[GUEST REVIEW] Camis - Cats Kils [No Label]

This is the first of its kind, a guest review on Auxiliary Out, written by Arvo Zylo. Enjoy!

Cammisa Forrest seems to have an affinity for spray paint. When I saw the band that she was in, Miami Beach, who apparently reunited for a performance at Chicago's Neon Marshmallow Fest in August 2010, she was running around gleefully behind some kind of barricade made of plastic wrap in front of the stage, coating the translucent sheen with a fog of different colored spray paint. The flimsy cellophane wall fell down, and she flailed around with it like some kind of glue sniffing fairy lady, while Matt Kimmel babbled, chanted, coughed, and hacked into a heavily delayed swatch of effects. Everybody in the room probably left with a headache or a “contact high” (if that is appropriate for fumes), and I'm not sure if I liked it or if I was just light-headed. In person, Cammisa is definitely mellow and peaceable, certainly a free spirit if there ever was one, which is still refreshing to me even in the art/noise/experimental scene. There was a discussion between Dominick Dufner (Sigulda), myself, and her, which led to trades. With no surprise, what I bartered for was packaged in thick paper sewn together, covered in gold spray paint, with a CDR also spray painted (caked with spray paint). Apparently it was limited to 20 copies and thrown together in honor of the fest.
Cammisa or Camis, which seems to be the official artist name, is definitely young, but just how young I don't know. Either way, the CDr Cats Kils to me is an excellent piece of work, not that it boasts expensive vintage synthesizers, has any studied techniques, or worships any particular necrophile genre, it doesn't even hold much of an affiliation to the concept of “outsider music”. What does it for me in a lot of cases is when a person's personality is shown in what I would consider a pure form, and when someone creates a world that I can visualize, I haven't caught on to that as succinctly as I did with Cats Kils in a long time. In this case, there are layers of lo-fi drones, simple toy keyboard phrases, lots of reversed vocals, and (dare I say) charmingly half-baked acoustic bedroom songs. At one point, there is someone novicing at a piano and in the background, birds whistle, people walk around, Camissa continues to play while occasionally making talk with a barking/growling dog. Later on, something that sounds like a plodding reverse accordion tap weaves around sparsely with distant spaced out wa wa wa singing, acoustic guitar and maybe a ukulele, a squeak doll, and some kind of plastic percussion instrument, and this track goes absolutely nowhere, which is good for an ending. At other points it sounds like layers of Soundgarden and Fionna Apple in reverse, and ultimately, what drives it home is where Cammisa is sort of meandering with her voice reverbed out over a sitar loop, when someone apparently comes in during the recording and says stuff like “you said you were going to go to clean your room 4 hours ago, you said you were going to go to sleep one hour ago, I need you to quiet down, I can't sleep through these pornophonics” etc. It sounds more like a roommate than a parent and either way, the chant defiantly keeps going.
I can't help but to imagine a person (not necessarily Cammisa) sitting anxiously in front of a television or at a dinner table during autumn, after getting back from school, annoyed that the sun is going down earlier and earlier, unsure of their identity, unsure of their future, and feeling a sort of optimism that comes with so many options; a desire to have more horizons coupled with the feeling of being trapped, the absolute refusal to accept some dreadful idea of hatching into a real grown up who packs their lunch and hurries through futile, clotted traffic over and over. I see a person unintentionally disregarding consensus reality in baby steps, a willful naivete, an insular yet familiar chaos coupled with a peaceful disruption that irks people who can't let loose, and an unwillingness to commit to anything but the moment. This little disc comes off as not particularly rebellious, not deliberately contrary per se, yet both abstruse and autonomous, and refreshing in how effectively peculiar it is.
I don't really know Cammisa, she could be an accountant for all I know, and I don't intend to project these ideas as her motivations for the release; I'm sure they were different, but either way Cats Kils was an unexpected surprise. It's hard to explain, I feel strange because I'm confident that this is something that is not simply a fleeting point of interest in my personal history as a listener, but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to return to this thing in 5 years, regardless of my personal sound palette is at this time, although only time will tell if the spray paint hasn't eroded the disc by then!

Charlie McAlister - Country Creme/Victorian Fog [Feeding Tube]

Last year Feeding Tube records out in Massachusetts dropped what was unequivocally the best, most essential reissue/archival release of the year, and maybe even the best release of 2010 period. That record is Pimania. I cannot stress strongly enough how essential that record is, the less you know the better, but it is worth every penny.

Feeding Tube is not folk that like to waste time so on 1/1/11 (as you can see this review is quite tardy, sorry!) they entered this year's competitor for best archival release and it once again has blown me clean away.

Charlie McAlister was a mysterious figure I'd heard a lot about yet never actually heard. I have a friend who put out tapes by him in the 90s from whom I've heard a few stories and I've read plenty of web-ink on the guy as well. When I first heard this record I was not disappointed in the least, in fact I instantly understood why people talk so much about him. His songwriting is immediately compelling; it's at once pleasantly classic and ardently strange.

The recordings on this Country Creme/Victorian Fog LP were recorded between 1998 and 1999 but they seem to feel older like a rustic old curio no one knows about but you. All of the tape warble and manipulation certainly situates the music within a certain era, but the sound McAlister conjures transcends any era and it ultimately sounds timeless. Steeped in hissy, fizzy, buzzy fidelity, his nimble arrangements, generally consisting of acoustic guitar and voice plus a melody by a violin or harmonica or additional banjo plucks, are skuffed up revealing the diamond-hard hooks at the center of his songs. But for what most would probably categorize as a folk record, this thing is noisy. Kevin Taylor is credited with "noise machine" in the outro of "Depths of Confusion" and "Desperate Plea" features a feedback-ridden harmonica and various tape snags throughout. McAllister occasionally drops into demented passages of found tape samples, which get their own track in the form of "Fried Sandwich Play" which, I'll be honest, I skip sometimes when I'm not in the mood for such befuddlement. It's inclusion is enlightening, showing an example of the range of McAllister's work but it's somewhat ill-fitting in the context of this particular record.

