With the presence of “blood” and “horror” in the artist and album names, you’d be forgiven for bracing yourself for a harsh, Hospital-ish onslaught. You might even be forgiven for expecting rhythms, as well. Yes, you are forgiven (Pete Townshend voice) of all those sins because Blood Rhythms traffics in smooth, almost glassy tones. Blood Rhythms is a duo of Leslie Keffer and Arvo Zylo, two mainstays in the noise underground, and this Horror Pilation disc compiles the two sides of the Horror Pilation LP (the first in a six(!) LP series by the duo) in addition to material culled from other LPs in the series. Horror Pilation isn’t minimal (it has no problem flooding the room with frequencies) but it is gradual. With no obvious melodic structure in play, you’ll ask yourself: has this been changing constantly or has it not changed at all? As always, the truth lies somewhere in between. The two “sides” don't seem like an exact continuation but both sound like they are cut from the same session; to my ears, the second sounds like it’s had a light layer of frost wiped away but for all I know my mind is playing tricks on me and the two are sonically indistinguishable. As far the “bonus” material goes, the lesson might change but the essence of the message is the same. The tracks sound different than the first LP material, but are grown within the same parameters. All in all the disc runs 74 minutes, at seven bucks, it’s a real valu-pak of drones! Patient and budget-conscious dronehounds take note.
Now here is a real doozy. Embarrassingly, I have to admit that I’m not that well-versed in LAFMS (that’s the Los Angeles Free Music Society, if you’re even less well-versed than I am), a seminal, intrepid collective of sonic explorers that have been scouting for the edge of the universe since at least the 1970s. The recordings on this double-disc set, compiled by Ace Farren Ford and Ju Suk Reet Meate, range from the 1960s to 2020s, that’s 60 going on 70 years of recorded music in one place! As you can imagine, this is an overwhelmingly eclectic couple hours of music making taking you on a deep sonic safari.
The beginning of Volume 4 (disc 2), perfectly illustrates the range of imagination on display. It first starts with a 2003 recording of Lynn Carey reading her 1988 poem “Jazzpoem (my life in music… unf.)” a rumination on jazz and sex. Then slips into “Summer’s Day” by Collide Burger with Chicken Larry and Patrick Lubow, a 1978 foray into old timey folk ditties. After that, you get “Sydney and Cleo” by Electric Bill Robinson in 1990 which sounds both like a cartoon radio play and an avant-garde sound ensemble. (Sounds much different than Robinson’s hilarious hippie folk tune “No One as Gentle as You” which appears on disc 1.) Bet you can’t guess what comes next. Well, if you guessed a free jazz-rock goof-off Jefferson Airplane cover by Dr. Amazon (titled “Silly Rabbit” naturally) where the “singer” tries to clear the room by exhorting in the most strained vibrato imaginable, then give yourself a gold star because that is what comes next!
There are nearly 30 tracks here so it’s not feasible to dig into all of them but rest assured that each one is quality in its own unique way. I’ll pick out a few notable highlights. An instant favorite is Dan and Letha Rodman Melchior’s musique concrete jam “The Purple Pill Redux” about penile growth and hot dogs and burgers. (Anyone hungry?) Bizarre and utterly fun. As is “Describe Again” by Testing Vault, which fits clearly into The Shadow Ring or later-Scott Walker avant-soundworld-song thing but without sounding derivative of either. Deranged sonic perpetrators Kommissar Hjuler und Frau Mama Baer contribute the catchiest number they’ll probably ever make, sounding a bit like an early 00s NYC freaky groove band (Gang Gang Dance and the like). Portland, OR’s Million Brazilians continue that vibe as well. Also from Portland, Lee Rockey’s late 60s violin-based rocketblast “Soundcraft” appears in two versions. The gleeful weirdness of “Light Bulb 2.1” by {AN} EeL is infectious. Donkey Flybye, James Dewey and Eric Zann set your house on fire with “JBE” using aluminum foil anti-charisma guitar and devices. “Kettleday” is excellent field recording/non-music/tactile rattle and clank from GX Jupitter-Larsen & Ace Farren Ford. Epic home-fi ditty “Down in the Dungeon” by Mr. Foon (“I’m just down here reading my science fiction/You know it’s real bitchin’”) is quite pleasing, particularly when the song is scuttled for a sophomoric shred sesh. Trance Farmers’ sample-based garage rock/drone collage “Gas Can” will keep you popping that rewind button. Concluding the set, Erica Rawlings contributes a reading of her eventful short story “Bloody Very Little Good Happens in Autumn” which I just might agree with.
