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!

]]> http://www.no-core.net/blog/2009/09/gay-beast-satanized-hot-guts-live-at-silent-barn/feed/ 0 http://www.no-core.net/blog/2009/06/gay-beast-second-wave/ http://www.no-core.net/blog/2009/06/gay-beast-second-wave/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:13:00 +0000 M*P* Lockwood http://www.no-core.net/blog/?p=39

So, you’ve been waiting for the no-wave/math/prog/noise-rock album of the year? Well, here you go! Heck, this might be the winner in that category for the decade. Double heck, one of the only other serious contenders for that title would probably be Gay Beast’s last album, “Disrobics.”

This is a glorious collision of angular guitar parts, analog synth sweeps and bleeps, sax blurts, and drumming in that complex endless-fill style. And some real singing. (I like me some screeching or hollering too, but it’s nice to hear a different approach here.) Oh yeah, and TUNES.

I told a friend who attended a recent Gay Beast show with me that what I loved about them was how they could make challenging and amazingly complex music and also fill it with catchy hooks. After the show, this person, who is far more inclined than I am to listen to “pop” music, said that “maybe it’s catchy for music that YOU listen to.” Well, point taken. It can be a matter of perspective. Maybe Gay Beast is what Deerhoof sounds like to your average indie rock fan. (if I had pull-quotes, that would be it)

Still, I maintain that the hooks are there. Even to me, they seemed a little hard to “get” on first listen, but now after my 20th listen or so I find myself singing as I walk down the street, “Don’t sweep me a-a-aah – don’t sweep me under the rug – I am only human!” I have even woken up with Gay Beast songs running through my head.

And there may be the best selling point for “second wave” – it will bring great rewards upon many, many repeated listens. By the time you have the songs figured out, you will find that you’ve fallen in love with them. This ranks high as the album most worth your hard-earned dollars. All the more amazing that band singer/keyboardist/saxophonist Danimal gave this to me in trade, after he tried to pay for MY disc which I handed him. Could there be a more stand-up dude? (At the aforementioned show. Photos posted soon. I cannot guarantee this trading trick will work more than once.)

FREE MP3 SAMPLE: “eeexxxpppaaannndddiiinnnggg”

Bonus trivia: see if you can catch the DEVO tune semi-hidden on the album.

LP and CD on Skin Graft Records

http://www.last.fm/music/Gay+Beast
http://www.myspace.com/gaybeast
http://skingraftrecords.com/news_desk.html

Here’s a video of them killing it at the Cake-Shop back in Oh-6.

Let me back up and do the back-story as succinctly as possible. Guitarist Jeff Schneider used to be in Arab on Radar, a no-wave styled band known for their high energy. The others also come from various Providence avant-rock bands. At first Made in Mexico was a pretty thumping, skronky affair. Then I saw them a few years back and without radically changing the basic elements of their sound, they had found their groove. Literally. They made a packed room of people at one of those CMJ showcase shows dance.

The influence that is heavily quoted and mentioned all over this album is reggaeton music, which is something like a recent cross-breed of hip-hop, dancehall, and salsa. You can read more at Wikipedia. The characteristic reggaeton beat is that “BOOM ch-BOOM chick” that starts off the track “For Your Own Good” on this album. Of course reggaeton is usually made with drum machines and doesn’t usually feature shrill, metallic guitar playing. It also usually features rapping, not alternating kitten-soft and banshee-shrieked vocals.

So what we have here is a genuine mutant hybrid, not no-wave anymore, too weird to be punk rock, and definitely not legitimate reggaeton. But definitely in the tradition of punk bands that looked outside of their immediate neighborhood for inspiration and came up with something refreshing, like Public Image Limited or Gang of Four or even the Clash. Maybe even the Pixies, who similarly merged piercing guitars, a Spanish influence, and soft/scream vocals – but with rather different results.