McAlister is quite a spectacular lyricist as well. Kicking off with "I am Staying Here" McAlister delivers a timeless phrase I'm sure many can relate to: "Because of my friends and the beer/I am staying here." "Vision/Rage/Irish Girl" sounds like McAlister might even be making up the story as he goes over jaunty guitar and seething tin can clatter.

"Fake Country Music" is a weirdly lucid self-reflection on McAlister's music:

"Fake country music is what I like to play/Fake country music, okay/I'm playing the fiddle with a rusty key/I make country music for you and me/I'm shrieking and screaming and knocking down the walls/I'm the hideous creature in the [Fall? fog?]"

McAllister delivers a killer fiddle solo/skree to finish it off.

There's a ton of classic shit on Country Creme but the Victorian Fog side is even stronger. Starting with what is now gonna be my go-to when college football comes back in September, "Hair/Wind/Football." McAlister paints a picture of the school band playing in a fog while the players play a rough game of football over a jaunty rhythm while laying into waxy violin drones. It's a modest, mellow intro which belies the intensity of its subject matter. The instrumental "March #16" is paired perfectly with it, lead by an enterprising young glockenspiel. From there McAlister ambles down to the "Plantation of Pain," McAlister's response to confederate songs. It's another entirely infectious little ditty--McAlister is just unstoppable on this record.

The absolute pinnacle of the LP (and one of the greatest songs I've come across in a while) is "Bog Man." First of all, it's about a bog man, which I am fortunate to have seen two of in Dublin, so that's pretty badass to me. Furthermore though, McAlister re-envisions the bog man as a 1930s Universal monster movie. A man's body is thrown in a bog and 10,000 years later he is discovered, put on display and comes back to life, wreaking havoc on the townspeople in the process. In my eyes, this is quintessential McAlister; he's never better lyrically or as a songwriter and arranger on the record. I really could gush for pages and pages about this single song and at the end of the day my words would be woefully inadequate in expressing the magic of this tune; so I'll spare you on the condition that you buy this record or do whatever you have to experience the song for yourself.

Following is a wild and untitled instrumental, full of militant snare drum, tangled webs of chimes and whirring organ-tape-machine-whathaveyou--my guess is this is the "parade." Probably my second favorite song on the record is "After the Parade" as it features McAlister's most affecting vocal delivery. The gentle quiver in his voice is strangely gripping and imbues his portrait of the carcass of a parade with a strangely undefinable sensation. How do we take his couplet "It's time to go for a ride/I can't remember what we did last night"? Is it nostalgia? Is it panic? Something else entirely? Ultimately, the song closes with McAlister sawing out his most lovely melody on his fiddle. The song is so brief yet it features so much depth and rich ambiguity.

"Sinking Ship" details just that. Though McAlister's account of such terrors is met with an upbeat cyclical melody. "Song X" is another instrumental from a similar cloth of the prior instrumentals on the side.

A spate of short songs conclude the record. "Go to Hell" matches a whimsical chiming melody with garbled tape manipulation and feisty lyrics, "Pale Light" plonks along on a detuned six-string and squealing slide guitar lead and "The Big 'Parade'" oddly enough details society circa-World War 1 .

Reaching for some kind of phrase to capture the feel of this record, I'd offer up "This is old timey music for the weirdo underground." But really it's much more than that. What you need to know is this: Charlie McAlister's voice, as an artist not just a singer, is honest and inimitable. Whether you ultimately like his music or not, McAlister is someone you must hear for yourself and Feeding Tube, having done a beautiful job curating this LP, has done all the legwork for you. All you need to do is listen.

Dead Neanderthals - The V-Shaped Position [No Label]

The Dutch duo Dead Neanderthals are back with another 3" disc of destruction. Their last was some intense grindcore jazzin' and they are back with more effects on the sax, more reverb on the drums, a few slower tempos and some probably even faster if you can believe it.

"Asterisk" sets the tone of relentless grindcore drumming and distorted baritone sax. Dude can wail like a banshee, dude can smack the skins like a bastard. The 35 second "The Bleaching" one-ups the previous track in intensity. "Drinking Mercury" develops itself past the minute mark with clattering drumming and boisterous sax. Parts of it actually sound like it could be covering another "Dead" band, the Kennedys that is. It sounds like fierce loopy punk transcribed for sax and drums. Out of nowhere a heavily effected sax dirge takes over "Hemisphere" providing a bit of a breather between the two assaults bookending the piece. "Rabbit" similarly, slows things down in the back half with a cymbal wash outro. "Rotten Teeth/Tooth Decay" despite a brief almost 8-bit sounding NES-soundtrack breakdown, brings the raw and nasty stuff. As does the shortest track on the disc, "Speed of the Cobra."

The default epic at 5 and a half minutes, nearly half the album's runtime, the title track builds tension with a long intro of measured, pounding drums and looped sax drones. When the duo finally reveals their cards halfway through there's a legit melody (surprise!) Though the melody is quite tense and spectacular, the Neanderthals don't rest on such laurels. They slide into a long (in their world) breakdown/sax solo before coming to a halt. With less than 90 seconds to go, they pounce back with a fury, delivering inescapable, Wasteland Jazz Unit-levels of carnage. Yee-ikes!

The disc comes with a sticker and a mini-poster of a gynecological illustration, not sure if that was necessary. You can get the disc from the crew directly.