AUGUST 2020

Whoa... this is the first post since the pandemic-fueled lockdown here in LA. My family has been very fortunate; we are healthy and still have jobs but my wife and I have been working full time (in her case, more than full time) while also taking care of our ever-active one year old daughter full-time at home. All in all, we're very thankful to be in the position we're in compared to the desperate circumstances that have beset so many people. That said, it's been nearly impossible to find spare time (and, more importantly, energy) to allocate to thinking and writing about music. I've got a pair of very interesting LPs I've spent some time with over the past several months for today's post and then going forward I'm going to try switching to a quick-hitter format with short blurbs on releases. I'll try to corral my loquacious tendencies in order to get some kind of briefer AuxOut content out into the world, most likely in irregular intervals but hopefully much more often. Thanks to any and all who read the site, I hope you are staying healthy and enjoying music every day.

Benjamin Dean Wilson - The Smartest Person in the Room [Works of Love]

I’ve been wrestling for months with how to accurately describe The Smartest Person in the Room, the sophomore effort from Benjamin Dean Wilson, Tulsa’s turtlenecked troubadour of note. On one hand, it doesn’t sound like anything radical but on the other, it’s quietly the most ambitious album I’ve heard in that hazy bullshit genre we call “singer-songwriter” in some years.

The record’s release has a perfect story for some future rock-doc: Cincinnati’s Works of Love is a record label established by novelist Luke Geddes who used part of his book advance to start the label (badass) and serendipitously came across Wilson’s debut LP while browsing eBay listings for Jonathan Richman records. An impulse purchase led to Geddes falling in love with Wilson’s music and offering to make his follow up the inaugural release on Works of Love.  

Wilson’s reedy vocals, somewhere between David Berman and the tinny tenor of James Taylor’s voice, belie the density of The Smartest Person in the Room. It’s verbally dense (the word count for each song must be stratospheric) with tastefully orchestrated arrangements that can keep up with the cavalcade of vocabulary. There are so many blink-and-you-miss-’em melodic nuggets crammed into this record that it’s far too overwhelming to try to capture them in this review. However, one of the keys to Wilson’s production is that, despite the wide array of instrumentation—we’re talking guitars, bass, drums, piano, viola, organ, synth, multiple male and female voices and more, he maintains a very spacious, naturalistic atmosphere for the album. 

To call Wilson’s tracks merely “songs” is almost a disservice as they are long, winding narratives of quotidian snark with ever shifting arrangements for each act. The Smartest Person in the Room feels like a collection of short stories nearly as much as it feels like a record. With songs usually unfurling to 7-10 minutes in length, Wilson often ignores verse-chorus convention opting for constantly evolving movements. Probably too literary to classify as pocket symphonies but structurally there’s a symphonic element at the core of these songs. Clocking in at just four minutes, “Ridgemore Hotel” sticks closest to typical pop song format but even that’s chock full of little key shifts and detours.

Positioning the title track as the opener is a smart choice by the smartest person in the room as it's the most immediately hooky (I was singing the ambling “I come from a family full of idiots” chorus to myself after a single listen) and nestles into a comfortable middle ground between Wilson’s firm grasp on pop songwriting and his more grandiose gestures that arrive in short order. The rest of the album ranges from the beautiful chamber music vignettes of “Mr. Paranoid, Lizzy, and Her Family”, the ten-minute finale of “Vitamin Supplements”, an amusing epic of con games and rackets, and “A Difficult Decision for Ronny Giovanni”, a comical minor key funk tune about the modern day descendant of Don Giovanni.

Wilson’s best work comes on “Won’t Say It Again...” a wry, disturbing portrait of an immature (and deranged) schmuck who can’t fucking deal with being separated from his ex-wife, all the while proving exactly why she’s better off without him. The song winds through the narrator’s bizarre stream of conscious including how butchering a deer reminds him of his ex-wife, straining to live in a movie flashback of his life and, ultimately, in a final unnerving kissoff, the resolution to hold his feelings inside and give his ex-wife’s address to a local serial killer. It might be Wilson’s best work as an arranger as well, finding various combinations of timbres to underscore the fluctuating tone from segment to segment, including an unexpected, hummable harmonica-led conclusion.

As alluded to, The Smartest Person in the Room is a dense record and after many listens I still notice new lyrical and aural details in every song each time it’s on the turntable. Wilson is truly doing his own thing; his peculiar voice (literally and figuratively) stands out from the leagues of forgettable singer-songwriters out there and that is so goddamn refreshing. Thank you.

The Shifters - The Shifters [Digital Regress]

Melbourne’s The Shifters' boastful, pie-in-the-sky online dating profile would describe themselves as Desperate Bicycles-meets-The Raincoats-meets-The Fall. This sounds like the best band that ever existed, certainly on par with using an eight-year-old profile pic. Except, in this instance, it's actually pretty true. The other reference point is mid-80s Flying Nun, think pre-Terminals bands like Scorched Earth Policy and The Max Block. If DigiRegress had pulled the wool and said The Shifters’ debut was a reissue of a cassette from 35 years ago rather than five (the truth), I'd be inclined to believe them. This LP miraculously sounds like it came from that era, one of the best in history, and I desperately want to know how this feat was managed. 

So The Shifters sounds like a million, but what about the songs? Well, they’re pretty fucking impressive too. Eight killer songs with no filler in sight. Each one is a hook-laden, instant-classic in its own way. The first two tracks “Creggan Shops” and “Captain Hindsight” made it as the A- and B-sides of a single in 2016 and it’s easy to see why. “Creggan Shops” seems like The Shifters’s mission statement if there ever was one. It’s got the fixation on areas of colonial strife, in this case Ireland, (songs “Algeria” and “Tel Aviv” appear later on the side) evoking brutal images of kneecapping alongside clever esoteric puns (“R.U.C. again and now you don’t”), over a scrappy brew of stepping guitar riffs and melodica wheeze. “Captain Hindsight”, alternately, breaks into an utterly gorgeous violin melody over murmuring bass and needly guitar thrums. The band ratchets up the tension on “Algeria” with a descending four-note bass line and thumping tom pattern. Vocalist/lyricist/guitarist Miles Jansen is impeccable on the mic and his sloshed Aussie accent sounds more on edge than usual here.

VU’s “Heroin” has many, many great grandchildren by now and The Shifters add another to the litter with “The American Attitude to Law”, working the extended two-chord format into their own style while singing about sliced achilles tendons, suing the internet and namechecking YouTube to timestamp it in the 21st century. “Benedictine Man” must be about Benedictine monks, I can only assume given Jansen’s historical proclivities, and it showcases the catchiest chorus on the record (you will be hollering “He was a Benedictine man!” in no time) with dual guitar riffs to match. The country-fried “Colour Me In” has a strong whiff of The Statler Brothers’ “Flowers on the Wall” without actually sounding like it and if “Algeria” seemed intense, the band really gets their blood pumping on “Stuck in the Middle” about as full-throttle as the ragtag group gets on the album.

In addition to the quality of the songwriting, the performances are perfect across the board. Drummer Ryan Coffey isn’t afraid to ignore his cymbals and even his snare occasionally giving each song a fresh rhythmic center while the two guitars and bass expertly intertwine loose, twangy single note lines maintaining space and allowing each other to stand out at different points. Angus McLean is The Shifters’ secret weapon playing both violin and melodica, wringing out all manners of lyrical melodies, rhythmic plucks and occasionally sawing skronk. If the rest of the band is the bones, he’s the flesh “colouring” the band in.

I remember seeing The Shifters tape pop up on several best of the 2010s lists which inspired this purchase and, for once, the lists were right! Do I have a new favorite band? I just might!

Much gratitude to Digital Regress for bringing this gem stateside. Right now DR is having a moving sale (20% off everything) so you can grab The Shifters along with other sweet Antipodean (and American) sounds for some low, low prices. Buy it.