A true, and surprisingly listenable, kaleidoscope of the outer fringes of audio art. Recommended to those that can handle it. You know who you are!
The latest tape from NYC’s Cyanide Tooth (also one half of Maximum Ernst) jets down a neo-early-industrial track. Reminding me of the likes of early 80s Cabaret Voltaire, somewhere in that soft nexus of electrical alienation and mutant dance floor innovation. See “Clank City Club”, for instance. Obliterated recordings of some non-Western reed instrument bleat over the incessant thumps of a stalled engine. On “Chartered Trip”, grooves lurk but cascade on top of each other, weaving an itchy (but not abrasive) blanket. What sounds like 40 superimposed field recordings of Mr. Tooth’s 10th birthday party at the local laser tag outpost form a thick, crusty coat of frosting on top. On the second side, “Radio Eater” brings a little more heat with jagged static grind and high frequency penetration pushed right up to the fore. “Lo-Hi-O” latches onto a vocal fragment and blasts off into the syncopat-o-sphere. “Transcendental Llama” (featuring electric baglama—yeah, I had to look it up too—by Roy V) makes for a true change of pace. Dare I say “ambient” classification might be on the table, if it weren’t for the rapid, relentless, uneven strumming that underpins the affair. I’ll be honest, on first listen, I kept waiting for the Holy Molar to jump out from behind a bush and jab a feedback icepick in my ear, but lo and behold he’s content to surf the sonic sea, one with the spirit of the universe. Might this noisenik be mellowing as he matures? We won’t know until the next cassette drops!
Now here is a fun little lathe from a trio of collaborators Tori Kudo, John Dieterich, and Caleb Dailey, entitled Tough Darts, Tender Nights (brought to the physical realm via Moone Records and Kids and the Occult). Kudo (Noise, et al), Dieterich (Deerhoof, et al) and Dailey (Moone Records, et al) being best buds and all decided to play a little game of voice memo round robin. One member recorded a song on his phone, then sent it to the next member who listened and then recorded his own song in response on his phone, then sent his song to the next member… and the wheel turns. After a few cycles the group was happy with the material that they generated (ranging from lonesome cowboy tunes to unidentifiable field recordings to pointed noise prickles) and compiled and edited it into a flowing collage of their collective conscience. The end result is entirely strange and beguiling, but eminently listenable and soothing as well. Rocking back and forth between country and blues traditions and the avant “traditions” of tape music, or Graham Lambkin, or Kudo himself! The way the recordings all leech into one another generates an impressive, personable web of tones, where the multiplicity of approaches initiates a singular, breathing machine, limbs coordinated as they stretch in opposing directions. Even more importantly: Tough Darts, Tender Nights forms an intimate, sonic product of friendship, and, gratefully, the listener is gifted a momentary portal inside. Recommended!
One of the pitfalls of writing about music is that you have to write. Listening to music is great, but writing? Ugh. Sometimes, you put something on with an open word doc waiting and the honest intent to jot down notes. But then, you listen, and listen, and when it’s all over and done with you realize you didn’t jot down a goddamn thing! Infuriating. Case in point is this here LP, Age, the third full-length by Flower Festival but first for me, I keep listening but not actually writing anything. There is something so warm and comforting about it that it disabuses me of the notion that I need to be writing about anything. I should just relax and enjoy. Yes, my shortcomings in the productivity department are the music’s fault. Now that I’ve put my own head in a vice until I reach 200 words, how shall I go about describing this? Broad strokes first. It’s clearly a pop record. A soft one at that. But not an ordinary one, and never dull.
