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Since childhood Perhacs has composed music using elements from her visualization of sound (color frequencies, musical shapes, etc,...). This cult album from 1970 combines ethereal folk with flourishes of electronics and spacey jazz. Eight bonus tracks, fascinating notes, and sketches make this a worthwhile reissue.
A glance at the cover of Parallelograms will bring the words "hippy" and "LSD" to mind. But take a closer look and you'll see that the beauty wandering the meadow in a mini-dress is wearing sensible shoes. The truth is that in the late 1960s everyone didn't drop-out and some people didn't need drugs to expand their mind. Take Linda Perhacs. She was a career-oriented dental hygienist in Beverly Hills when she met film composer Leonard Rosenman, and his wife, Kay, who recognized and encouraged her creativity. As Perhacs says, "even as a tiny child, I have seen musical tones and colors as twins (and they are twins vibrationally in physics). Along with this I would see complex chronological patterns that moved up and changed rapidly like Irish dancers." Is "vibrationally" a word? It is now.
At the time of meeting the Rosenman's, Perhacs was married to a like-minded sculptor and designer who shared her love of the getting out into the invigorating wildness of nature. Perhacs had homemade tapes of her "little campfire songs" and one listen to the song "Parallelograms" was enough for Leonard Rosenman to offer to produce an album for her. His liking for atonal sounds tempered her delicate musings. Perhacs wrote some new songs and recording was done at night while she kept her day job. "Dolphin" was inspired by diving in California. "Hey, Who Really Cares" (co-written with Oliver Nelson) would become the theme tune for the TV series Matt Lincoln. Meanwhile, in a not-uncommon tale, her record company failed to promote the album but, even worse, changed the running order and pressed the disc so badly that she threw her copy away. No one offered another deal so Perhacs concentrated on other things, like dental hygiene and going out to the country, presumably.
There's another picture of Linda Perhacs inside the booklet. Taken in 1995 she is glowing with health: her hair is dark, her teeth are dazzling white (no surprise there). Relaxed and happy in her white sweater and skirt she looks like I imagine Wonder Woman might look at the end of an idyllic vacation in Ireland! A clue to how she has survived in such fine fettle perhaps lies in the way that she has taken pain and disgust and turned them into something positive and uplifting. For example, her song "Paper Mountain Man" addresses a former lover who was too liberal with his love and "Porcelain Baked-Over Cast-Iron Wedding" is her response to her repulsion at the grandeur and sheer cost of Beverly Hills weddings. In Perhacs' hands, both sound like lovely songs with a slightly sharp edge. Clearly this is a woman who knows about balance and nature. Her honest quotes about music making and her non-trendy life have a sincerity and openness that are as refreshing and dignified as her music. Good vibrations; worth picking up.
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Much to the chagrin of bloated record labels and those authoritarian grumps at the RIAA, young people today have near instantaneous and essentially free access to virtually any song thanks to the proliferation of torrents and other file sharing schemes. That brazen attitude inevitably had to expand to music composition, though, as this album proves, that might not be entirely for the best.
Unlicensed “warez” of music production software have existed for well over a decade, initially traded by impoverished young musicians eager to express themselves. Yet in the same way that the concept of Napster exploded into the multi-channel bootleg phenomenon bringing the music business to its knees, so too has the appropriation of that ethos come to those who wish to make music. And while I lack any proof of Zeller’s complicity in the aforementioned illegal behavior, his place in this generation of thieves is cemented by this unbearably jejune and hackneyed debut.
Much like Bomb 20's unparalleled proto-breakcore classic Field Manual, released a decade prior, the suitably named Audio Vandalism egregiously swipes long passages from films and television programs to bolster his album. Yet unlike the Digital Hardcore zealot, Zeller's wholesale appropriation lacks the former's vibrant anarchist spirit that transformed disparate speech samples into fresh linguistic conversions and distillations not unlike William Burroughs' cut-up method. In its stead lie a novice producer’s desperate attempts to fill in yawning gaps of his unexceptional, indistinct tracks. Buried under the weight of an excessive break overstuffed with generic movie dialogue, "Thor Theory" serves as the most glaring example of this half-assedness. While one could generously credit Zeller with upholding the sampling traditions of 80s and 90s industrialists, the material here suffers from such a dearth of originality that I cannot, in good conscience, even offer that consolation prize to such colorless, unsubstantial sonics.
