Time will forget music. Much of it. Oldies radio stations are a perfectexample. On most of those channels, you'll find James Brown reduced toonly one hit, "I Got You (I Feel Good)." You'll never hear "FunkyPresident," "Mother Popcorn," or "It's a Mans Mans Mans World." Thesame can be said for a number of artists who might have never reachednumber one. Right now it can be observed with music from the 1980s, aswe're reminded constantly of "Come on Eileen" but never Dexy's MidnightRunner's second single. While Boyd Rice understands that he can'tchange the world, he sure as hell knows how to put up a fight. Twelveof his favorite forgotten girl group songs have been presented here,none of which you have probably ever heard of. While the sound qualityis obviously shoddily reproduced from the old 45s, it sure isrefreshing to hear some really fun girl group songs that haven't beenplayed to death. It's almost like getting one of the Nuggetscollections or the amazing 5xCD set called "Box of Trash", anduncovering a world stifled by corporate decisions to trim playlists andlimit history. If anything Boyd Rice can be commended for, it's hisastonishing ability to make people question their surroundings and getthem thinking. "Music for Pussycats" frighteningly gives me moreconfidence that over time, much of the music we love and write abouthere on Brainwashed will be erased from civilization.
samples:
- Diane Ray - Please Don't Talk to the Lifeguard
- Bernadette Caroll - Party Girl
- Priscilla Parts - My Window
- Lori Burton - Love Was
The No-Neck Blues Band are a semi-improvisational collective ofmusicians making fragmented, shamanistic music that alternately toucheson elements of blues, folk, country, bluegrass, psychedelia andkrautrock. For all these myriad influences, the No-Necks have arrivedat a sound that is not very far from Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra or thefirst two Amon Duul albums. That is to say, very unstructured andchaotic hippie drum circle music that will probably sound best to thosehopelessly in the throes of a violent hallucinatory state. There aresome moments of genuine psych-folk intensity, like the dark mumbledvocals and cello drones that occur about 10 minutes into the firsttrack "assignment subud." However, most of these songs sort of meanderin a non-engaging way through enticing song fragments that melt awayjust as they become interesting. I think you might be able to achievesome of the same effect by recording the Dave Matthews Band as theywarm up. Well, not really, but it felt good to write that. In allhonesty, the reason I can't get very excited about this release isbecause there is so much music in this same vein that is so muchbetter. The Boredoms "Vision Creation Newsun" or Acid Mothers Templetraditional folk album "La Novia" are both far superior examples ofthis genre. This first pressing of this CD comes with beautifulhome-made packaging made of plexiglass, Velcro and burnished plywood.It is unfortunate that the music contained within really doesn't fullylive up to its aesthetic aspirations. 
Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist and band whore Sam Shalabi has re-arranged the concept of collaboration for this one. Instead of the player in the ensemble, his role this time is of a maniacal mastermind at the controls. For this recording, he has solicited recordings from a number of friends on various instruments, cut up their bits and pasted them back into his own compositions.
For the last ten years, Station 17 has been a musical therapy projectbased in Germany for a small group of financially-challenged mentallyhandicapped folks. The original concept was to pair up six members witha few professional musicians and see what happens. Since its inception,the group has released four albums and have played numerous shows,incorporating a variety of theatrics alongside the musicalperformances. According to the website, the group has progressed fromimprovisationally-based music and performances to a more constructed,loop-based sound. This year saw the first worldwide distributed releaseby Mute, a 17-track collection featuring some of Station 17'spreviously released songs with treatments by Kreidler, To Rococo Rot,FM Einheit, Pole and The Modernist. In all honesty, the concept is muchmore interesting than the output, which I find carries too manycharacteristics of the groups involved with the creation. Perhaps it'sthe necessary key to gain them more attention, but I think I've heardenough To Rococo Rot albums this year. Adding chopped up vocal samplesto clicky post-disco beats isn't a very progressive concept. If theoriginal albums are ever exported, I'll be enthusiastic to listen, butthis release honestly isn't doing a lot for me.
