Podcast Episodes 721 & 722 are live!
Mid-November midweek special
Two new episodes are now available.
Episode 721 features Throwing Muses, Eros, claire rousay, Moin, Zachary Paul, Voice Actor and Squu, Leya, Venediktos Tempelboom, Cybotron, Robin Rimbaud and Michael Wells, Man or Astro-Man?, and Aisha Vaughan.
Episode 722 has James Blackshaw, FACS, Laibach, La Securite, Good Sad Happy Bad, Eramus Hall, Nonconnah, The Rollies, Jabu, Freckle, Evan Chapman, diane barbe, Tuxedomoon, and Mark McGuire.
Wine in Paris photo by Mathieu.
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Despite my love for demented junglist Panacea, I didn't start out as a Squaremeter fan. In fact, I downright detested Mathis Mootz's first album with that moniker. Perhaps the worst release in Ant-Zen's peerless catalog, 14id1610s was inexcusably self-indulgent: a poorly executed collection of irreverent accidents reeking of puerile amateurism. 
Another Stephen O'Malley musical project is released on yet another limited edition: this time a one-sided and etched LP. Although Crashed Like Wretched Moth does not grab me like the previous Ginnungagap releases, it does not have the same immediate power. It seems to be slowly growing on me but I doubt I will be able to embrace it as heartily as his other side project releases.
Three-piece bands like this aren't supposed to exist anymore. Typically a keyboardist, an extra guitar player, and someone able to manipulate a laptop or some drum machines would be necessary to do what this band does with one guitar, one bass, and one drum set. Their intensity is propelled in equal portions by brutally distorted guitar work, driving bass lines, pounding drums, and simple, effective song writing. 
The "Green" EP begins with the anthemic "Never Going Down," a song that is part tribal drumming and part "I'm going to rip your legs off your body" guitar assault. The songs on this EP sound slightly more open, less washed out in effects and more immediate. If the "Red" EP is a bit dreamy despite all its immediacy, the majority of the "Green" EP is akin to having a piano dropped on your head when you least expect it. It starts off strong and doesn't even think about relenting until the final song, "Ocean," which is powerful in its own right, though not as heavy as tracks like "My Weakness" or "To Fix the Gash in Your Head." Both of these tunes sound like they were made for a car crash, "My Weakness" has an especially virulent drum line that holds up an accelerated guitar part and a heavy, throbbing bass guitar that holds the song together with its melody and throbbing rhythm. Not to back down for even a second, "To Fix in the Gash in Your Head" is perhaps the bands catchiest tune despite its manic pace and nasty lyrics. "I'll just wait for you to turn around and kick your head in" is delivered in a near deadpan voice, betraying the idea that this might be a sarcastic tune: with the flying, completely sizzling melody that dominates the tune and the machine gun percussion, it's hard to believe that this song is anything but dead serious. The "Green" EP ends with "Ocean," a song whose title completely relates its contents. Filled with washes of noise and a floating, dense melody, it is the perfect end to an EP that feels complete unto itself, as if each of the songs had been written for each other.
On their third and most recent EP the band almost completely shifts gears. The music is far more subdued than either of the previous EPs and the emphasis on pure aural assault is toned down for a bit. In a way the track "Half Awake" dominates 18 and a half minute running time, tumbling along in waves of loose strings and wavering effects. It also stands out as being completely instrumental, many of the effects on the guitars sounding like keyboards and drifting easily through the steady pulse of drums. A "portastudio demo" of "Missing You" is included, fitting in well because it is far more stripped down, the trilled bass and delayed effects calming down the energy that the "Red" EP version has. Closing things out is a cover of The Jesus and Mary Chain's "Just Out of Reach" from the Barbed Wire Kisses compilation. It's a good cover, but more than that, it really sets this band apart from any of their influences, demonstrating in no uncertain terms that A Place to Bury Strangers are working on their own agenda, no matter who's influenced them.
This meeting between New York's Phantom Limb and Tokyo's Tetuzi Akiyama is electric. At just over half an hour it is all too short but the music on this disc is impeccable. The playing is inventive, abstract and full of energy. While far from perfect, I enjoyed it immensely. Phantom Limb and Akiyama do not employ flashy, over-the-top techniques but build on solid grooves and noise to make compelling music.
Project Perfect, long lost duo consisting of Andy Brown (Jessamine/Fontanelle/Southerning) and guitarist Charlie Smyth (Fontanelle) sees their entire oeuvre re-released on Community Library this month. 
Unlike most composers working with electronics, Teague does not use them as his primary instruments or as part of difficult, academic studies. Instead he composes straightforward scores for ordinary orchestras and includes electronics like any regular composer would include other traditional instruments. For most of the pieces, the electronics take the back seat and are used only to embellish the piece like any other instrument. The end result is a nice but fairly uneventful album.
For all their brooding, muffled fatalism and urgent, agile glamour, Josef K's smartest feature may have been their gleeful determination to shun cliché. They always sounded less destined for hit than myth, and despite not being an unqualified success, this compilation reveals that -at best- their juxtaposition of joy and grimness remains cathartic.