I’m gonna wager a guess that Micah Dailey, Mr. Flow Fest himself, is a member of my generation, spending teenage years with the music of the early 00s. It reminds me of something that might have appeared at that moment in time, though without any mediation through a nostalgic lens. Flower Fest doesn’t sound like either of these bands, but there’s an ether of friendly sonic detritus reminiscent of The Books and Califone. (Well, the instrumental opener “Predictify” does kinda sound like The Books.) Sounds drift in and out, dissolve into one another. But that makes it sound like some shoegazey dream pop record and it’s not really that (although it’s not not that either). There are structured songs and crackling drums (such as on “Lunatic”), there is wonderful clarinet on “The Well”, alternately insistent with a chant-like rhythmicism or squirrelly and squawking, contributed by Seth Kassleman (Warm Climate), there are bent strings strangled out of tune perched prominently against sheets of plush falsetto coos on “Pedestrian”. Nothing is played straight, jagged and smooth peacefully coexist, all decisions are made with a deftness and confidence that’s obscured by the leisurely execution. The rhythms, the melodies, the voices in “Get Over It” all seem to trickle down like water in a brook. They may not all move at the same pace but they do so in collective unison. “How Wonderful” is the most straightforward (country-tinged) pop song on the record with its flowing pedal steel and drum machine pumping away underneath a blanket. It recalls something Daughn Gibson might make if he ever felt content and filled with romance, which I reckon has probably never happened.
Dailey is joined by a sizable corps of contributors too long to list (though it does include Lonna Kelley who sings her own composition on “Behave” which seamlessly ingratiates itself with the rest of Dailey’s songs) and much like Micah’s brother Caleb’s last LP, there is a sense of community on display, adding a unique breadth and depth to each arrangement. When Dailey ends “Pedestrian”, with the spoken proclamation “I’m going to start my own nation” it doesn’t seem that far-fetched.
Los Microbios, a project of Lance Jones based in the nether reaches of Vermont, has been making tunes at home since the 90s according to Jason Henn of Honey Radar, and he even taught Henn how to operate a 4-track. (A little nugget afforded by internet research, true journalist at work here.) Cognitive Thinning is a lo-fi record, and I mean a lo-fi record. This isn’t a “is it or isn’t it lo-fi?” conundrum people like to ruminate on. This is a low-fidelity recording; the instruments (except vocals, sometimes) are churned together into one mass of smeared frequencies.
For a good chunk of its runtime, Cognitive Thinning wears it influences on its mildewy sleeve, whether that be the punk twilight between the 70s and 80s (“Trained to Follow” is a lowest of the lo-fi take on second album-era Suicide—with maybe a touch of Daniel Johnston as well, “John’s Amp” sounds like a budget boombox Joy Division demo and “A City is Not Science” is a clear doubletime reworking of “Blue Monday”) or the outgrowths of the British Invasion (an enjoyable cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Child of the Moon” and an epic rendition of “Oh Yoko” that crushes all the composition’s nimble maneuvers into overdriven, mis-biased oblivion). Elsewhere, there’s “Not Even a Pandemic Can Bring Us Back Together” a deep voiced keyboard ballad buried under a pile of fiberglass insulation and “Walls” a frantic, out of character 44-seconds of abrasion. The closest RIYL that came to my mind, evident on tracks such as “For Us”, is early Pink Reason when Kevin Failure would dabble in pop moves once in a while. There is an additional similarity in the sort of heaving, guttural quality to their baritone voices too. For all I know, Jones taught Kevin how to use his 4-track as well!
Meadow Argus - The Chameleon’s Dish [Aural Canyon]
A couple new joints from Tynan Krakoff’s Meadow Argus project, one very focused and the other sprawling over an hour. First up is the sprawler, Arboreal Frippery released by the legendary UK label Chocolate Monk (I recently saw Cannonball Run for the first time and that has to be the etymological inspiration behind the name, right?). Culled from seemingly decades of tapes, including microcassettes recorded by Tynan on a late 00s hitchhiking jaunt with his brother, Arboreal Frippery goes here and there and whatever place it damn well pleases. My favorite piece is one of the longest, the finale “Trainwreck Tunnel” which finds a perfect symbiosis among its tape loops and chord organ drones. Elemental drift. “Every Person Contains a Universe” achieves ominous stasis over its 17 minutes. Is that a cow? That’s a cow, right? Mournful moos punctuate the undulating tape loops. That may sound quaint but not too much later you’ll hear someone confess “I’m afraid I’m going to kill somebody. Just by not knowing what to do.” “Balloon” is much more frenetic as a conversation plays with voices stepping over each tripping through a tangled bed of looped groans while “Ladybug” resonates with tape-garbled peaking autoharp plucks (I’m making a guess as autoharp is mentioned in the list of tools employed).