Regrettably, the mad borrowing doesn't end there. Zeller's derivative sound loots the marketplace of musical ideas, pilfering from distorted dubsteppers like Milanese and Vex'd (“Hell Train”) and mugging IDM elders whose names need not be mentioned to drive home my point. It's difficult to draw a line between influence and exploitation, but like former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote about pornography, I know it when I see it. In this case, I hear it in “Cavern Sunshine” and “Macbooking,” poorly executed facsimiles of distorto-glitch gods Gridlock and Synapscape respectively. Even the tribal rhythms of This Morn Omina get ripped off on closer "Doom The Drummer." I find it especially distasteful that, after all this time, power noise painted itself into such a corner that Hymen would release something this obnoxious and plagiaristic. Someone ought to inform Zeller that talent cannot be downloaded, legally or illegally. I suppose I just did.
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When this EP first came out it made little sense to me. The six songs were recorded during the same session as Copper Blue but the sound was completely different. The sound was rather grim, there were no happy singalongs, the vocals were buried (if present at all), and I didn't quite understand if it was attempting to be religious statement or not. Nineteen years later, a cleaned up master and back story makes a world of distance as it almost completely makes sense now.
The music industry moves much faster in the United Kingdom than it does here in the United States and the monsterous success of Copper Blue in the UK resulted in Creation's pressure for a second Sugar release to keep the momentum going in the very fickle press and UK market. Even though in 1993 I had plenty of music from Creation acts (Slowdive, MBV, Primal Scam, etc,...) Rykodisc was Sugar's US home and Creation never seemed to be a factor. Listening now, years later, it comes as no surprise to read liner notes from Creation employees claiming this to be their favorite release. It was the closest Mould has ever come to making a shoegaze record!
The simple acoustic strumming, distorted-but-lyrical guitar hook, and ghostly faint vocals of the opening "Come Around" could easily be a dead ringer for a Ride tune while "Tilted," the EP's single, is a furious rush of energy, a mass of guitars wrapped in a speedy tune owing much to Mould's punk roots.
The middle pair of songs, "Judas Cradle" and "JC Auto" make up what is allegedly the religious component of the record—Beaster was released on Easter in 1993 and its title is obviously a pun on the name of the holiday—but I personally don't see any deep meanings in the words of "Judas Cradle." Lyrically, "JC Auto," on the other hand, seems to have two themes going on: one being Mould's self-reflection and the chorus being a struggle with the pressure of being popular as he was. Reading about the constant demands on the group as a recording, touring, and press entity provides a bit of justification for this song as Mould would lash out with this song live, dragging "I'm Not Your Jesus Christ" into the song repeatedly, stretching "JC Auto" to be about twice as long.
In this light, Beaster was a release: a yin to the yang. David Barbe, the bassist, is quoted in the accompanying booklet that the inside joke was that Copper Blue was the band Sugar, while Beaster was the band named "Spice."
Rounding out the album is the deliciously bloated poppy ditty "Feeling Better," and the serene "Walking Away." Despite the tacky synth horn sounds, the former kicks some serious ass with the heavy riffage, chunky bass, and monstrous drums (with cowbell in all the right spots). The latter is an absolutely gorgeous and dreamy drum/guitar/bass-free cathedral organ based love song with very few lyrics and a lot of emotion.
The sound of the remaster is nothing short of stunning. I no longer regard Besaster as a muddy mess, as I can now hear the individual instruments and layers much, much clearer. Accompanying the CD on this Edsel version is a DVD featuring the music video for "Tilted," and four songs recorded live at the XFM Great Expectations show at Finsbury Park in 1993.The Beaster remastered audio will be included on the Copper Blue remaster package due from Merge later this month but as I said in the Copper Blue review, it is quite its own beast and I don't feel any regret jumping for the import version.
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This long unavailable album marks an important step in the development of Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt's music in that it is the first themed album of many in their career, which is one of the defining features that makes Matmos so interesting. Anyone can try and be clever with quirky samples but with The West, Matmos rose above using novelty sounds just for the sake of them. At this point they became an intellectually challenging but still musically compelling entity.