FEBRUARY 2020

TV dinner Education - Nya Perspektiv [Cudighi]
I'd never heard of TV dinner Education before and the little bit I saw about them described the duo as a psychedelic band. I dig psychedelia but I was thrilled when I listened and realized this band is so much more. TV dinner Education is a duo of Loti Solovitsky contributing voice, drums, FX and tapes and Julesy Bejbi presiding over prepared toy guitar and tapes. Though it might not be readily apparent by that list of instruments, there are some strong strains of mutant disco and the more affable (yet avant-garde) areas of no wave and its latter day acolytes.

There's also a hearty dose of bizarre sonic emulsification, which they stick right up front ("Dyslectic Clam: A"). I love hearing a band kick off a record with their weirdest track; it's a heavy duty power move that gets you excited for what's to come. "Clam" is a five minute clatter and scrape fest that falls somewhere between sloooooooow-motion Brian Ruryk and the weirder parts of the Sightings discography. What a way to start! TV dinner Education then immediately juxtapose the power trip with the contagious simplicity of "Easy Busy". There's certainly a dub vibe to it, and an adventurous hip hop producer could sample the shit out of it and make a really hot beat.

"Easy Busy" conjures visions of a pared down Gang Gang Dance, stripping away the polyrhythmia down to the heart of the groove. This continues on "Excellent Choice" which immediately leaps out as a favorite (excellent choice!) after a tumultuous middle section freakout the duo lock into a strangely captivating guitar/drum pattern. Elsewhere on the tape, you hear the voice of an evil spirit luring you into a deep dark forest ("Little Birds") as well as a throwback bassline ("External Borders") that recalls the brief era in the 90s where you could find success being in a funk-metal band. What a time...

Nya Perspektiv is chock full of invigorating sounds and TV dinner Education achieve the rare feat of pumping out grooves without sacrificing a lick of their abrasive aberrance. Check this crew out!

Woollen Kits - Maths [R.I.P. Society]
I have a Kits LP which is solid, heavily channeling Beat Happening replete with the Australian version of Calvin Johnson on the mic. I liked it enough to grab this 7" platter at the local shop and I'm so glad I did.

Roaring like an amped up, totally punk Beat Happening, "Maths" is a straight up banger with the kind of ascending/descending riff you'll be replaying endlessly in your nog while you fall asleep and it will still be there when you wake up. A tad surf-y, with plenty of fuzz, it's rock & roll bliss plain and simple. The singer's voice is so deep it gets a little lost in the lo-fi slop and it would have been nice to have a voice that could cut through a bit but that's a minor gripe for a tune this bulletproof.

"Out of Town" is a better fit for his voice. It's a bit burlier and the playful, sing-songy quality of the melody of "Maths" is absent here. The monotone voice is met with a chunky two-chord riff and the perfect couple is all each other ever wanted in a mate. Now who can explain this extra "L" in Woollen? An Aussie thing or are they just trying to add some edge like Jaill?

Saint Black - Saint Black [Semi-Permanent]
This self-titled full-length from New Jersey's Saint Black arrived in my mailbox at the perfect time. Lots of early Dead C, early Smog (there's a track here called "Down to the Sky" which doesn't fall too far from "Sewn to the Sky" hmm...), Sentridoh, Stefan Christensen and Sacred Product have been on the turntable of late and the black Saint is surely trying to continue music history in that home-recorded trajectory.

Saint Black is lo-fi. Not lo-fi in the sense of conventional sounds on a meager budget, but lo-fi in the sense of packing his songs with all kinds of weird shit that you'd end up murdered for if you put it on a studio pop record. You can hear the hiss, so Saint Black rightly left the noise reduction switch in its off position on his four track. "Saint Body" is the weirdest moment with some strange out of place sounds littering the stereo spectrum. The song sounds like it was recorded standing next to a pneumatic paint shaker, and if that wasn't enough, someone starts banging on the door in the left channel out of nowhere at one point.

With a voice reminiscent of a Charlie McAlister-Calvin Johnson lovechild (this is an inordinate amount of Calvin Johnson mentions today) that kinda sets the scene for the style of these songs. Mid-tempo, drawn-out vowels, mundane yet quirky lyrics. You can certainly hear a Beat Happening vibe lurking in "What Passes for Gas?" and there's a self-ascribed "pacific northeast" tag on Bandcamp making me wonder if that's a knowing nod to the sounds of Olympia. Saint Black recalls another Pacific Northwest staple on "Full Cuck Press" which has a touch of the early A Frames sound when their finely honed cyborg rock was in its fuzzy embryonic stages

The record kicks off with a pair of highlights, the 25 second "I'm Tender" and the hit of the album "Touch No Evil" arrives afterward with an instantly hummable melody that's slowly papered over with all sorts of audio gunk. That's the one finds it way creeping into my mind unannounced. "Saint Vacation" shows that, when he wants to, he can play things straight and deliver a very nice low key pop number even if he can't help himself from abruptly sheering the track off at the stem with a harsh tape edit.

The Saint generally keeps things short (right move!) aside from the four and a half minute plaintive declaration of love, "Alex", which is nice but would gain potency in a slimmer frame. A couple of the tracks ("Laugh or Puke" and "Breed Concept") don't make much of an impression and unfortunately they arrive back to back, but Saint Black is onto something and, considering this is his first album, I'm really curious to hear where he goes from here and how he develops as a songwriter going forward. He's not afraid to wear his idiosyncrasies on his tape and that quality gets more refreshing by the year.

St. Dad - Do as I Say Not What I Do [no label]
Speaking of saints, I have the perfect segway to this month's baby/parent-themed review! It's the 10th anniversary of this parenting manual Do as I Say Not What I Do and by now St. Dad should be mentioned in the same breath as Dr. Spock right? Well... maybe not. These guys sound like they're 17 tops, but hey the world is probably full of 17 year old dads so who am I to judge? They hailed from somewhere in Florida but to my palette they have a bit of that Clevo nutwad flavor, like a truly dumb electric eels or, more recently, the brilliantly dumb Bad Noids.

They're probably not the best guys to be taking parenting advice from but they manage to get one or two things right on "Jobs and Junk" with observations like "Everybody's doing it/Jobs and junk" and "Pour another cup of coffee/Down my throat" because, man, dads get tired, especially at work.

The record sounds positively wretched which is right in my wheelhouse and, to be fair, the band is surprisingly tight and melodic but with a wild-eyed neighborhood tough like Gustavo on the mic, St. Dad takes on the same fly-off-the-handle character. His hyper-nasal, generally unintelligible sneer 'n whine is the EP's defining quality. Quite handily, the Dads offer up their lyrics scrawled slightly more intelligibly in a booklet. Without it, I probably wouldn't have realized the record ends with the immortal couplet "I've cut my own head off/Now I'm blind". These are some maladjusted lads, writing songs about selling their grandma on eBay and disturbingly, but fittingly, they save their catchiest riffs for their saddest track "The Unwanted Child".

The sleeve with a lovely multi-colored screenprint job is curiously professional looking, how'd that happen? Do these guys have a well-adjusted older sister or kindly aunt looking out for them? It's a  curious discrepancy that only adds to St. Dad's mystique.

JANUARY 2020

Lithics - Wendy Kraemer EP [Moone]
From time to time, I come across the new-paradigm music chat including the whole “what’s the point of record labels nowadays?” thing. In my opinion, it’s not an argument worth having because the philosophy that motivates such a question values recorded music in an enormously different way than it has been throughout its history.

Perhaps hiring a PR company to help get you social media followers and a place on a Spotify playlist is a more effective way to play a tent at Coachella. Perhaps us record buyers are just a forest of trees waiting to be wiped out by a streaming tidal wave. (But let it be known that we are having a hell of a lot of fun listening to our stereos while we wait.)

