Tense Forms
The air is thick, muggy, and full of nervous chatter. The congregationfinds their seats with the help of ushers dressed in black suits,polite in their assistance and insistence that the growing crowd findtheir seats. The tent is makeshift at best, made from old bed sheetsand a few cracks in the seams are visible to those who look above. Noone is sure what to expect. They've heard the tales of this newminister and his new gospel, but they are apprehensive, perhaps even alittle frightened at the prospect. Then, suddenly, the lights dim, andthe stage explodes with horns, guitar, bass, and heavy percussion. Asthe lights restore the minister sings, no, howlsthe sermon with a boogie that is just shy of satanic, and thecongregation can't help but rise to their feet and join in with theminimal choir that accompanies him. Casey Meehan is that minister, andhis songs aren't the old or new testament, but they are lessons for theweak nonetheless. He sings of being baptised, of being born again, andwith titles like "Who Will Be Saved?" and "Do Right" his mission isclear. He may not be of a formal religion, but he is here to shepherdthe meek through the valley, and he will do so with a bit of Dixie, abit of Storyville, New Orleans, and a lot of moxy and sensual vocalprowess reminiscent of Mark Sandman and Greg Dulli. These songs are thelessons of a man who has been through it all, who sees the masks we allput on and who wants to shatter them, hurling a reality with the forceof a fastball; and like any good evangelist he has sinned as much asthose he tries to save. His band, the Delta Still, are a tight, fierceensemble, and the songs are punishing in places and delicate in others:whatever it takes to get the message out right. The instrumentals aremassive, and through it all Meehan carries the weight with ease, sexingthe microphone for all its worth. For his first record, Meehan isshooting out of the gate, heading down the track at full speed. Catchhim if you can.
The air is thick, muggy, and full of nervous chatter. The congregationfinds their seats with the help of ushers dressed in black suits,polite in their assistance and insistence that the growing crowd findtheir seats. The tent is makeshift at best, made from old bed sheetsand a few cracks in the seams are visible to those who look above. Noone is sure what to expect. They've heard the tales of this newminister and his new gospel, but they are apprehensive, perhaps even alittle frightened at the prospect. Then, suddenly, the lights dim, andthe stage explodes with horns, guitar, bass, and heavy percussion. Asthe lights restore the minister sings, no, howlsthe sermon with a boogie that is just shy of satanic, and thecongregation can't help but rise to their feet and join in with theminimal choir that accompanies him. Casey Meehan is that minister, andhis songs aren't the old or new testament, but they are lessons for theweak nonetheless. He sings of being baptised, of being born again, andwith titles like "Who Will Be Saved?" and "Do Right" his mission isclear. He may not be of a formal religion, but he is here to shepherdthe meek through the valley, and he will do so with a bit of Dixie, abit of Storyville, New Orleans, and a lot of moxy and sensual vocalprowess reminiscent of Mark Sandman and Greg Dulli. These songs are thelessons of a man who has been through it all, who sees the masks we allput on and who wants to shatter them, hurling a reality with the forceof a fastball; and like any good evangelist he has sinned as much asthose he tries to save. His band, the Delta Still, are a tight, fierceensemble, and the songs are punishing in places and delicate in others:whatever it takes to get the message out right. The instrumentals aremassive, and through it all Meehan carries the weight with ease, sexingthe microphone for all its worth. For his first record, Meehan isshooting out of the gate, heading down the track at full speed. Catchhim if you can.samples:
23five came into the public eye as the label vehicle for soundartist-types, peddling the kind of stuff I'd see in the MoMA gift shopand pass by thinking it just wouldn't be the same outside an austeregallery space. Now only 6 releases into stride, the label has proved mewrong several times over. One needs only to hear Furudate &Zbigniew's World As Will II to see why. The opening minutes ofCoelacanth's sophomore release, however, left me with second, or ratherthird, thoughts. The Glass Sponge begins with a sparse scraping,thumping, and clanging that seems on the brink the ever-arty black holeof inaccessibility. After a few minutes, droning bell tones andtempered feedback ease their way in, making the piece more substantialbefore, as quickly as it began, the music fades into silence. Thoseopening bits were merely a prelude to the real meat of track, a sort ofsecond act comprised of layered static and an enriched texture oflulling feedback and prolonged bell tones. Stuttering vocal utteringsrise from drone and static layers that sound truly oceanic. Song titleslike "The Leaden Sea" and "The Violet Shell and Its Raft" lend a marinetheme to The Glass Sponge that feels apt in relation to the music. (Thename Coelacanth, also, refers to a prehistoric fish recently discoveredto still exist). All four tracks exhibit an approach to drone musicthat is both texturally rich and emotionally resonant. Tracks rangefrom gentle, inviting trips across static that gurgles and glimmerslike actual liquid to eerie passages where hollow drones and squealingfeedback rise from the depths. The Glass Sponge is host to a multitudeof bizarre, untraceable sounds as well. Various throbbings, tinkerings,and knockings find comfortable home in Coelacanth's sound world, givenoverture in the album's first moments, making it increasingly hard tobelieve that any of this was gathered from public performance as thenotes describe. This is beautiful, thoroughly engaging, and uniquemusic, no doubt more appropriate headphone music for pretending yourbed is a liferaft than for strolling the museum floor. 
Jim Haynes is a San Francisco-based musician who has made a name for himself through work in the duo Coelacanth and in his travels as a solo sound-artist. The rich SF scene has no doubt provided Haynes with many opportunities to expand his listener-ship, and recently he has ventured eastward with an installation called Magnetic North appearing in Nashville and San Jose. This disc, the first release from The Helen Scarsdale Agency and limited to 300 copies, contains the audio portion of the installation, culled from performances of the last two years. The most striking quality of the music herein can inadequately be described as its organic nature.
Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs of Admittance, has been crafting his brand of acoustic rock for the past five years, winning some over with his psychedelic ruminations and earthy tones. For his latest release, the pop song structure is on full display, as Chasny keeps it short and sweet for the most part, and lays on the space rock undertone with a very thin brush. As always, Chasny plays pretty much everything himself, with Ethan Miller adding the most influential contributions. There seems to be a more Indian influence on these songs than there ever was before, from the opening track to the sitar on "Somewhere Between," though Chasny's guitar work is everywhere and as impressive as always. Six Organs' infamous lack of production values are also on every track, with the whole album possessing a muted, dirty, and quirky quality, where tempos speed up and slow down here and there, and sounds swell in and out. Chasny's multi-tracked vocals have a spooky effect, like a ghost choir with little to live for, and as each track progresses, he takes greater chances and reaches to new highs and lows with his voice. Altogether this means it's more of the same from Chasny for the most part, with nothing really shocking or new to speak of. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as the songs are among the best he's written, including the "reworked and finalized" version of "Somewhere Between;" but it still leaves me with that overwhelming feeling of "What if he...?" Someday, maybe Six Organs will branch out into new territory. Until then, there's still a lot to appreciate, as acoustic psychedelia doesn't get much better than this. 