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This long unavailable album marks an important step in the development of Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt's music in that it is the first themed album of many in their career, which is one of the defining features that makes Matmos so interesting. Anyone can try and be clever with quirky samples but with The West, Matmos rose above using novelty sounds just for the sake of them. At this point they became an intellectually challenging but still musically compelling entity.
The idea of the American West is as strong an inspiration and mythology as you can get (especially so in these last few years when the western movie has made such a revival). Many artists have taken on the aesthetic of the campfire song or the Morricone-esque desert soundscape; The Residents did a masterful rendition of old cowboy songs during their Cube-E period; and more recently Earth have reinvented themselves as some kind of doomy country band. Matmos, no strangers to themed releases, undertook a similar task around ten years ago. However, it is not immediately obvious from just listening to the music that they are doing an album influences by country music.
The opening piece, “Last Delicious Cigarette,” wanders around in what sounds like a normal mode of working for Daniel and Schmidt but far from anyone else’s idea of what the West should sound like; A jerky dance beat of squeaky electronic sounds and a pulsing bass synth rhythm. Then it hits; five minutes in and a dizzy violin sound takes over from the electronic blips and whirrs. Immediately a tension is present that is utterly familiar: There is a good guy and a bad guy, the one with the fastest draw wins. Matmos turns the table yet again and rather than end with a bang, the track fizzles out instead. From here on in, The West lives up to its title.
The music shifts from campfire acoustic strumming to banging electronic jams. On the title track, a fantastic electronic beat suddenly drops into a quiet, slow slide guitar passage. It should be a jarring shift but it works brilliantly. Rhythms and moods traditionally associated with men in big hats riding horses are co-opted by Daniel and Schmidt and turned into that quirky dance-come –concrète style that they alone seem capable of pulling off. From reading the sleeve notes, even the most musical parts of The West seem not to have been planned. Much of the instrumentation was recorded as repayment for bunking at Chateau Matmos for use by the pair at a later date. The playing of their house guests was supplemented by David Pajo, who mailed plenty of fantastic guitar playing to the duo. His guitar frequently sounds like it was taken straight from some classic cowboy movie and provides a solid stylistic base for the album.
The West is a bona fida classic and it is criminal that it has been unavailable for so long. Now that the situation has been redressed, I can only hope that the earlier singles/EPs will be collected and thus get most of the early Matmos recordings back in print (and it would be nice to hear the shelved People Like Us collaboration that was due to come out before the PLU/Matmos live album). In the meantime, I am going to be playing the hell out of this album and making up for lost time.
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Artist: Hirsute Pursuit
Title: Tighten That Muscle Ring
Catalogue No: CSR158CD
Barcode: 8 2356650672 0
Format: CD in 6-panel digifile
Genre: Gay / Industrial / Experimental
Shipping: Now
Music that smells like a man!
“I play Hirsute Pursuit at all of my DJ gigs” (Peter Christopherson)
"Tighten That Muscle Ring" features collaborators such as Bryin Dall of Thee Majesty, Boyd Rice of NON and Sleazy of Coil / Throbbing Gristle.
The music is real. The sex is real.
Created by Harley Phoenix and his musical partner, Bryin Dall, this is Gay Sex Music that offers no apologies. Enticing rhythms combined with raw sex and a commanding, deep, resonate voice, Harley has transformed explicit instructions for serving his pleasure into a musical orgy that hits the gay community where it plays, the dance floor and the bedroom. Sleazy dance beats pound along at tempos that encourage carnal exploration, while sounds of ecstasy cannot be ignored. You will be thinking Cock Thoughts (a song from the first album, That Hole Belongs to Me).
After starting with a MySpace page Hirsute Pursuit has become THE MOST PLAYED GAY MUSIC ON MYSPACE. Typical letters from fans tell Harley that after listening to his music, they HAD to go “get off”. While fans have been pleading for photos, Harley refuses to give in. Understanding the restraints of reality, Harley remains in the shadows, making Hirsute Pursuit the ultimate in musical fantasy.