When reading the press release for "those who tell the truth..." byexplosions in the sky earlier this year, I came across a description ofthem that works for many bands I've heard over the years: "Why can't Iwrite melodies like that?" The difference between explosions in the skyand broken social scene is simply volume and aggressive stance. BrendanCanning and Kevin Drew are the primary players in the scene, and theirsound is that of laying down a nice droning sampled base track, andthen throwing recorded odds and ends at it to see what fits. I don'tmean just random sounds; we are talking about music that is created byplaying instruments, here. A subtle bassline, gentle guitar chords,piano, and even horns join the mix at different times. But brokensocial scene are the best kind of musical alchemists: they don't pushthe music to go to a certain direction, and they don't force theirplaying to the point that it sounds like it. They just let the musicbe, and percolate on its own. And it gets there everytime. Even vocals,when they do appear, are heavily treated and sampled so that they, too,sound like another instrument in the mix. It's all very "primitive,"yes, as the liner notes indicate, but it comes off sounding planned andpolished. And those melodies that you'd kill to have written yourselfare always there. There are two simple phrases that work so well todescribe this release, and they're right in the liner notes: "sometimesit's o.k." and "love it all." Sometimes, too, it's very good, and withthis release, you won't have to try real hard to love it. A nicelycrafted first release.
One of the most consistently innovative and influential of Britain'searly 80's experimental/industrial scene, 23 Skidoo always seem to meto have one foot planted firmly in the ancient feudal Orient. The songson the long-overdue reissue of the band's 1984 masterpiece UrbanGamelan are obsessed with the cold, calculated perfection of theindustrial-funk fusion they pioneered. This record is part of acomprehensive re-release of all of the band's early work by RoninRecords. 23 Skidoo's interest in improvised Indonesian percussion,found instruments, afro-beat and funk has always placed them in theirown cage, quite apart from contemporaries Throbbing Gristle and CabaretVoltaire, to whom they are often compared. The first side builds agiant tower of funk exploration, the highlight being Fire, in which awandering bass melody, pounding beat, random echo and zealouslyscreamed vocals meld to form an uneasy dub track which is a lot morecreepy than it is rocksteady. This uneasy vibe on all of the tracks isenhanced by the remastering job, which exposes background whispers andelectrical drones, lending an air of British esotericism to theecstatic Zen proceedings. The second side opens with the tense,pressure-cooker trippiness of Urban Gamelan Pt. 1, an exploratory workfor traditional Indo-Pacific chimes and drums. The album's apex is themasterful Language Dub, which utilizes traditional percussion,wall-of-sound reverb and samples from martial arts films to build adrama that is literally overwhelming. This track fades away into acrystal pool, and we are left with a hauntingly rhythmic swansong. Thisalbum is a breathtaking work of head-cracked-open inspiration and manicjoy. 
Maschinenschlosser (Machine Fitters) is the latest project of ChristianStefaner, aka Neat and a member of multimedia design team c2s2, and"Orange Noise" is his 4th audio release, first for Austria's Dbelltimelabel. Twenty tracks, eight of which are exactly 3 minutes and 2seconds apiece for whatever reason, add up to about 74 minutes ofunassuming electronica. The flow and variation of the disc is verypeculiar. An 11 minute opener of softly pitter pattered beats and mild,looped tones is followed by numerous, more experimental pieces based ondifferent, somewhat simple sound waves. I guess this is how Stefanerdefines 'orange' noise, with digital hums, buzzes, drones and such lefton repeat. "Vas 1" and "Reset (Plane)" offer the most turbulent, barelylistenable selection of sounds, sort of like a laptop devised ThrobbingGristle. Out of the blue, er, orange, comes "Funky Shark" at track 13with pseudo funky beats, followed by the incredibly grating and funkless bursts of "Funky Ericsson". Yes, I get the joke, but guess what,cell phones make really shitty (non)music. Then finally, mercifully,something truly interesting as "Rec6+jw2" and "Stompa" nicely blendtones and beats. "La Internacional" is an odd but welcome closer astender music box bells gradually wind down. What a strange album. Butall in all, there's very little of anything memorable and far too muchtedium and annoyance along the way.