Apropos of nothing, here is a brief mention of a favorite discovery of Fall 2024. The People Skills name (the nom de plume of Jesse Dewlow) has been rattling around for a decade or more I feel like. I know I heard bits of Dewlow’s cough syrup slurred dirges here and there over the years, and nothing ever clicked. Still, I couldn’t let go of the fact that in-the-know folks like Siltbreeze, Digital Regress and I Dischi Del Barone had been deep in the People Skills pocket. Was I missing something, or were they? Who do I trust? Smart, tasteful people like them, or …myself? I know whom I’d put my money on, and it’s definitely not myself. So when the opportunity came to purchase the second “proper” People Skills album, Gunshots at Crestridge (brought to the public by the reputable Blackest Ever Black imprint), I said “fuck it, let’s find out what I’ve been missing.” Turns out it was a lot!
Gunshots is a killer record. When listening, my head was swirling with all these elements I’ve loved from other artists and here they were, glued and stewed together. Banana Head’s slo-mo surf pop, Pink Reason’s bomb shelter ballads, (early) Yellow Swans’ love of aggressively present drum machines, or the ascendant ghost of Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart after his body was smeared on the motorway releasing all traces of his hyperventilating histrionics into the ether. There’s even some hints of Smog’s Wild Love (one of the finest records ever made), a downtrodden troubadour trying to mesh incongruous pieces of his life together, figuratively and sonically. But as with all the truly good ones, People Skills doesn’t sound that much like any of those. It can’t be anything but itself—enduring in an environment all its own, songs and non-songs seamlessly coexisting. Gunshots at Crestridge is a home (or a hole, depending on your predilection) to inhabit for 45 minutes at a time. Take a visit, I recommend it!
Now here is a real good thing. Picked this up at a show recently where Portland, OR’s Shop Regulars shared a bill with Famous Mammals from Oakland (by-way-of-Cheltenham) and my current fav Oregon band The Lavender Flu. The ol’ Regulars here are giving the Flu a run for their money though. Not that they have that much in common, although they both probably like The Velvet Underground given that they’re still playing guitars and drums two decades into the 21st century.
Speaking of the Lord’s messengers (ya know, the message of rock & roll), the VU riff-repeat template features PROMINENTLY in the Shop Regulars’ debut LP but instead of the usual honking, ripped speaker grooves, new life is breathed into that aged physique via Television-ish prickly plink plonk. The Regs’ tinnitus-inviting live incarnation that I witnessed was two guitars, one bass and two drummers, and it sounds like the same thing was happening when they rolled tape. (Though there’s a list of like 12 disciples that played on the record, headed up by Shop manager Matt Radesovich.) In the live environs the rhythm section was humming like a finely tuned jalopy engine, Radesovich smashed one chord at hummingbird speed while another guitarist plowed into staggering arpeggios.
The LP recalls post-Y2K double guitar angle attacks ranging from the first Ex Models’ album to the first Strokes’. The context has been reshapen though. Did I mention that there are some long songs on this record, and there’s only five of them? (Come to think of it, that’s a lot like the last Ex Models album.) So what’s happening on top of all the downstrokes? Radesovich's drawling, semi-somnolent vocals, that’s what! I’ve spent a long time trying to place it. I was thinking maybe Lee Ranaldo’s speak-sing thing, but I really think it is an American-accented Ben Wallers that he’s reminding me of.