The late morning autumn sky is grey, at least as much of it that can beseen past the tops of the tall buildings. People walk by in slowmotion. A bird hangs in what looks like suspended animation, waiting topounce on the next piece of bread somebody drops or a knish that fallsfrom a moving cart. The collaborative record between Connors and Grubbsisn't a pretty walk in the fields, it's the sound of a dark, urbancityscape. It's also a bit of a juxtaposition. While there's certainlyno rules either collaborator always follow, I'm typically used todissonance from David Grubbs' solo work and soft flowing motions fromLoren (MazzaCane) Connors. The instrumental live in the studiorecording of Arborvitaeopens with soft, flowing piano chord progressions provided by David andharsh guitar tones from Loren. (Additionally, the titles suggest aspringtime theme, but I get a completely different feeling.) As thedaylight comes to an early end, so reflects the mood of the album. Bitby bit, the brightness fades. Half-way through the disc, on "The Ghostof Exquisite," both are playing guitars and feeding off each other'sbleak tonality. By the end of the album, the cold night has fallen."The Highest Point in Brooklyn" features the return of Grubbs on piano,this time, with a much more uneasy, uncomfortable rush, played upagainst the distorted abrasive notes of Connors' guitar, restless anddirty. In fact, at some points, Connors sounds like he doesn't evencare if the instrument cords even come loose from his guitar. The roomsounds, probably picked up by the piano microphone, are those of twopeople getting a little antsy in their chairs. Intentional or not, it'sa subtle hint at a tension, yet by the end of the piece (and thealbum), the calmness has returned. The night has grown as quiet as it'sgoing to get in a city that doesn't sleep.
Mieses Gegonge are something of a mystery, but they appear to be asister group to HNAS, having shared the credit for the first HNAS albumAbwassermusik. The material on this CD is culled from two liveperformances in 1985. The sound is very strange indeed: a twistedcombination of arrhythmic percussion together with horribly phased anddistorted vocals. The treated voices and drums are immediatelyreminiscent of the "psych-out" sections of classic Can constructionslike "Halleluwah" and "Aumgn." However, Mieses Gegonge is all psych-outwith no breaks for coherence. Bizarre chants and ululations quaver andripple across layers of randomly beaten skins and gongs, reverbed andwarped into oblivion. If anyone attending these performances wasn't onat least three hits of fine Dusseldorf acid, I feel sorry for them. Therecording is shitty and wracked with distortion, which adds interestingbursts of high-frequency noise that contribute to the lunacy. Imagine apost-lobotomy 23 Skidoo trying to cover The Master Musicians of Jajoukawith nothing but a saw and a zither and William Bennett playing oneroom over, and you might begin to approximate the experience of Live.It's a uniquely fucked sound that will appeal to jaded listenerslooking for a surreal thrill.
Duka Bass Band appears to be a trio consisting of Lasse Laudrup, Martin B. Klaeren and Sven Nykvist. On Fraulein Casanova,they are joined on a few tracks by Christoph Heeman and Achim P. LiKhan of HNAS, and Heeman also produced the album. The Duka Bass Band'ssound is a fuzzy, primitive clamor of clueless post-jazz improvisationsthat meander aimlessly and appear to fly in several differentdirections at once. It has a certain amateurish quality and a creepysubterranean feel that appeals to me, although I couldn't say exactlywhy. In the exclusively German liner notes, Heeman muses "Fraulein Casanovais for me a jerking step forward into the natural alreadyness ofmusic." Perhaps this dodgy AltaVista translation should not be trusted,but it's as good an explanation as any for the oddly surreal freeplaying on display here. The opening track is the seven-minute"Zauberformeln," which means 'magical formulas.' It's an aptdescription for the mysterious forces that transform the sound ofdeficiently played clarinet, organs and drums into a strange alchemicalgold that is more than the sum of its components. There are momentsthroughout Fraulein Casanova that touch on elements of firemusic improvs, belabored Shaggs-style guitar, and in the case of thelast track (whose title loosely translates to "For God, 1000 Years IsLike a Day"), a ramshackle psych-folk jam not dissimilar from therecent work of Sunburned Hand of the Man. This is my personal favoriteof the six bootlegs, and I look forward to further recordings by thismysterious post-industrial jazz trio materializing at some future point.