An artist creates and a label curates and both qualities are necessary and important to music lovers. Most music is bad, and there is more bad music being "released" than ever before. Entering the fourth decade of the online era, labels may be less important for the infrastructure they provide (though I don't necessarily agree with this) but far more important for the curatorial work they do. Releasing records (and tapes and CDs) is expensive and labor-intensive. The fact that a record exists means that somebody truly loves it and believes in it so much that they think others will love it too, and consequently assumes the risk that others won't.

This release, an EP titled Wendy Kraemer by Portland, OR’s Lithics, is a case in point as to why I love record labels (keep in mind I’m not talking about media conglomerates). Wendy Kraemer was first a tour tape thrown together by the band in 2017, consisting of home recorded demos and outtakes and was likely destined for ephemeral status as little magnetic mementos for a clutch of Lithics fans. But Moone Records, obviously one of those Lithics fans, loved that tape so much that it felt compelled to put hundreds of copies out on 12 inches of 45rpm vinyl. Being a record label goes beyond merely sharing your obsession but also trying to create an obsession for someone else (or with any luck, many people)—to make your obsessions become other people’s obsessions.

Lithics are rooted in the late 70s/early 80s; such as the sinewy sounds of Wire, Au Pairs, and various no wave acts but filtered through the placid minimalism of Young Marble Giants and the decade's oncoming development of indie pop. There's a lot of energy lurking in Lithics tunes but they keep it tightly bundled under Aubrey Hornor's stiff-lipped, somewhat somnolent voice. Lithics are chock full of potential energy, if you can remember your high school physics class. There is an anxious precision to Lithics’ songwriting and performance which creates a compelling contrast with the sketchbook nature of Wendy Kraemer. There are no song titles or a track listing given, and each side of the record is unbanded. Moone really labored to preserve the original tape experience (e.g. no skipping tracks) which is another idiosyncratic move that contributes to the unique vibe of the record.

The first side features tight bass lines and geometric patterned melodies you'd expect from Lithics but you also get some flutish feedback breaths over jazz drumming, unidentifiable musique concrète handheld sound collage and what sounds like a recording of playback of a practice session recording. My favorite moment in Wendy Kraemer arrives during the first side with a great little tune featuring multi-tracked vocals and two guitars, one being a normal sounding electric guitar and the other sounding like unamplified electric guitar like they aimed a microphone at the bridge or maybe duct-taped a contact mic between the pickups. The bass is so locked in that it wasn't until the track ended that it dawned on me there were no drums present. It's an unusual approach yet the result is easily identifiable as a Lithics tune.

This is the first Lithics record I've heard but I do recognize a couple songs on Side B having heard them on various radio shows. The second side mostly eschews the patchwork nature of the first for straightforward demos, and really good sounding demos at that. Their most recognizable song “Edible Door” (or recognizable to me since I can recall the name) appears here in less polished form but no less tight with the bands nervy chops on full display. (I might even prefer this version.) These guys must practice a lot, Wendy Kraemer often doesn’t have the typical feel of the homemade sloppy, mistake-laden rough draft that these types of releases usually amount to. They’re like those bothersome students that bring in their rough drafts to peer review groups and could already get an A turning the paper in as is.

The first song on Side B sounds great, bristling with jagged riffs tied together with a stealthily infectious vocal hook. Oddly enough the following song reminds me of Kate Bush's "Under Ice" despite being a completely different kind of arrangement (one with an odd mechanical sounding kick drum). The end of the side slips into more jammy territory and muffled vocals before fittingly concluding with the sound of a cassette being rewound.

In a rare event that will surely never happen again, I am actually posting this review before the record has been released. Wendy Kraemer is officially being released next Friday, February 7th but it's already available for pre-order on the Moone website.

Jacken Elswyth/Alula Down - Betwixt & Between 5 [Betwixt & Between]
I previously reviewed the fourth installment of Betwixt & Between, an ongoing split series by banjoist Jacken Elswyth where he pairs a different artist with his own work each time out. Elswyth's side was quite enjoyable and Quinie's side really got my jaw dropping so I was eager to hear what sounds lie in wait on the next installment.

As usual Elswyth kicks things off, here with three tracks. Opener "Sweet Lemeny" begins in a bit of a raga-inspired mood backed with a persistent harmonium drone before morphing into frenetic Fahey-isms in the track's second half. Elswyth's choice of instrument, clawhammer banjo if I recall, allows him to work in these established modes but introduce a new take on them. The bright, percussive timbre of the banjo produces an entirely different feeling than we've come to expect with these approaches to music making. "Improvisation for Banjo (22.4)" features fierce, speedy fingerpicking and is certainly the most wild-eyed of the bunch. My favorite moment of Elswyth's material comes near the end, where it sounds like he perhaps grabbed a bow and raked on the strings without missing a beat before concluding the piece. Its jagged coruscation is an unexpected thrill and the piece is richer for it.

Consonant and pleasing to the ear, the final piece "Last Chance Set" is vibrantly active and brimming with adventure; it would be a treat to hear it soundtrack pretty much any movie that's ever been made about Appalachia. I enjoyed my first experience with Elswyth on the last installment of Betwixt & Between but, unless my ears deceive me, I think he's getting better.

Alula Down is a duo that sounds like it could be one person, and that is by no means a bad thing. They create spare and elemental versions of English folk songs that come off as quite haunting without any overt gothic posturing. Each of the four tracks is constructed with the bare minimum of materials. A beautiful, somewhat chilly voice, a single track of acoustic guitar and subtle accoutrements depending on the track (birdsong, wheezing drone, a bed of looped voice). Alula Down reminds me of early Caethua which is a very good thing, though they come off as even more stoic and concentrated. The duo provides a foreboding version of "Sweet Lemeny" which is a true highlight. Based around a stone-faced, cyclical guitar pattern, the track makes for a fascinating contrast with Elswyth's interpretation. The avian duo of "Three Ravens" and "Blackbird" that closes the disc is pitch perfect as well. I could eat a whole plate of these things. 

Shop Assistants - Safety Net [53rd & 3rd]
My most joyous record store moment in recent memory is finding this Shop Assistants 12" at an affordable price. The limey blokes across the pond have the luxury of picking this beauty up dirt cheap but not so here in the western United States. "Safety Net" is a glorious tune, immediately evocative of that angel-voiced 80s Scottish sound. A pure dose of hard-driving c86 sugar rush. It's a rollicking number built on chugging bass, thumping toms and soaring guitar riffs, the kind that lives in your head forever after a single listen.

The two songs on the second side are good too. The pop stomp of “Almost Made It” rolls with a big time guitar break and the lovely closing ballad "Somewhere in China" anticipates the many somber Belle & Sebastian earworms to come. This is simply a public service announcement to grab this record if you are fortunate to have the opportunity.

The Bibs - From the Fish Houses [Soft Abuse]
Don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep up this baby-themed record review gag but I think I've got at least another six months in the tank so I hope you're getting used to it. This month's selection takes its name from one of the most important items you can have in your baby-care arsenal (especially now that my kid is starting to eat solid food): sons of Detroit, MI, The Bibs.

I actually don't know much of anything about The Bibs (apparently they are some kind of Heath Moerland-less (Sick Llama, Tyvek) configuration of Roachclip—which is also a band I'm not too familiar with). I have the Spacecase Records Podcast (excellent listening of new and old while you do the dishes, I recommend it!) to thank for putting The Bibs on my radar after they put "Fine Wine" on one of the episodes. I was hooked and shortly after, like some sort of divine gift, From the Fish Houses showed up in the new arrivals bin after a long, frustrating day.

Emblazoned on a small scrap of paper tucked in the jacket is the insignia "recorded on Tascam four track." Immortal words that get the hair to stand up on the back of my neck every time. There is certainly a Flying Nun vibe on Fish Houses, or at least a post-Flying Nun vibe after the Kiwis infiltrated the water supply of American college-aged rock bands, so if that's in your wheelhouse (and come on, it should be in everybody's wheelhouse) then this record is worth a look. One of The Bibs is named "Chris Durham" and that is a Flying Nun name if I've ever heard one.