Okay, okay, all this talk about New York City bands (and whatever bog Ben Wallers crawled out of) but what about my home state of California? Oh yeah, that’s right, there’s some fuckin’ Creedence running through the Regulars’ veins too. CCR wasn’t shy about dropping a 12-minute head nodder/guit-grinder on Side B and neither are the Regs! ‘Xcept when the Regs do it, they call it the “Emerson Run Down”. Emerson Run Down on the corner, if ya know what I mean. (Fuckin’ zing!) While his lackeys are locked into a perfectly-practiced hustle-trance, Matt R’s voice is fed through some kind of bizarre mid-humped EQ or bandpass filter, pinging around the marbled walls of heaven; he’s a mic swallower without even raising his voice. He intones “go tell it on the mountain” “row your boat ashore” and you realize these really are trumpeter angels spreading the gospel of redemption through rhythm and riffage. And that’s just one of the five holy mantras of rock & roll on this record. Get it. Get zen. One of my favorite things about 2024!
Baltimore’s Workers Comp had never entered my radar and I’m ever grateful to Ever/Never for compiling their first three tapes (with a new “bonus” track tacked on, naturally) on a single LP, the eponymous Workers Comp. There’s no irony in the name. “Pressure Today” finds lyrical fodder in hex wrenches and conveyor belts, industrial decline and decay. The record is brimming with tales of dreary toil: “We all could use a break/From the shovel and the rake/And when boss says ‘How are you?’/You say ‘Surviving the dream…’” Workers Comp is the voice of the people.
The Workers’ approach is so simple that it’s hard to describe. It feels a little rich to uncritically accept that this music was made only a few years ago. It just as easily sounds like it could be a 47-copy private press run from ‘76 by a trio of college dropouts-cum-working stiffs in Missouri documenting their life’s work, airing their grievances from the factory floor on “Gilt Rig”, steeped in the methods of Blue Ӧyster Cult. The inclusion of “Alley-Oop (1996)” ruins that fantasy for obvious reasons but I don’t care because it’s fucking beautiful. The fidelity, the performances, they’re perfectly imperfect. Not amateurish, just imperfect. The songs though, every single one, now those are just proper perfect. Workers Comp has either stumbled upon or finely honed (don’t care which) a twitchy, twangy Heartland version of UK DIY.
Throwing a curveball from the jump, the LP kicks off with a country tune “When I’m Here”, loose and entirely credible. But it’s a prelude paving the way for the ass kickers “Pick and Choose” and “High on the Job”. “Job”, in particular, pops in my head constantly with its guttural vocal hook. If you’ve held fond feelings for any David Nance tune in the past decade-plus, this tune is a must as Workers Comp match or surpass every Nance tune I’ve heard save for “Leather in the Box”. I could say the same about Mordecai. “Good Luck” and “Shoot” with their plinky guitar lines and nerved-up rhythms might’ve even been hits in “The Great Garage Revival” of my youth, but alas they’re a few decades too late. Such is life.
A unique element of the record is that four different singers take the lead at various points. Joshua Gillis handles most vocal duties (and he’s a damn fine frontman) but “Never Have I Ever” brings in a ringer on vocals, Anna McClellan, and borrows half of the Shop Assistants’ peppy “Safety Net” bassline. McClellan’s guileless, Mo Tuckerish-presence on the mic is a welcome change of pace from the hollowed-out bitterness that leads the charge the rest of the time. Luke Reddick sounds like punk rock Mark Hollis on “Peel Away” hollering over top of a sick guitar melody but on the depress-o-matic ballad “It’s Fine” he sounds truly shell shocked. The only comparison I can come up with is watching this drunk old man singing karaoke to the slowest country song I’ve ever heard at The Crab Bowl on Barbur Blvd. Heartrending stuff. Meanwhile the “bonus” track “Basic Values” surfs along on searing guitar leads and is sung by Ryan McKeever (also of Staffers fame), and it’s one of the best tunes on the LP!
You probably haven’t watched DIG! 100 times in your life like I have but there’s this random dude at a NYC subway station that says about the Brian Jonestown Massacre: “I was there in the 60s and these guys have ‘it’”. I wasn’t there in the 60s, but Workers Comp bloody well have “it”.
My favorite 2024 release? We’re nearing the end and Workers Comp is in pole position. I’m scared to investigate if this is a memorial compilation or if Workers Comp is still a going concern, because if they are, Workers Comp is my new favorite band. I’m so in love.
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