It's anyone's guess who the hell Speck Nusseck or The Legendary FatBoys are, or where they come from, or what masochistic weirdoencouraged them to record Dancemusic Fur Dicke Backer.The answers to these questions are not readily apparent, and they maynever become clear. The only thing we have to go on are the seven songscomprising Dancemusic, for which the word "annoying" seemswoefully inadequate. Plodding drum machine rhythms and randomly pluckedbass compete with vocals shouted into a megaphone backed by lamekeyboard effects which underscore the mess. I'm tempted to call thisoutsider music, but that would suggest that it is charmingly sincereand/or amateurish music that has worthwhile elements. Unfortunately,Speck Nusseck are neither charming nor sincere, and they are not worthanyone's time. They appear to be influenced by the edgy post-punk ofSection 25, the noisy effrontery of Throbbing Gristle and even themotorik beats of Neu!, but they are terribly unequal to the job ofpaying homage to their heroes. The best thing that can be said aboutthis album is that it is mercifully short, and would likely make anexcellent way to get rid of the last few people still hanging out inyour living room after the party is over.
HNAS are invariably compared to Nurse With Wound, and more often thannot to the detriment of Heeman and company. It seems that they areforever doomed, relegated to an obscure footnote in the NWW story bywriters and critics, who seem unable to realize that HNAS use their ownunique strategies to portray their particular brand of audiosurrealism. HNAS does not revel in the exaggerated psychedelicgrotesqueries of Steven Stapleton's work — their tactics are sloppier,less calculated, and in many cases even stranger. The seminal krautrockband Faust is a much more analogous comparison. Heeman and Khan's pathwas paved by Faust's willfully messy LPs that cycled through disparatehalf-formed musical ideas and random piss-takes. Ich Kannte Einen Gummibaumis a good demonstration of their distinct sound. The first trackcreates a creeping quasi-rhythmic industrial atmosphere, recalling theearly work of Laibach, but Heeman's deliberately muddy production andmuffled sounds of voices, distant guitar solos and graveyard organs adda nebulous mystery belonging to HNAS alone. The second track, "Kill DenAchim" is culled from a live performance, and finds the band in agloriously anarchic phase. A woman screams violent provocations backedby oblivious, repetitive electric guitar licks and sheets of live noiseand distortion. On "Ich bin ja besser," a disco record is obscured bylayers of cacophonous whalesong. Track five loosely translates to "AWinter Without Skin Problems," in which a disintegrating chamberorchestra fights against encroaching electronic squalls. The last trackis an extended 25-minute construction combining silly-cum-sinistervocal mutations alongside nonsense percussion. The lunacy segues into alengthy section of concrete tape edits, combining impressionistic pianopieces with field recordings and samples drawn from German televisionand radio.
Another in a trilogy of rare HNAS cassette titles issued by G. Gonge, The Uncollectedis an odds-and-sods anthology, collecting tracks from out-of-printcompilations and rare cassettes, as well as some previously unreleasedmaterial. As such it is an uneven and incoherent listen, but with aband as unorthodox as HNAS, that's hardly a problem. Most of the tracksare in the jagged cut-and-splice style recognizable from mid-80's HNASalbums. It feels a bit like an audio version of the absurdist photo andtext collages found in early punk zines. More than once these piecesdigress into the stoned chatter and laughter of a group of youngGermans, who I can only assume to be Christoph, Achim, and friends.Recording and including this unseemly screwing-about on their albumstakes the music out of the realm of the dryly conceptual oravant-garde, and into the "anything goes" realm of DIY homeexperimentalism. That said, there is also much that is musicallyimpressive among these songs, as in the noir queasiness of "DemPetermann zu Ehren," a dark piano dirge. "Was wir von Cassetten halten4" is a phased electronic piece with looped sing-song vocals recallsearly Current 93. "Wie ein Bock am Michekstag" is similar to the workPeople Like Us, juxtaposing dialogue samples from a "Learn to SpeakSwedish" tape with a kitschy exotica loop. The final song is a rare andlovely track by Duka Bass Band: more demented post-jazz with sinisterundertones.