Yoshihiro Hanno has played jazz and drum'n'bass and composedsoundtracks for Chinese films but here he plays his experimentalglitchery hand. He originally released this material as two EP's on hisCirque label. "April" comprised his own compositions, and "Remixes"compiled other artists' mutations of those tracks. Sub Rosa havecombined the original "April" with three of the remixes, presumably themost sympathetic. Combining the two releases might seem an odd idea,but it works really well.The opening 'On/Off' rips some robotic syllables from what sounds likea hacked speak'n'spell toy then sends fractured piano notes ripplingprettily from speaker to speaker. 'Lab Suite' glitches a choir to soundlike an updated homage to early Steve Reich or Philip Glass repetitionmusic. Hanno stitches together brief looping fragments to form a brightmosaic of sound that will probably either entrance or irritate. Whilstthe first couple of tracks seem very serious, 'Compass' deploys similartactics to comedic effect. By this point things begin to get a bitformulaic so it's fortunate that Oval steps in with a magnificentlyfull bodied remix that has an overlapping density lacking in Hanno'srelatively linear originals. 'Trapezoid' is more like the Oval mix thanthe first three Hanno tracks, so was presumably the primary track onwhich Markus Popp based his remix, but whilst Hanno seems to stitchglitch horizontally, Oval piles on vertical strata. 'Trapezoid'squelches and whines more than Hanno's other tracks and latterly tailsoff into a soundcard swamp. Hidenobu Ito, whose eclectic 'Bedroom in aCage' CD was quite good fun, remixes 'Lab Suite' adding some acousticguitar and vibraphones and jingling bells to the finely stutteringvoices. Then he begins 'Aaahing' over the top and a second guitar picksa melody out as shakers shuffle. Like Oval, his slowly unfolding extralayers and melodic colouration highlight the minimal aspect of Hanno'ssoundworld. The reason to get this is Chistophe Charles' excellent epic'Verena/On Canvas' remix which opens up a mysterious electroacousticportal through which drones support vague memory noise; distant voiceslaughing, a train passing, a bicycle bell ringing, that perkyspeak'n'spell... eventually all is stripped of association and reducedto the processed munching and hissing of the computer. Then all thesounds rush back in, faster and desperate. Latterly eerie droneambience underpins shards of Hanno's sounds fading in an out, bothprocessed and untouched, until 14 minutes in when the glitch chorussings for its third meal. The final track, 'A Short Break' is actuallyHanno's longest original, and is quite different to the others. Anacoustic guitar picks out slow notes in the foreground, and more guitarmelody and string drone settles in beautifully. It sounds like it wasquite likely stitched together in a computer, and the guitars playaround each other in a way quite unlike any other I've heard, perhapsbecause he's using long loops that are going out of synch with eachother. Halfway through piano fills and rapid glitch drop in. Thisdefinitely seems the most interesting of Hanno's tracks and is a lovelyway to drift to the end of the album.
Blimp are a four piece from Poland that practically hide guitar, bassand drums within analogue synths, loops, samples, effects and rhythmprogramming. The 40 minutes of music here is instrumental (save for amuddled recitation of a James Joyce poem in one track) with welltempered, basic bass/beats and very thick layers of back and foregroundtexture and micro mechanical sounds. It's more of a mellow electronicgroove thing than a post rock groove thing, though it's really bothwith a bit of spacey dub and krautrock mixed in, often reminding me ofMouse on Mars and the solo work of Thomas Fehlmann of The Orb. "17"offers up the most prominent bass guitar based groove, almost to thepoint of Jah Wobble prominence. Everything is perfectly pleasant andcomes to an end far too quickly. My only other minor complaint - a fewunintentional clicks pop up here and there, which may be a problem withthe disc itself and not the music or mix.
