A stateside release is the crowning achievement for what has been a hard three years for Melbourne, Australia's Art of Fighting. 'Wires' was originally released last year on the excellent Trifekta label to much crtical acclaim and the Australian equivalent of a Grammy for Best Independent Release.
Three new episodes for your listening enjoyment. After two weeks off, we are back with three brand new episodes: three hours / 36 tunes. Episode 697 features music from Beak>, Brothertiger, Kate Carr, Gnod, Taylor Deupree, FIN, Church Andrews & Matt Davies, Ortrotasce, Bill MacKay, Celer, Kaboom Karavan, and Ida. Episode 698 boasts a lineup of tracks from Susanna, Nonpareils, KMRU, A Place To Bury Strangers, final, Coti K., Dalton Alexander, Akio Suzuki, The Shadow Ring, Filther, Aaron Dilloway, and Ghost Dubs. Episode 699 is bursting at the seams with jams from Crash Course In Science, Chrystabell and David Lynch, Machinedrum, Ekin Fil, Finlay Shakespeare, Actress, Mercury Rev, Dave Brown / Jason Kahn, øjeRum, d'Eon, Jeremy Gignoux, and Shellac. Mountain photo taken in Japan by Chris. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Five years ago, Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards seemed poised to take over the rock world as their band, Failure, was earning accolades for their recorded output as well as for their live presence. Shortly after "Stuck on You" from their 'Fantastic Planet' album became a minor hit on college radio, Edwards and Andrews parted company, and Failure was no more.
Will "creates human Tragedies, causes Chaos, and is the primary source of Creation" profess the liner notes to 'World As Will II,' referencing the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, who believed that everything was intrinsically "will," and inherently negative, naturally causing conflict and suffering.
After about the third listen through, I noticed that this album seemed devoid of something. There comes a particular repertoire with each Piano Magic release, one you are just conditioned to expect based on their past works. But this new album did not seem to feature this repertoire. Gone are the perplexingly intricate sound collages which feature indecipherable instruments, sounding like they could be either computer-created noises or just esoteric analog instruments rummaged from the dusty bin of a thrift store.
Steve Wilkes leads this ecletic group of percussionists who released their first record in 1997. Wilkes, former drummer for the Blue Man Group, wanted to create a sound that was based entirely in modern drumsets with different stylings. The members would create sound collages that would, in a way, force the drums to take on the different roles other instruments normally play in a band: one would be the voice, one the rhythm, one the interesting flourish, etc. It's certainly an interesting concept, that's for sure.
Let's be honest—three white, nerdy, Hoboken NJ-based alt-rock indie superstars will probably never earn the amount of cred for this song that Sun Ra has earned in his years of groundbreaking musical endeavors. But Yo La Tengo aren't stupid, and I'm sure they realize this.
Like their Fort Thunder brethren, Forcefield's music is usually best supplemented by their performance art, which features the band (members Patootie Lobe, Meerk Puffy, Gorgon Radeo, and Le Geef) in full-knit suits which look suspiciously like afghans lifted from grandma's couch twenty-three years ago. 'Roggaboggas' is supposedly a companion piece to the Forcefield art collective's appearance at the 2002 Whitney Biennial (they were one of the few fresh sights at the Biennial), which was itself a symptom of the art world's tardy adoption of the deceased Fort Thunder.
The second release from this German label is available just in time to combat numerous other obnoxious holiday releases. Attention record store clerks: demand this gets played instead of those goddamned 'Very Special Christmas' or Mariah Carey albums.