Without any publicity or releases, Hirsute Pursuit has had over 140,000 plays in less than a year! Drawing fans from all musical genres, including House, Country, Rock, Hip Hop, etc. Primarily attracting a gay audience, recent fans also include female dominatrixes, middle-class housewives and straight guys (as is evidenced in the video, Boys Keep Swinging featuring Boyd Rice and James Pope, both straight). The raw sensuality has now crossed over into the heterosexual domain.
This is music you can fuck to, as well as bump and grind.
Harley Phoenix is currently preparing Hirsute Pursuit's live show experience which will include actual musicians, dancers and video to give the audience members a complete sensory explosion.
Comes in a 6-panel digisleeve.
Tracks: 1. Boys Keep Swinging | 2. You're Here To Pleasure Me | 3. One Sleazy Night In Bangkok | 4. Daddy Bear | 5. My Pleasure | 6. Big Time | 7. Fuck | 8. My Pretty Pink Hole
| 9. Slow Ride In Kentucky | 10. One Sleazy Night In New Orleans | 11. My Pleasure House
| 12. Fuck - Pounding Mix | 13. My Pleasure House - Pleasuregate Mix
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Intransitive Recordings
CDs like this make me smile because they have dual uses: 1) listeningenjoyment and 2) annoying the hell out of a captive audience. I imaginepopping this one on full blast for a car full of guests while zippingalong the freeway at 80 mph. No escape. Nerve Net Noise is a Japanesesynth duo that set their homemade synths to autopilot and record theunexpected results. This album's focus is on rhythmic percussionpercussive clicks and chirps, almost like a pared-down Pan Sonic sansthe Finnish Stoicism. Japanese culture is fascinated with all thingscute, and I imagine the wheezy squeaks on "#3" being a cheery cartoonbird laughing at your erratic heartbeat. "#5" sounds like someonerapidfire plugging/unplugging one of those chirping Christmasornaments. "Long Mail to Boston" is an overloaded car horn blast. Whilethis is a trying record for those with short attention spans, it's justthe trick for those of you who incessantly drum on anything and pick uprhythms from refrigerator buzzes and passing trains. NNN go a littlefar to claim that this is a "new kind of pop music," but some of itindeed is catchy. Not the kind of thing you could hum though—the heavyclicks are of the brain function interruption variety.
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Tigerbeat6
Numbers might not be an electronic laptop band, but like nearlyeverything else on the TB6 label, it is fun, addictive, silly, andsickingly dancable. This trio of youngsters from the Bay Area consistof a Moog player, guitarist and a front-stage drummer who controls theworld. (All of which who sing.) While I'll be the first to admit Ididn't really get this band entirely on record, after seeing them liveI have been completely won over. Subsequently, the album sounds muchbetter now. Clocking in at just over 19 minutes, this ten-song recordhas got to be one of the most genuine releases of the year. The bandaddresses adult issues through the mind of a child, as the subjectmatter ranges from materialistic greed ("We Like Having Things") totechnology ("Intercom") and strained intrapersonal relations ("Too Coolto Say Hi"). The disjunct playing and off-tunings of the guitarseparate the group from the typical post-punk punks, almost as if threecomputer nerds were handed rock instruments and trained long and hardto play louder, faster, and more original than the bullies down thestreet. Training and practice payed off as the good kids did win thistime. Let's see how they do in the sequel.
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This compilation of artists on SharkAttack! features some extremely talented bands playing some incredibly strong material. Charlene, whose members started SharkAttack!, contribute four tracks, HelloAttack give two, and Compass and Lockgroove three each.SharkAttack!Music
The music of Charlene has already been praised on the Brain recently, and the four tracks here run their gamut of sound. There's the drone of "Look for the Line," the pop of "Low Down" and "Radio Son," and the quiet beauty of the hidden "Slow Broadcast Dozer." All are fantastic. HelloAttack craft space rock instrumentals with solid bass grooves, chiming guitars, and keyboard drone. Their two tracks bode well for their full-length, due next year. "D" is an loud attack with a bounce rhythm, where "A" is slow to start but eventually makes it to a loud yet metered and aggressive tone at the end. Lockgroove includes David S. Goodman, who is also Compass. Both projects have released singles on SharkAttack!, and both demand strong notice in their offerings on this CD. Goodman plays with beeps and programmed beat pop with aplomb, and his three songs have a charming grace. Lockgroove burn out of the gate with "Nullify," then click it down a few notches for "All Caught Up" and "All My Friends," showing the ability to bruise as well as to soothe. Their debut EP and full-length, from 1998 and 2000, respectively, are also available directly through their website, with more to come on SharkAttack!, I'm sure. SharkAttack! is truly a home for great artists with common themes and has a lot to show on this compilation.