I just love the thematic unity of this whole album, with the packaging reflecting the music and lyrics, all of which also take inspiration from Latin American radical revolutionary politics. I also really like the little musical interludes which feature riffs from songs elsewhere on the album, and “Mundo 1″ even uses that siren sound that they always use on NYC’s reggaeton radio station when they change from one song to the next. One of my favorite parts of the album is the last track, “March on La Migra.” It starts our somewhat innocuous, but takes a left turn halfway through and becomes downright chilling by the end with singer Rebecca Mitchell screaming “Surely they want – human touch!” At least, I think that’s what she’s saying. Definitely ending on a high note.

Available on CD and LP from Skin Graft Records.

http://www.last.fm/music/Made+In+Mexico

http://www.myspace.com/zodiaczoo
http://skingraftrecords.com/shop.html

Alright, so I’m not quite on top of my new releases, but I have finally caught up with the new one from AIDS Wolf, who are proudly carrying the no-wave/bad-vibes-noise-rock torch right now. AIDS Wolf use loud, dissonant, non-chord guitar parts, flailing drums and the caterwauling of singer Chloe Lum to assault the listener. (All of these are good things in my book)

The first thing I notice is that they’re not going to shake the Arab on Radar comparisons with this record, especially starting the first song off with that fluttery guitar sound that opens some Arab on Radar songs also … but from there things take a turn for the more difficult. In fact, the first track, “M.T.I.,” is probably the most “out” on the record, just barely holding together and sounding like maybe, just maybe, it was an inspired improvisation.

I went back and listened to AIDS Wolf’s earlier “Lovvers LP” for comparison, and this one is much denser (both in terms of production values and playing) and more complex. “Lovvers” is similarly dissonant, but the song structures are rather straight forward. On “Cities of Glass” a clear effort has gone into deconstructing the music-making blueprints, not just the guitar sound and tuning. For example, on “Ch-ch-chatter” the guitars and drums sound ALMOST like they’re going to lock into a groove, but all the players are counting different numbers of beats and it never completely synchronizes. Most of the songs work this way, at least partly. (I’m guessing AIDS Wolf want this album to be their “Sang Phat Editor”)

For me, this makes for a much deeper and more fascinating listen. There may be some direct cues taken from the aforementioned Arab on Radar and U.S.Maple (it would be appropriate to name-drop Harry Pussy here too), but seriously, since all of those bands are defunct, how many current bands are trying to advance new music composition techniques? I don’t mean trying to advance new combinations of effects pedals, but trying to reconstruct “rock” music from the DNA up. (If you want to take that as a reference to the band, DNA, that works too!) I’m not going to go quite so far as to put “Cities of Glass” on a level with U.S.Maple’s “Sang Phat Editor” but right now AIDS Wolf largely have the field to themselves.*

One complaint, I wish Chloe’s vocals were clean, without that distortion on them through every song. I think they’d be far more expressive.

CD & LP on Skin Graft. Killer live show too, touring the States in March!

AIDS Wolf page at Skin Graft Records
AIDS Wolf on last.fm
AIDS Wolf blog

* Correct me if I’m wrong! I always appreciate musical recommendations!

Scissor Shock is really prolific and this full-length release follows right behind an equally full-length release which seems like it came out less than 6 months ago. From what I gather, Scissor Shock started out doing something more like the usual kid-with-a-laptop style of grindcore/8-bit. I’m glad that the project has evolved into this more challenging and interesting style.

The arrhythmic beats are accompanied by some equally off-balance guitar manglings, trombone, miscellaneous, and some Wicked Witch of the West vocals. There are also a couple of tracks to break things up with only some acoustic guitar noodling, which actually sounds quite skilled and even pretty. These tracks are called “Ghost Fahey” and “Fahey Ghost” and while I’m not really familiar with John Fahey’s music, I’m guessing these tracks are some kind of homage. (maybe also an homage to the band Ghost?) I really respect that actually. If you’re going to try to play like a favorite artist, just call it like it is, don’t try to pass it off as your own invention. In the same vein, this album also includes a track titled “Blood Infinitive” and yeah, there’s definitely a link between this and Royal Trux’s “Twin Infinitives” too. Strangely, while being far more honest about who he’s stealing from, Scissor Shock has also created music that is far more unique than most other bands.