"Fine Wine" is a small laundry pile of sloshed vocals, killer carnival-lite organ melodies and a jaunty rhythm section. The recipe is so, so simple but it's also perfection. The track feels like a lost classic that's been sitting in some burnout's closet since 1983 finally getting unleashed upon the world decades later. You gotta hear it.

Elsewhere in the ramshackle collection, "Slow Curves" has that great cardboard box drum sound and marks The Bibs' biggest effort at penning a pop hit, which is to say not all that much effort coming from these bummed strummers. If I really squint (like really squint) I see some hazy slacker-rock version of Nirvana's "Lounge Act" in "Afternoon", a rare uptempo ditty. The opening trio of "Trenches," "This Was" and "Already Gone" makes for an unvarnished entry into Fish Houses's lonesome sounds, nestled among the lingering ghosts on the cassette they recorded over. Live drums that practically sound like a drum machine, bleary eyed slow motion picking patterns and an organ that makes a habit of hiding out in the background whispering handsome countermelodies from time to time. The Bibs indulge in the fragile sound of the single coil pickup and love their single notes, I don't think they strum a guitar until four songs into the record. I have the feeling that as the years go by I'm going to be digging this record more and more.

The worst thing I can say about Fish Houses is that "Fine Wine" is so fucking great that the album's other tracks can't match it. The vast majority of recorded music doesn't come close either, so as far as "worst things" go that's pretty damn good.

DECEMBER 2019

Natalie Rose LeBrecht - Mandarava Rose [Galtta]
Galtta Media is one of the more consistent purveyors of experimental sounds having defined an electronic- and jazz-tinged forcefield around itself yet still find ways to subvert expectations. Last year's Nick Stevens tape came out of left field (yet somehow made perfect sense) and I loved it. Now we have this tape from Natalie Rose LeBrecht and I feel the same, it fits right within "the Galtta sound" while feeling like a departure as well.

This is a heavy tape, it's probably 70 minutes long so you gotta clear your schedule to give it the proper attention. Not difficult listening but demanding, and certainly affecting, in its way. Uneasy listening, shall we say. It's worth taking the trip if you can swing it though because it's a heady one, and easy to get lost in if you allow yourself to.

LeBrecht drizzles layers of acoustic and electric pianos, organ and voice on top of one another creating this whirling, swirling, twirling vortex of sounds in space. With an opening title like "Rishi Stars for Turiyasangitananda" it's evident that Alice Coltrane is an influence, but LeBrecht is on her own tip, exploding notions of what a pop ballad can be rather than jazz. The eleven minute jaw dropper "Rosebud & Lotus" is baroque pop in slow motion, feeling alternately like you're paralyzed in a foggy piano bar witnessing a blurry chanteuse waft wispy croons from the corner of the room, and sinking deep, deep into your chair in the cinema as the lights exponentially dim save for the glowing tableau enveloping you, offering some metaphysical communication you can't parse. David Lackner joins on wind instruments providing subtle accents but it's really LeBrecht doing the heavy lifting here, concocting such sorcery with a deft pair of hands.

Another highlight, "Autonomy Dream", is a wonder in its own right, with LeBrecht pushing her voice further into a higher register supported by a funereal organ melody replete with a somber sax solo by Lackner. LeBrecht is equally magnificent when not unraveling lengthy tendrils of sound over 10 minute run times. "Hear Today" winds down the tape in under four minutes with LeBrecht wistfully exhaling over a simple arpeggio before drifting away amid organ gleam and a rattling flute.

All in all, Mandarava Rose is a mysterious, transporting tape that I'm nowhere close to fully exploring but I'm comforted knowing I'll be rewarded each time I return to it, continually discovering new alleyways to slip down for years to come.

Von Hayes - Moderate Rock [no label]
This is my first encounter with Von Hayes, apparently a band involving Graham Repulski. I wrote about Repulski and his impressively bang-on body swap with Bob Pollard on Success Racist here and Von Hayes seems to add a Tobin Sprout to the equation as two singers trade songs on this one. (The other guy sounds like Colin Meloy from The Decemberists without the shtick.) As one would expect Von Hayes doesn't fall too far from the Graham Repulski tree which is cradled right between the roots of the GBV grand oak so that's "the sound" here. Although, Moderate Rock is lo-fi in method more than aesthetic as the recording is pretty clean overall. The arrangements are simple, usually two guitars, voice and a simple drum machine track (though some songs feature live drums) and that's it. It's a tried and true formula that has worked (and alternately not worked) time and time again.

True to its title, all the songs on Moderate Rock are solid and easily digestible but most don't particularly stand out. Nothing soars like "James Run" on the Repulski tape I have. However, in its second half the album hits its stride, starting with the highlight "Pissanthemum" (for some reason the CD features a few titles belonging on a Bloodhound Gang album like "Urinal Cookies") which takes things to an even simpler place than usual with finger picked acoustic guitar and electric guitar feedback backing up the best vocal performance of the album. "Man of Few Verbs" is an uptempo college rock ditty with a catchy guitar riff. "Zeroes and Victims" splits the difference somewhere in between the previous two, making for a nice string of hits in the album's closing frame.

If you're unfamiliar, I'd recommend tracking down Repulski's Success Racist first before moving on to Moderate Rock, but if you've got that eternal itch for early 90s era college rock like I do, Von Hayes does the trick, sounding especially good on the car stereo during the commute home.

Brandy - Laugh Track [Monofonus Press] 
This team up of Running and Pampers members (now there's a band I should consider reviewing for the baby-themed AuxOut segments) sounds exactly like you'd expect. That's a good thing in my book as Brandy retains the relentless ground 'n pound DNA of both groups. The bass player from Pampers and bass player from Running both play here but it sounds like one picked up a guitar (I'm guessing Matthew Hord of Running is the one who stuck with the low end here).

Despite the mathematics of porting over only one member of Running to Pampers' two, Brandy hews a little closer to Running even though they ditch the neverending feedback for a tight, precise sound. I don't hear as much of the garage rock influence present on the Pampers LP which I'm all good with, 95% lean noise rock action is how I like it.

"You're a Dentist" (an oblique Punch-Drunk Love reference I'm hoping?) kicks off the record with thumping drums and fucking shakers! Drummer is groovin' for probably a full minute before the bass starts rumbling. It's one of the best intros to a noise-rock record in recent memory. Pretty much every track relies on the same tried and true formula of two or three note riffs repeated ad infinitum, unintelligible vocals, with occasional guitar solo/feedback moves as the trio stomps every toe they can on their way to the back door. They're all good but it's hard to pick out one from another. (The penultimate and accurately-dubbed "Urgent Blowout" is pretty gnarly though.) In total, it's a twenty minute 45rpm drubbing and you're out, certainly with a few more bruises than before.

Brandy isn't doing anything especially new—Mayyors, Lamps and any number of other bands with a similar ethos come to mind—but it's doing it really well. Keep shakin' boys.

Tim Cohen - Laugh Tracks [Captured Tracks]
From Laugh Track to Laugh Tracks, this month's baby-themed selection, though not limited to simply babies this applies to all parent-child relationships—and probably beyond those as well.

Penned and sung by Tim's dad Robert Cohen, "Small Things Matter" is an ambling piano ditty I came across on an old episode of a radio show on my drive to work; I was singing it the rest of the day and thus had to track down the record or I'd surely die. "Small Things Matter" is a rare song that I come across far too infrequently. An expression so heartfelt and genuine, devoid of any pretense or irony, that it achieves a sort of universal purity—and I say this as a person who believes that nothing is universal.

