loves Sonic Youth, right? Or at least , everyone loves Sonic Youth at some stage of their evolution. You already own all their records, or at least, you own all their records up to a certain point where you lost track. So do you need this one?

The subtitle of this album is somewhat misleading. “B-sides and rarities” suggests that there is going to be some stuff dug up from across SY’s long career. And aren’t all the b-sides compiled on some other release by now? Well, that’s not really what we have here. This is basically a bunch of jams recorded in more recent years that didn’t have anywhere else to go but were too good to just throw away.

If you enjoyed Sonic Youth’s last few records (“Rather Ripped,” “Sonic Nurse,” “Murray Street”) then you will be really happy to get this record, which is essentially the outtakes. Improvised jams and songs that didn’t quite make it. I’m pretty stoked about this because I think those are some of SY’s best releases since (insert favorite old-school SY album here). If you did lose track of what they were doing X albums back, I’d recommend at least checking in again.

There are a couple of tracks I could live without. “Campfire” is some kind of ambient electronic track from a compilation and sounds to me like it’s just filling space here. There’s also a new, extended “Diamond Sea,” the already rather long track from the end of “Washing Machine.” Since we already got some 15 minutes worth of the very same recording on that album, I would rather have gotten more totally unheard material here.

But I’m pretty happy because the bulk of this is blissful, breezily dissonant and eezily rockin’ Sonic Jams. Good tour driving music, drinking coffee on the porch late Sunday morning music. (Or maybe oil-painting in your over-priced “East Williamsburg” loft to the track “Fauxhemians?”)