P.S. Adam is also very generous about giving his music away online. Poke around a little bit and you can find plenty of Scissor Shock for free download, but you’ll want to buy an album too!

“Synonym for the Word Decay” is to be released September 26th on Laser Seizure Records.

http://www.geocities.com/scissor_shock/

http://www.myspace.com/scissorshock

So I went to the recent Teenage Jesus & the Jerks reunion show at the Knitting Factory. I know, I was fully expecting that I might be paying $25 for 10 minutes (or less?) of disappointment. But heck, I went to the Contortions reunion show and it turned out to be pretty damn good. Turns out this show was pretty damn good too. I’d even say really good.

This show was celebrating the release of some No-Wave Book. I thought I already knew about this book, which came out a few months back, but it turns out this is ANOTHER No-Wave book. I have no idea why 2 different books came out at the same time, or how exactly they differ, but maybe once I get some extra money and buy them both I can do a compare and contrast book review for everyone. I’m going to assume that any readers of this are familiar with the original No-Wave bands, and if you’re not, well there are now TWO books on the subject which you could refer to.

The opening band was a group of original No-Wavers called Information who, I’ll be honest, wasn’t familiar to me. Apparently Information was a short-lived group which played alongside all the No New York bands. Members were in several other bands and Informationeers Chris Nelson and Philip Dray formed The Scene is Now, a band which has been in existence ever since. (This article tells some of the story) They sounded fantastic, absolutely nailing that rough/complex, untrained/brilliant dichotomy that sounds exactly like what you’d hope to hear at a No-Wave reunion show. Drums that thump right along with guitars doing things that shouldn’t go together but sound amazing together anyway, and hey, that exact electric organ (?) sound from the Contortions record.

There were lots of older folks in the audience, fans and friends from the original days it seemed. Then some music nerds and most heartening of all, some younger kids, including some cool dudes rocking flannel and the classic Mudhoney Big Muff T-shirt. The kids are alright! Very few hipster 20-somethings, but you know, I was at the early show (8:00) and maybe the scene was different at the 11:00 show.

Teenage Jesus and The Jerks go on at 9:30 sharp. As it turns out, this performance was pretty much everything you could have wanted. Lydia Lunch was a fireball of spite, the guitar sound was just as shrill and dissonant as it should be, and I’m pretty sure they played every single song. (Except for the early ones with James Chance. I suppose you could have wanted a guest appearance by him too, but no such luck.) The drummer, Jim Sclavunos (who originally played bass with the band), and Thurston Moore who was filling in on bass (of course?) tried very hard to stand perfectly still with permanent scowls on their faces throughout the set.

I say “tried” because while all the No-Wave hate was in place, it was clear that tonight it was all in good fun. The “hecklers” in the audience were in on it and laughed and cheered at Ms. Lunch’s comebacks. Sample: “Fuck you!” LL: “You’d like to fuck me but you STILL couldn’t afford it.” TJ&J were known for their brief sets and military-like discipline. When the band were a slight bit off on the beginning of a song it was immediately halted and Lydia shouted “Again!” When the song was cut short a third time and she simply shot a deathly glare at Thurston, he and Mr. Sclavunos couldn’t quite suppress their grins. When Thurston’s guitar strap broke later on, Lydia said “This is what happens when we let a member of Sonic Youth join the band. Fumble!” But then even she cracked under the good vibes and had to say, although in a sarcastic tone “No… I love Sonic Youth.”

Despite a closing comment of “Less is more, get over it,” I have actually seen many much shorter sets in recent days. I guess the standards have changed since ’78 thanks to groups like Cock ESP and the whole International Noise Conference scene, and of course Teenage Jesus in the first place. No complaints though, TJ&J still wrapped up in 30 minutes max, way before anyone could get bored.

photos by Georgia Kral