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Textile
All functional humans have the capacity to make noise, whether it'swith what genetics gave them or the tools they make. However, very fewhave the capabilities of making noisy things sound amazing to the humanear. Some bands never achieve this. Thankfully, at least Jackie-OMotherfucker does a good job of achieving it about half the time oneach their albums. In all of my recordings of this Portland,Oregon-based collective, they have remained consistent between thenumber of songs that sound completely derivative and uninspiring tosongs that really sound like an impressively orchestrated group ofmusicians whose sounds amount to more than just chin-scratching mayhem.For the latest disc, the band opens with a track that doesn't move faroff the Molasses-like northern white guy hillbilly blues singing tipand follows it up with a track that kept me re-referring to the packageto make sure it wasn't an elaborate cover of Jandek's "Carnival Queen"with tape mutilations. It's at this point, however, that the ensembleis basically getting in gear. They pause for a 17-second instruction onplaying on "the seven" and by halftime through the immense (andperpetually changing) fourth track, "777 (Tombstone Massive)," I'mhappily lost in a daze. It opens with relentless drum and percussionpoundings then halts, restarting with a crackle, wind instruments,chimes and a low string drone. A quick rise reintroduces the forcefulpercussion from the first few moments but thankfully that dies down forthe mesmerising interplay between strings, winds, and chimes. Just wheneverything boils up to a clumsy, disorganized borderline masturbatoryjam with nobody paying attention to each other, (the end of "Feast ofthe Mau Ma") quietness befalls the record and all is good again. Thealbum ends with two more 10-minute pieces: a blissful quietinstrumental and a 'manual' loop of guitar and drums with distortedvocals which leaves me with an unsettling feeling despite theviolinists struggles to play something pleasant. One of these days thisband is either going to make a record that will be my favorite of theyear or send a pipe bomb to my P.O. box. I don't know which to fearmore.
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Load
Pleasurehorse populates the songs on "Bareskinrug" with pummelingpolyrhythms which erupt arbitrarily all over the place. The sound isdense, heavy, and percussive. The pounding throughout "Bareskinrug" iscreated primarily by the bass beat, which provides the bed from whichthe other minor beats spring, sometimes blossoming, sometimeswithering. Amidst the percussion, you can pick out the synthesizedcomputer noises which fizzle, fizz and fiddle. Whereas I was astoundedby the violence of the sound, I also felt like I was being attacked bythe songs, which is just to say that at no point was "Bareskinrug"removed to the background of my mind. The music draws an adamant linein the mind's foreground, refusing to cross over into some lost ambientland. "Laitbait" felt like being cudgeled with a tomahawk repeatedlyand then the subsequent dizzied and blood-speckled daze whichaccompanies such a bludgeoning. The full range of this experience wascaptured within just the three minutes of this song. Most of the othersongs can be likened to some other violent or intense sensation. Theonly time at which the album threatened to be boring was "Re: Vip,"which maintains the same dull beat for three minutes, with nothinghovering around it to give it much life. When it finally promises tochange the beat, the song merely morphs into a duller beat perpetuatinguntil the end. The range of sound on the album as a whole is not thatwide, but the recombination of sounds is innovative. "Bareskinrug" isinteresting to listen to at first, but has a hard time sustainingmultiple exposures, unless, of course, you find a song on it whichchanges your life for a few weeks. Otherwise, the aural assaults becomeall too similar, like the daily beatings from a schoolyard bully. Isthe day you got your nose bloodied much different than the day you gotyour arm pinned behind your back? Nonetheless, Pleasurehorse does a lotwith a little, and heavy-handedly suggests he might have some promisingwork yet to perfect.
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