The older Cohen ruminates on the difficulty of explaining all the bad shit in the world to a child: how can you be truthful without things sounding so hopeless? His solutions are things like doing small favors for your neighbors or lending "a helping hand to someone further down the ladder" because small things do matter. It's hard to keep it together after the final couplet "Small things matter/Give a sad face laughter" as I think of my daughter and all the joy she brings to everyone who encounters her. I have an inkling you'll feel the same about one of your loved ones as well when you hear it. I can only hope she'll want me to sing a song like this with her when she grows up.

Laugh Tracks is a really solid pop record worth hearing but it belongs in the home of every family because of this song.

NOVEMBER 2019

ISS - Alles 3rd Gut [Sorry State]
Admittedly, I've spent most of 2019 digging through the music of years (decades) prior but I'll be damned if there isn't a better 2019 release than the latest ISS LP. I normally stay away from label "marketing" but Sorry State calls ISS the 21st century's first and only punk band and it's so perfect I wish I'd thought of it. From the classic punk reference (Crime, just in case you're unfamiliar) to the biting, corrosive wit to the fact that it's just the goddamn truth, it is the perfect summation of North Carolina's ISS. There's basically no reason to read this review when that sentence exists. But I'm writing it anyway, go figure.

I discovered ISS a few years ago when I heard "It's a Chore" (an anthem that immediately etched itself in my brain with acid) off of their scorcher of an LP (Endless Pussyfooting) and then they followed that up with a 7" EP which was improbably just as good as the full length and clearly the best short form release of last year. Now it's 2019 and another year, another ISS classic. In case you're unfamiliar, ISS is the only punk band of recent vintage that has discovered a truly innovative approach. They've tastefully combined samples (of punk and punk-adjacent music) and live instrumentation with educated, incisive and sidesplitting assessments of "the scene" into airtight, economical song structures. They're thoroughly original, thoroughly now and thoroughly punk.

Alles 3rd Gut had me psyched by the title alone, they sampled DAF on the previous LP and I was ready to dive into a new DAF-inspired punk-techno ISS. This record isn't that and there isn't much Einstürzende Neubauten influence either despite the cover, but it does expand on their sound in numerous ways, and most importantly the songs started living in my head after just 1 or 2 spins. I could gush on and on about every single track but to save everyone time (including me, most importantly) I won't.

Some of the songs fit well into signature ISS territory like the standout "Fake V Flake" encapsulating the continual spinelessness of moderate politicians ("calculating infallible ways to remain noncommittal"). They stay on the political tip in "Barron Wasteland", imagining a horrifying future under Barron Trump's reign over thick fuzz bass. I love these guys so much I even forgive their dig at LA in the track. The funniest song title of the record "Shoko Ones Pt. 1" takes aim at cults as the group brilliantly turns "Aum Shinrikyo" into a catchy refrain.

As usual, there are a couple of tunes indebted to hardcore like "DDYSWHP" a gutbusting portrait of a former frat brat wallowing over his newfound role of minivan-driving dad ("I used to have a frat car/Now I drive a Windstar/A 2003, no nav or CD, boo hoo/Everyone yells at me wanting to play nonsense from their iPods/But they're all forgetting there ain't no goddamn AUX in Daddy's Whip"). There's "Mac N Me" as well, a vicious screed about entitlement in the 21st century music industry ("Why won't they ask What's in My Bag?/I wanna be the new Sheer Mag/Fly me in to play a fest and then you'll check me out on Tiny Desk/I'll just try not to O.D. like Jay did").

What's most exciting about Alles 3rd Gut are the new directions ISS pushes themselves in. They try out some mellower tunes ("Nut" and "Diet Yogurt") and they're some of the best songs on the record with major hooks. "Elevator Shaft (feat. Miss Lady)" is a bizarre duet painting some Misery-esque narrative (I think?) over a catchy-as-hell melody (and kicking in Giorgio Moroder bass at the end). Channeling 2 Tone, ISS tackles ska in their skewed way with "White Man in Hammerpants", a brilliant satire of the modern white douchebag listening to Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro podcasts at the gym. "Aromatherapy" slows things down for a bit of dirge rock sludge, an unexpected move but they're great at it which shouldn't be unexpected. There's some sax work here that I feel like is sampled from some free jazz record but I'm not the one to call to identify free jazz samples.

The reason why ISS records have been so good is because of the bulletproof songcraft and with the shifts in style on Alles 3rd Gut, this fact has never been more apparent. The songs are still designed with utmost efficiency in mind inviting endless re-playability; they're just now doing it in more ways. Music isn't a competition but these guys are the champs right now. I can't wait to hear where they go with the next record.

Mrs Dink - Diabolique [Degenerate Trifecta]
Sharing a name with one of my favorite 1950s thrillers, Diabolique (well, Les Diaboliques if you're going by the original French title), is a good way to get me interested in hearing your record. This disc is the work of Mrs Dink, purveyor of Washington state techno outpost Degenerate Trifecta.

After a suitable "intro (by Mr Dink)" builds the suspense, the curtain raises and Mrs Dink drops "Cuz I L!ke !t" built around an infectious loop of a muted chime (or synthetic equivalent). It's a hell of a way to start the show but the rest of the disc is packed with stellar jams.

"Classy as $hit" has a charming supplemental literary passage courtesy of Pete Hope but, more importantly, it THUMPS. The thundering kick rumbles like a timpani as Mrs Dink weaves several trance-y synth melodies together and lays on this great shaker-like percussive loop that I can't pinpoint. "zOmb!e dIscO" serves up several walking melody lines and a killer percussive shudder that sounds like a dumpster closing while the cheery tune "G.P. (JUST BE)" radiates positivity. Heavy duty uplift. "My Thru$ting Sexu@lity" features a sequenced synth line that is just odd enough that it might fit somewhere into DAF's Virgin trilogy if it were more out of tune. (And a title like that certainly encourages the thought.)

The best joint of the album is probably "Juli3's Repl@cement" lead by its contagious synth melody which is reminding me of another track I can't quite place, maybe The Juan Maclean's "You Can't Have it Both Ways"? The track builds over seven and a half minutes always on the brink of being unleashed, leaving the listener suspended in a constant state of anticipation.

The disc crams in 69 minutes, including three remixes, which is a lot for an old blogger to digest but also a lot of bang for your buck. Buying this record supports a good cause as well; Mrs Dink is donating all proceeds from the sales of the physical and digital releases of Diabolique to the Lambert House in Seattle, a safe space and resource center for LGBTQ youth. For a diable, Mrs Dink sure is an angel.

Turkish Delight - Howcha Magowcha [I Heart Noise]
Three cheers for I Heart Noise and its cassette reissue campaign of Boston's Turkish Delight. This is cool for two reasons: one) I'd never heard of Turkish Delight and probably wouldn't have without IHN's guiding hand and two) I love to see the cassette tape being employed as a reissue format as well. Vinyl reissues are great but they're expensive and there are a lot of records of yore that deserve to find new listeners but may not yet generate the financial return needed to (responsibly) undertake a vinyl pressing.

Howcha Magowcha, originally released in 1998, is chock full of great tunes and Turkish Delight tastefully change up their approach throughout. "Go Baby" swings from a bubblegum grunge "whoa-whoa-ah-oh!" chorus to a noise freakout while "Gull Bite" commits to grinding skronk. "Li Colt Vas" has a bit of a Swirlies vibe with the shoegaze influence dialed down (speaking of un(der)heralded 90s bands...). "No Sky" makes for a fascinating concoction of artsy 4AD vibes (This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins), 70s riff rock and early 90s "college-core" (like when Sebadoh played really fast and angry).