The first track of Die Drehorgel Als Feuerspritzewas recorded live in 1984, the title roughly translating to "TheParadoxes and Secret Sciences of the World." It's one of the bestpieces I've heard HNAS' prolific oevre, a murky sound sculpturecomprising long-form synth drones and gothic organ swells. The sticky,shapeless drones and burbling moogs converge into caverns filled withfloating stone obelisks that chisel strange patterns into thelistener's consciousness. The piece develops using an interior logic, adreamlike coherence that slowly asserts itself over the course of halfan hour. "Barenklammer" was recorded for an as-yet-unreleased HNASvideo, and contains some of the same source material as the firsttrack, quite reminiscent of the synthesizer arpeggiations andavant-rock noise that characterized Tangerine Dream's Electronic Meditationalbum. The third track pushes my PANIC buttons: a manipulative noisepiece that plays like Bernard Herrmann's string tribute to Whitehouse.The layered voices and random bass slaps of the last track evokes Crasscovering a Hildegaard von Bingen chant while tripping on mushrooms.This is a concentrated effort by HNAS, and its single-minded absurditymakes it the most consistent of the three HNAS CD-Rs reissued by G.Gonge. As more of these rare recordings come to light, perhaps HNAS canfinally crawl out of the long shadow cast by Nurse With Wound andreveal themselves to be every bit as unique, talented and vital.
On previous albums, Do Make Say Think played their own blend ofpsych-rock with jazz influence in an effort to explore the stars andplanets, drifting off into their own orbit. Occasionally, as on theirlast album, they got so close to the stars that they brought back somedust here and there, or they gathered sunlight and a planet'satmosphere through which to project their instrumental structures,resulting in a fluid and pleasant listen. For their fourth album,however, they've created a work of true beauty, as though they'velanded on a new planet they can finally call their own. Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymnis best listened to as a whole, or on vinyl where it is split intothree thematic parts. Overall the album is a step more towardscohesion, with every song blending into the next and creating animmersive feel. Structurally, the parts of the record are separated bytheir slight differences, with the first area covering blending guitarwork, the second infusing more horns for flavor, and the last sectionbleeding into sliced structures with effects and dischordant cacaphony.Ultimately, it all gives way to the hymnal "Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!,"with full organ computer glitch wonder and western guitar with afterschool chorale. It's as though the experience and different sides ofthe band—sometimes warring for control before or finding their way outonly here and there#151;are now one, omniscient and comfortable,allowing for a full, varied, and complex sound that covers a lot ofground and never sounds disjointed. Every song tells a story, turnspage after page, building to a truly bright and vibrant climax thatwhen finally reached makes the whole journey seem all the moreworthwhile. Do Make Say Think are growing into themselves with everyrelease, and their latest shows a comfort and complacence that can onlyserve them well in the future.
DFA's newest release is a split 12" single. The Juan Maclean's track isa seamlessly realized disco-house anthem that sounds every bit as goodas one of the circa-1980 Larry Levan and Arthur Russell classic Paradise Garagebangers. "Give Me Every Little Thing" is perfect music for a crowdedBrooklyn nighspot on a hot summer night, with its sophisticateddowntown grooves and an r&b-inflected chorus. The Rapture's side isan energetic slab of raw punk-funk with the typically strained vocaldelivery, this time ring-modulated and covered up with a denseproduction that includes atmospheric keyboard swells and a tickingtime-bomb beat. "1, 2, 3, 4, Kick that fucker out the door!" screamsJenner, as the song kicks into electro-house gear. This track is takenfrom The Rapture's forthcoming full-length LP Echoes, and theirsound is gradually becoming more unique and tough to pin down; aconfoundingly addictive combination of post-punk, goth, disco and funkelements.
