Aufgehoben - Messidor (2006)

Jesus fucking christ, this headache that I've had for well over 24 hours just will not go away. I'm too lazy to leave my apartment to get some pills for it so instead I've just been making it worse, recording a nauseatingly distorted one man hardcore punk jam (a revolutionary EP or album by summer, maybe?) and listening to Homostupids, Anal Babes, Mentally Challenged, Brainbombs, Vile Gash, and a few other things that are just too trebley for almost anyone to tolerate, let alone me today in my feeling like shit state. So why in the good lord's name did I put this album on? This band is made up of a bunch of British guys who enjoy "improvising" together, which means making horrible noises that fall somewhere between free jazz and a jackhammer tearing up your skull. I hear that they spend a lot of time editing their music before releasing it in the Long Player format so you can rest assured that a lot of thought was put into making this album as painfully loud as it is. This isn't the kind of intense lurching noise that envelops every facet of your being by sounding brutal yet still quite listenable (Monno, Mandarin Movie, Kevin Drumm, etc.), but something much closer to relentless metallic scraping. Really makes Supersilent look like a bunch of fey wusses. The guys explore a range of textures, but it's all mixed so damn loud that it's hard to notice. Check it out if you want to fucking die.

Rating: Too elite even for me! Oh, yeah, I'm introducing a new concept to this blog: including the year that the album was released next to the title. Why not, really... it seems like a helpful thing to do.

Download Link: "Co Anima"... whooooaaaa!!!!!!

The Shadow Ring - City Lights

City Lights. The title conjures feelings of excitement, a hot 'n horny night on the town stuffed well beyond the brim with endless possibilities for adventure. So it's forgivable if you went into this recording expecting sweaty dance bangers. What's here instead is... free form outsider post-punk? Oh, rats! Forget about your night on the town. The lads will be in the Shadow Ring are staying in at 3:00 in the morning and they're taking you along with them!

Much like their one time Siltbreeze labelmates the Dead C, the music on City Lights finds the group largely mining the bleak, angular nihilism of classic post-punk groups such as This Heat, The Fall, Wire, and Joy Division. And like the Dead C, the results not only make the listener realize just how truly "post" so much of that music actually was but that there are still more extreme realms for it be dragged into. Ordinary pop/rock concepts such as production, melody, rhythm, and song structure are stripped down to the point where the "songs" are only that in the loosest sense, seeming as if they could possibly continue clanging away forever. If we accept that Disco Inferno represents an accurate manifestation of the idea of "post-rock," then groups like the Shadow Ring and the Dead C are simply the raw DIY inverse, less like an otherworldly technology woven MIDI landscape of the future and more like a sort of post apocalyptic aftermath where music is reduced to banging on a floor tom and disappearing into some awful thrift shop guitar racket, all done in the name of mourning the deaths of those who weren't so lucky to make it out alive and thus rendering all worlds around and within you desolate and barren, so why commit yourself to anything other than this pretentious droney bullshit?

The pieces contained on this, the Shadow Ring's 1993 debut recording, bring to mind phrases such as "primitive," "outsider," "art damaged." The guitar stylings aren't so far off from the "retarded" pluckings of Jandek or the Godz. There is a certain feeling that music like this inspires, one of being sucked into a black hole of darkened apartments, drab sofas, and a sense of being consumed by the blank spaces that dominate the surrounding walls. City Lights paints a vivid portrait of this world. It is certainly "arty," what with its lyrical content consisting of incredibly dry readings of pseudo (?) dadaist (??!) poetry delivered in a joyless British monotone, yet that also injects some humor into the proceedings. The presence of a track like "Lyin' Eyes," which features the "catchiest" moment on the album, a bouncy hook that could serve as the central idea of a Dragnet or Grotesque era Fall track, emphasizes this, as does the fact that it only lasts for a comically brief 56 seconds. The rest of the album is a spirit killing journey through tuneless muck. Sometimes somebody accidentally sits on a keyboard. I bet Sonic Youth talked about this back in the day. It's good!

Rating: Lost classic.

Download Link: "Cape of Seaweed"... a sick jam.

Crass - Yes Sir, I Will Love

You can't spell "Crass" without "ass"! You also can't spell Crass without "cra(p.)" Catch my drift, eh? The first seven minutes are pretty good because it's really noisy and then the drummer sings a delightful piano pop song but then the rest just sounds like a not very good Crass song going on for like 30 minutes! They really "jam the fuck out" here. Hit this recording up if you like music that's not that great.

Rating: Pretty stupid.

Download Link:

R.I.P. Jay Reatard

Tribute this weekend, probably.





1/17/10 EDIT:

Too much homework to take the time to write a bunch of stuff, sorry. Maybe in a few months when the tragedy has sunk deeper into our consciousness. Jay was one of the most talented artists to release music in my lifetime and his body of work will continue to serve as an inspiration to me, as it has for the three years I've spent worshipping at its altar. The Hipinion thread about his death is an embarrassment and Chris Ott is a colossal wiener.

Just listen to the records.

No Trend - Teen Love

The year is 1983 and the band is No Trend and their music is really fucking good! Hardcore punk? Not exactly. The musicmakers in No Trend were a little noisier and funnier than most groups at the time. Much like fellow rock gods Flipper, they recognized the exhilarating absurdity in playing the same big stupid bass riff over and over and decorating it with an unholy guitar racket and goofily shouted lyrics (think "Sex Bomb" rather than the more serious tunes such as "Life" and "Ever.") The singer's voice is about as blatantly obnoxious as that of the guy from Deep Wound, but the music is far from being a speedy festival of hardcore riffin'. The first track on this three song single is not "Teen Love" but a song called "Mass Sterilization Caused by Venereal Disease" and it's a relentless wind tunnel of noise that sounds more like a new Drunkdriver track than any other music that was happening at the time. "Cancer" is a bit cleaner and is either "a delightful no wave romp" or "like a more retarded Wipers" because I only know how to describe these songs by telling you what bands they remind me of. And of course the side long title track "Teen Love" is their shameless Yes tribute. Unlike Close To The Edge, however, it is on side two of a 7" single and is only six minutes and 39 seconds long. The band hammers out a sloppy midtempo groove that isn't all that far off from the PiL and Joy Division hits of the day while the singer sarcastically delivers a crushing tale of high school romance to you, the listener. At some point it speeds up and gets even uglier. You'll love it!

Rating: Not even your hip uncle's punk rock. Teen Love is a filthy, hilarious, rockin' release by one of the most fearless acts of the '80s DC scene. Just read over the band name again and ask yourself how they could have possibly been unoriginal!

Download Link: No Trend - Teen Love [1983]

Richard Davies - Telegraph

I have a sheet of notebook paper on my desk and on it is a list of albums I intend to review for this blog. I've been checking them off at a fairly satisfying rate, I have to say. This album was on it, but I had forgotten about that when I opened the illegally downloaded mp3 files into iTunes, listened to them, realized that the entire thing was just this kinda forgettable straightforward rock based singer/songwriter shit without any of the cool guitar noises that the presence of former Flaming Lips member Ronald Jones led me to believe might turn up at some point, and deleted it. I guess it won't be getting a second listen after all.

Rating: Forgettable.

Download Link: Thought Loop - "October"