The wild-eyed, gleeful "Smooth Karate" features a refrain I can't make heads nor tails of ("sex with you's like watching Kung Fu baby") backed by that Fred Flinstone tippy toes sound effect layered over a thick, chugging bassline. It rules. "Don't Look at Me" recasts Sonic Youth as a kraut-funk band and makes for a fun foray into heavy rhythms. The rhythms are back on "Thimble" and Turkish Delight makes a convincing case they could moonlight as an ESG and Liquid Liquid cover band if they wanted, while still maintaining their rough and ready sound.

"All Choked Up" is the pick of the litter, sounding like Pixies if Kim sang Francis's songs (with a little bit of Flipper's "Talk is Cheap" mixed in there too) and if you write a song evoking Pixies and Flipper, you're pretty fucking ace.

The end of Side A sags a little bit as "Sea Quest" might be a little too wobbly for its own good, slowing down the album's momentum and "Metronome" doesn't do much to regain it but overall it's quite a strong record. Many thanks to I Heart Noise for bringing it to my attention and getting it in my ears, I know others feel the same. Moral of the story, if I Heart Noise reissues something you better check it out.

Whettman Chelmets - Alas... The Sun is Shining and You are Still Alive [Submarine Broadcasting]
This is the first record I've heard by Whettman Chelmets and I wasn't too sure what to expect. I guessed maybe a bit of droney atmosphere, and I was a little bit right but Chelmets mostly has some other tricks up his sleeve.

Alas... The Sun is Shining and You are Still Alive comprises a trio of tracks all named for a piece of that phrase. Opener "The Sun is Shining" comes off a little like the shoegaze-synthpop hybridists of the early 00s like Dykehouse and M83. I'm also detecting The Cure seasoning in the mix as well. The production is a bit thin and sizzly, rather than the more typically lush choices of this genre. I don't necessarily mind it but I think maybe some vocals would have filled it out and made for a more satisfying piece overall.

"You are Still Alive" settles into a smeared, spiky long-form drone track recalling Yellow Swans' "shoegaze period" (mainly the At All Ends LP before they decided to call it quits). "Alive" isn't as dynamic as the Swans (who is? no one) but it kicks up quite a racket and makes for a perfect 9 minute blizzard of electricity to hurl yourself into.

The middle track "Alas..." is my favorite work here, it seems specifically placed in the center of the album because it splits the sonic difference between the other two. However, it also incorporates new elements not seen in those tracks. There's a nice thumping kick, processed acoustic guitar (which lends a wonderful organic touch to the proceedings without sticking out like a sore thumb). It's a dynamic composition with a laundry list of interesting production details, odd little melodies and sounds cropping up here and there. The final 90 seconds or so really hit hard so make sure you got your stereo turned up for the proper experience. Nice work.

Alas... The Sun is Shining and You are Still Alive clocks in under 20 minutes and I feel like Chelmets was focused and to-the-point in constructing the release, giving me a well-defined taste of what he's about. Brevity is a musician's friend and it can be yours too.

The Dipers - How to Plan Successful Parties [Omnibus]
This month's (vaguely) baby-themed selection: The Dipers' first and only release How to Plan Successful Parties which I guess you might call a "mini-album" (a term I've never really understood) because it's probably too weighty to be an EP but a 7-song punk full-length doesn't sound quite right either. Luckily, that nerd cataloging bullshit goes out the window when the record's on the turntable.

The Dipers were a trio of two A Frames and one Unnatural Helper (before he became an Unnatural Helper, I think) and the whole thing was recorded by Chris Woodhouse (Mayyors, Karate Party), one of the best engineers the rock & roll world has ever seen. With all that talent involved, it's fair to worry that the album may not be the sum of its parts but it most certainly is. The record was released in 2004 but was actually recorded back in 2001. Fuck me, that's almost 20 years ago now. I'm sure there's some story behind the delay but I don't know it, and rock & roll is timeless anyway.

As you'd expect, A Frames is certainly a reference point and if you like A Frames you're most certain to dig on The Dipers. If you don't like A Frames then I... I... I won't finish that sentence. Riff-grooves a la A Frames figure dominantly but fuzzy, garage-ier production supplants the usual robo-thug approach. This leads to stuff that you wouldn't find on an A Frames record but still delivered with their usual rigor. "It's Not Pretty" could be a theme song lead by an out-of-tune, slam-bang riff you're accustomed to hearing from Crash Normal or Dipers drummer Lars Finberg's band The Intelligence. While the stand out "Shake" is a party anthem full of the the kind of rock & roll swagger A Frames purposely avoid. After seven solid bangers Parties ends, fitfully, with a cascade of noise. Fun and inexpensive, the record completely justifies having a band called "The Dipers" (ick) in your home library.

OCTOBER 2019

Patois Counselors - Proper Release. [Ever/Never]
I've been wanting to write about this record for a while because it's an example of how there's no substitute for buying and spending time with a record. The full length debut from North Carolina's Patois Counselors, Proper Release., was praised uniformly by voices I trust and I heard several tracks played on various radio programs/podcasts but I just wasn't fully connecting with what I was hearing. I wanted to hear what everyone else seemed to hear, I just didn't.

I think the last straw was Yellow Green Red naming it the best full length of the year (a coveted honor to be sure) and comparing them to Tyvek (a band I grew to unabashedly love very slowly) and Men's Recovery Project. The MRP comparison ("'Terrible Likeness' is the best song Men’s Recovery Project never wrote"—more on this later) is what really caught my eye because who else sounds like The Project? Do I trust my ears listening to some compressed mp3 stream on a few occasions or do I trust a reputable label and a cadre of music nerds with better record collections than mine? Well, I've found from experience, the answer to this is always the latter. So I bought Proper Release.

Given some time to sit with the record (well, listen to it, I was probably up on my feet groovin' most of the time) I think I isolated the hurdle that my ears had been tripping over. Patois Counselors' impresario Bo White's voice and cadence sounds a lot like Beck and that guy from Cake. There's nothing wrong with that. But it was just weird and a bit off-putting. I first became aware of (obsessed with) music when Cake and Beck were ruling the alternative charts, so I'll probably need a psychiatrist to sort out this uncomfortable fixation for me cause it must go way back. I resisted for the first couple listens but there was something undeniably beguiling about the record. I bought the record because I knew it was something I wanted to wrestle with, something I wanted to deliberately spend time with and not simply give up on when I don't love it after a listen—having a small fistful of dollars invested always provides a little added motivation as well. With each listen, my initial resistance melted away bit by bit, the heavens parted and I saw the vision I'd longed for. This is a damn fine record.


After careful consideration, I think "Making Appointments" is the Counselors' finest moment. It feels like a track I would have caught once on MTV [insert "when they played videos" proviso here] and been like "Whoa! Who the hell was that band?" scrambling for pen + paper when the band name flashes on screen in the final seconds. Artsy video, maybe one of those where some things are black and white and some things are in color. I'd see it one time and never have the chance to see it again because it was too weird and cool for the general public so the single didn't chart, the album didn't sell, the A&R guy responsible gets a pink slip, the band gets dropped.

The track is a delightful recipe of burbling synth, insistent bassline, Marc Ribot-lite guitar jabs, what sounds like a wooden train whistle I had as a kid, and a piano chiming in with an infectious counter-melody. All lead, of course, by White's fuzzed out lethargy on the mic. "So tired of making appointments that I just quit" is one of the most succinct, universal statements of 21st century living I've heard; the perfect call to inaction leading one of the catchiest tunes in some time.

If Patois Counselors got a chance at a follow up single when "Making Appointments" failed to chart then "The Modern Station" would have been picked due to its classic-sounding, indelibly catchy rock chorus. White slips in "Sheered his library card because he's through it!" one of my favorite lines on the record, as well. It's not like it'd be an easy choice though. Jittery opener "Disconnect Notice" with its anthemic refrain of "The bills are unpaid!" against a mass of sputtering synths and bent strings would be a solid pick. The frantic "All Clean", which finds the crew huffing on some Brainiac ether and dancing like jacked-up jerks, would be ace. If you wanted to chill things out a bit, the slinky rubberband bass groove of "Get Excitement" with snatches of synth and guitar jetting in and out is a go-to. Or pick a nod to the forerunners like "Repeat Offender" and its spastic and infectious chorus, punctuated by a Mark E. Smith-styled "Repeat offend-uh!" or the Andy Gill-like guitar skronk stabs, grooving bass line and synths drizzled all over the damn place on "Last Heat". Hell, one of the top tracks is actually the instrumental "Pffones" which opens the second side, all futuristic mood setting, the punk counterpart to a Deltron 3030 interlude.