It's not as easy as it seems to be noisy. There's more to it than justyelling and banging on an instrument. It takes some real premeditationand skill to be able to pull together a rush of ear-piercing sound intosomething that is abrasive while still inspiring curiosity in thelistener to delve into the depth of the sound. The Sick Lipstick findthemselves on the right side of the line between trash and treasure,dropping an album that is assaulting in its style and modus operandibut is more likely to make the listener flail about with recklessabandon than hide under the bed. Lead vocalist Lindsay Gillard poutsand struts throughout, hurling deliciously shrill invectives ofnonsensical, stream-of-conscious lyrics into the band's swirl of noiseand atonality. She sounds like the spoiled girl who didn't get her wayfor once and unleashes a level of anger and psychological torture wellbeyond her years. She's got a knack for turning a phrase and catchingthe attention with lyrics like "I want / to have / your baby! / So youhave / to come / inside me!" from "Pretend I'm Sleeping," delivered inher elementary schoolgirl tone. Even when the song's subject matterisn't explicitly nasty or violent, Dillard's phrasing and tone are verypointed, and at time disturbing like the macabre, playground taunts ofa budding sociopath who just won't stop knocking the other kids aroundduring an otherwise pleasant game of kickball. Musically, The SickLipstick slug it out with razorblade guitar licks that jerk and squealrecklessly. These licks often skid out of control into waves of whitenoise that undulate wildly, creating a harsh auditory burnout. Backedwith a chunky, fuzzy keyboard they create a remarkably consistent soundfor a band whose aesthetic is so rooted in chaotic intensity. Thepercussion maintains a pleasant bi-polarity, at once both relentlesslynoisy and eagerly danceable. "Mommy's at the Grocery Store" benefitsfrom a modulating riff that repeats rhythmically with the backbeat andmakes it a positively brutal earworm, and the cascading, declarativechorus of "Zombie Cookie" seems destined to be some kind of alternatereality cheerleading cheer. "Thigh Master, I'm Yr Master" is thesurrealist-feminist rant that Kathleen Hanna wishes she wrote, jumpingfrom image to image in a jittery pounce. While their sound isinteresting and decidedly catchy, they rarely emerge from theboundaries established in the first few songs. Their tightness andcontrol keeps them from losing shape. Gillard never outright screams ina wordless fury, and the accompaniment never explodes into thefree-rock explosion that the building tension on Sting, Sting, Stingseems to foreshadow. That might be a difficult goal for the band toreach however, since every song on the album already kicks off at fullpower and never lets up. While the fervor this conveys is exhilaratingand exciting, a foray into more noticeable dynamics and counterpointsmight make those peaks even higher. In spite of these unfulfilleddesires, what The Sick Lipstick does present us with is a screechingbanshee punk rock record with provocative personality and loads of darkfun.
Black Dice is an entirely different proposition from the legions ofretro-disco and post-punk derivatives, and it is tempting to wonderjust what they're doing on a label like DFA. The easy answer is thatthey are excellent, and Murphy and Goldsworthy are able to recognizebrilliance, even when it comes in a package as noisy and uncommercialas Black Dice's Beaches and Canyons."Cone Toaster" is decidedly more rhythmic than much of the material onthat LP, but it still can't qualify as dance music, unless we'retalking about free-PCP night at the Mindfuck Discoteque. Black Dice'sheavy, psychedelic abrasiveness is informed by the krautrock of Can,the tribal Japanoise of The Boredoms and the punk-metal bombast of BigBlack. "Cone Toaster" is a mind-scraping gallery of atonal scrapings,polyrhythms, echo-chambered chanting and gloriously unhinged accidentsof improvisation. The b-side is a remix of the album track "EndlessHappiness" by Yamatsuka Eye (from The Boredoms) which remakes the songinto a hyperspeed hallucinogenic tribal-house track that wouldn't soundout of place of Eye's terrifically odd DJ Pica Pica Pica Planetary Love Gasmix CD. Eye takes the strange tactic of adding a more-or-less danceablebeat, sonically perverting the guitar and basslines into a cacophony ofshimmering protoplasm while adding the usual galaxy of chimes, whistlesand birdcalls that define his singularly whimsical and chaoticpunk-psych. This 12" is one of the most consistently enjoyable plattersof avant-garde lunacy released this year.