One of the truly genius moments is "Terrible Likeness", that's "the best song Men’s Recovery Project never wrote" I mentioned earlier. There's definitely a strong whiff of Men's Recovery Project (in their heavily Residents-ish mode) but Patois Counselors use that approach to go in their own direction. White frets about his disproportional facial features and general dissatisfaction when confronted with images of himself ("You are reminding me that flaws are inherent/Some combo of my parents"). Once again he isolates a uniquely 21st malady and skewers it. I'm reminded of all the time I and others have wasted handing back the iPhone and saying "I look terrible in these. Take some more." as the cycle repeats. The zombie-like chorus of voices chanting "agreed" in response to White's complaints perfectly mirrors the conscripted photographer's resigned desperation to hurry it up and get it over with. Plus, there's a slick g-funk sine-line.

The craziest factoid about Proper Release. is that there are nine(!) credited Patois Counselors: three guitarists, three synth players, bassist, drummer, and White (credited with voice, recording and mixing). Needless to say there's quite a bit going on in these tracks. More than anything else though, what's remarkable about Proper Release. is the songwriting. Pretty much every track here is an earworm in one fashion or another, each jam packed with peculiar hooks all its own. Whether tackling US health insurance in morbidly hilarious fashion on the exhilarating "So Many Digits" or peer pressure and acting like a jackass for a source of entertainment (the wistful finale "Target Not a Comrade") White always finds an unexpected lyrical angle to match the startling sonic concoctions.

Ever/Never is entering the esteemed ring of labels where I'll pretty much buy anything I come across at the record store if its emblazoned with their logo. I know it will be satisfyingly off-center and I'll probably end up loving it. This is the finest E/N record I've heard yet.

Final Cop - Broken Windows [Skrot Up]
Hailing from the prolific, ever-expanding universe of German Army, comes the offshoot Final Cop (credited as a duo of Vern Ore and Peter Kris) with this cassette released by Denmark's durable Skrot Up imprint. The label and artist have a relationship dating back to the first German Army tape I heard which feels like eons ago now. Happily, German Army hasn't slowed down one bit since then.

Fans of German Army, will have no trouble vibing to the sounds of Final Cop as its roots are still planted in the nascent Industrial genre of the late 70s and early 80s before Metal got its grubby little fingers all over it. Final Cop sounds darker though. The duo is geared more toward the crumbling of once-modern infrastructure, taking comfort in the caress of static electricity and the plush mounds of dust in the breaker box, standing apart from German Army's aural-anthropological expeditions to cultures outside the "western" milieu. If that pompous sentence isn't workin' for you, then I'll just say the tape has some cool sounds.

From the whispery, eerie slow-surf guitar strums and crispy drum machine of "Paradoxes" to the great "ooh-wah" synth sound buried way down deep on "World Analysis" Final Cop delivers their share of choice moments on Broken Windows. "Buried" is the operative word here as all the human elements at work sound collapsed upon while the drum machine rides above the fray. The fastest, loudest track—"Moral Majority"—arrives submerged in layers and layers of corrosive distortion. The vocals are reduced to mere voltages throughout, alongside the guitar buzz and drum machines. (If you do happen to make out some intelligible words while listening, then you're hearing the spoken samples rather than the live vocal.) The Cop sounds sharpest (or maybe I should say most indistinct) on the sullen throb of "Tahnahwah Comanche" punctuated by sharp snare hits, smeared with banshee electronics, as well as "Locke Lakota" an industrial shoegaze trip hop amalgam with a blurry but forceful hook. If any of the litany of adjectives used in this review sound appealing then you know what to do.

Writhing Squares - Out of the Ether [Trouble in Mind]
Maybe it's the Philadelphia connection, maybe it's the duo thing, maybe it's the heavy kraut-rock influence but I can't help but think of Writhing Squares as the yang to Blues Control's yin. Or maybe it's vice-versa? All this duality gets confusing. Blues Control is great when I wanna chill, but let's face it, most of the time I wanna rock and the Squares could scratch that itch blindfolded with two hands tied behind their backs.

Writhing Squares is comprised of Kevin Nickles (whose work I enjoyed on the first Taiwan Housing Project LP) on saxophone and flute and Daniel Provenzano taking care of bass duties with both guys chipping in on keys, percussion and vocals. The duo follows up their 2016 debut In the Void Above with Out of the Ether, continuing their mission to make the cosmos terrestrial-bound.

The title of the opening track "Dirt in My Mind's Eye" is about as perfect as it gets for this band, alluding to both the heady abstraction and persistent grit and grime of their sound. The metronomic drum machine ticks along as Nickles wails on the sax and Provenzano lays down some riffs but it's really just a warm up for what's to come. The duo gets downright punk on "Steely Eyed Missile Man" with a speedy drum machine, grooving riffs galore and a Mark Mothersbaugh-like yap. It'll make you move. "Bloodborne Hate and Black Book Mass" rides what's probably THE killer melody of the record with the sax and bass doubling the same line for true two fists to the gut action. Provenzano delivers a genuinely angular groove on "I Turned to the Mirror" setting up some sweet flute action. I'm usually a sax man, but the flute sounds even better within the Writhing Squares context. The way the flute's airiness plays off the dirt-caked bass is magical. Yet, it's a late developing organ melody that steals the show on this one. They attack from all sides.

The Squares really unfurl their wisdom on the sidelong jammer "A Whole New Jupiter". Unusually swirling right from the start, the track marches along diligently with Provenzano dropping wah-wah heat. The world needs more dudes shredding on bass while working the wah. Great move mid-track where everything drops out except the ever-reliant drum machine, and the guys take a break before bringing everything back and revamping the track in a whole new, optimistic form anchored by a lovely saxophone melody. Things kinda soar actually. Some true puff out your chest, I can take on the world vibes. Crucial jam.

The Siltbreeze debut was good but the Squares have taken things to another level with this one. Five tracks, all not-so-silent assassins. Pretty fucking great.

Eyeball - Paradox of Eternal Limits [no label]
The eyeball in the circuit board cover lead me down a path of expecting heavy electronics with a sci-fi/psychedelic angle. That's not really Eyeball's game though, the North Carolina quartet is delightfully difficult to pin down, but the underused tag of "space rock" may be the best genre to nestle them within. Paradox of Eternal Limits is a four track EP with the band modulating their sound differently each time out.

"Acid War" works with a bit of a Sabbath-y riff motif but with a surprisingly clean guitar tone. Eyeball have an interesting sound, keeping the instrumentation pretty clean but dialing up distorted vocals courtesy of Myriam Martian amid the spacey synths, grooving bass line and hand percussion.
The track features some proggy elements but without getting hi-falutin' and show-offy. Prog for the people!

The eight and a half minute "Inside the Moon"is a definite high point right from the Tangerine Dream-like synth intro. With the obvious caveat of no one sounds like Elizabeth Fraser, Martian's vocals take on a Cocteau Twins-like presence but a touch huskier. My favorite aspect of the track is either a processed violin or a synth controlled by violin (or just one hell of a dialed in, realistic envelope generator). It is a gorgeous sound and Eyeball takes full advantage of it. The track is a little trance-like and even at eight and a half minutes, I wouldn't mind it floating on a little longer. Eyeball keeps finding new territory to explore as it drifts into the sounds soft-jazz EVI (I think) by the end, and they sound like they could jam forever and really test those eternal limits. I was gonna suggest someone cut together some scenes from Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Moon with the track and throw it up on youtube, but Eyeball has already done their own video.

"Astral Projector" marks another new direction with a pagan-folk vibe and time-travel-themed lyrics replete with flute, rhythmic acoustic guitar strums and a tambourine & shaker rhythm section. Eyeball finally cuts loose on "The Red Minimum" with a thuggish bassline pounding the ground and a great little synth counter-melody that I wish was louder in the mix. Ms. Martian's vocals are blazing on this with strangulated sounding processing. My preference is to push all levels into the red but Eyeball manage to sound heavy and urgent here with pretty clean production. Bravo!

Four different stylistic variations under the Eyeball umbrella, paradoxically (hey! that's in the title) they sound the best at their toughest ("The Red Minimum") and at their most demure ("Inside the Moon").

Francesco Covarino - Olive [Thirsty Leaves]
This month's unapologetically baby-themed selection. I mentioned last month I love free percussion+musique concrète but free percussion+a baby girl is pretty good too. The solo album Olive by Italian percussionist and head of the Tsss Tapes imprint, Francesco Covarino, was recorded "a few weeks before [his] daughter was born" as noted in the jacket. The album title was inspired by his unborn daughter, in Francesco's words:

"In the first sonogram, she was just a little thing, the size and shape of an olive, so “Olive” was the name we used to refer to her during almost the entire pregnancy. While recording this music, I was thinking, “When my daughter grows up she will listen to this and think: ‘This is what my dad was like when I was about to be born’.”

Aww, isn't that sweet? I'm getting dusty thinking about it. Covarino has a very inviting style, and despite only percussive instruments at his disposal, subtle melodies reveal themselves willingly along with the rhythms. A half hour divided into 16 bite-sized morsels, Olive has a vignetted quality as Covarino transitions fluidly through different dispositions. The first four track sequence is case in point. The CD begins meekly, quiet enough that you'll be turning that volume knob up a little more then expected, then the second track ("oliva#56") thunders through with loud, rousing tom hits, leading into the third track ("oliva#85") which gets the rhythm rolling faster seguing perfectly into "oliva#30" which is quite evocative and moody. That's only the beginning of Olive's story, Covarino guides you down several invigorating pathways for the full 31 minutes. Excellent recording and mastering make this a delight on the stereo, unusually pleasant to relax and soak in for a solo-percussion effort.

As to be expected, my favorite track here is the weirdest one, the sixteenth to be exact, where Covarino eschews conventional drums completely for this garbled, rubbing of stones or some such object. It's great! But I make special mention because it, and the preceding track, are only available on the CD release and not on the digital version of the album. You gotta get the CD cause that track is the best note to end on. Olivia Newton-John said it best: baby, let's get into physical media.

SEPTEMBER 2019

Waxy Tomb - Imminent Fold [Gilgongo]
Well, here’s a tricky one. Every so often you run across a record that seems to taunt you while you write about it. With every attempt at description, I hear a ghostly scoff of “Nice try...” One must forge on through the aural and authorial wilderness, however, for the chance at arriving anywhere close to the desired destination. Dither and die.

Waxy Tomb is Jules Litman-Cleper, ostensibly a human hailing from this terrestrial plane, though I’m skeptical. Ah, the age-old ‘alien music’ trope. Overused? Quite. But, I swear, this time it’s really true. I have no trouble picturing an extra-terrestrial researcher poring over hours and hours of static and suddenly happening on Imminent Fold beamed from another dimension. Frantically attempting to explain to the skeptical powers-that-be that these are songs. Sir, sir! If you pay attention there are rhythms, melodies and (inaudible gasp) even words: “This is pop music.” An astonishing revelation sending chills up several spines.

Though it is far from a one-to-one comparison, I keep coming back to Sightings as a point of reference for Waxy Tomb. Both artists make it a point to work within traditional(ish) song structure but eschew any traditional approach in doing so. For Sightings, it’s the power trio rock band. For Waxy Tombs, it’s synth pop.

If you revisit the beginnings of synth pop, when Kraftwerk had sufficiently infected the minds of Daniel Miller and John Foxx, inspiring their respective synthetic discharges, things were weird. The Normal is weird. Metamatic is weirder. And then Gary Numan somewhat accidentally becomes a pop star and the form gets progressively straighter, more refined, more digestible. Imminent Fold is the result of an alternate history where synth pop never catches on, instead becoming a permanent refuge for the strange. The outcast form enduring mutation after mutation for four long decades until this LP emerges.

Is it a stretch to call Imminent Fold a pop record? Probably. But that’s the point. Litman-Cleper is re-imagining what one can do with familiar features and creative building blocks. But what does it sound like? Digital synthesis brain scramble, violently swinging between severe two-second loops of thump-click-bloooop and hare-brained drip and splatter, smothering an amorphous being who sounds like she’s attempting to communicate to a new race for the first time. Not haphazard, but employing structures a mere mortal can’t comprehend. The LP’s 18 tracks don’t feel like songs so much as nooks and crannies of one big bulbous, misshapen growth (handily approximated on the cover).

A big lyrics book (yes, real words are being sung and spoken!) is included, appropriately stylized to the point of illegibility. Looking like a fucked edition of those Magic Eye books with the hidden pictures I could never see as a kid (and probably still can’t as an adult either). It feels like a momentous event when I make out a phrase in the book and on the record at the same time. 

Sometimes when I finish reviewing a recording, I feel like my journey with it is complete. I know it back to front and have extracted everything there is to know. I certainly don’t feel that way about Imminent Fold and I don’t expect I ever will. Too many unattainable secrets lie within these grooves. A pop record I’ll be listening to the rest of my life and still never figure out. How often does that happen?

Kyle Motl - Augur [Metatrope]
San Diego-based contrabassist Kyle Motl reminds us all that the double bass is quite overlooked in the avant-garde solo improv zone. I've got loads of recordings of this ilk using guitar, percussion, violin etc. but the only other example of solo double bass I recall having in my library is an excellent tape by Andrew Scott Young (of Tiger Hatchery fame). So Motl has some fresh earth to plow, and plow he does.

Motl makes his instrument quaver and quake. Sometimes swelling to a burly, hulking mass, sometimes reduced to a frantic whimper. Tones heave and wheeze, subject to insistent palpitations. Contrabass truly is an incredible instrument, capable of mammalian squeals, didgeridoo-esque drones and timpani-like percussive thunder ("Augur II") in Motl's masterful hands. I couldn't blame you if you thought "gee, that's a ripping sax solo" on the particularly impressive "Phosphene II" where Motl manages to both take the lead and provide accompaniment for himself—a one-man-band of the highest order. Another curve ball, "Augur III" almost has a 70s crime movie vibe, somewhere between moody and slinky while "Augur IV" nearly sounds like a drum solo.

Augur is about as good as solo improvised performance gets. Diverse approaches and timbres abound; Motl doesn't fall into any repetitious habits, always finding a fresh approach to his instrument. Motl wasn't on my radar before, but he definitely is now. (By the way, the cassette sounds fantastic and according to the credits we have Matt Baltrucki (recording/mixing/mastering) to thank for that. Thanks Matt!)

Tashi Dorji & John Dieterich - Midden [Gilgongo/Moone]
[Skip to the second paragraph to avoid the navel gazing] Ah, Deerhoof, so many memories from my high school days. There was the time I reviewed their album Milk Man in the school paper and actually had parents lodge complaints about it (I had to meet with the principal over them!) And there was the first time I listened to a Deerhoof album. I was staying with an out-of-state friend for my 15th birthday celebration and when asked for a gift idea I requested Reveille by a new band I heard about called Deerhoof. My friend and his mom generously granted my wish and eagerly suggested we play the CD on the way to lunch while I politely declined, hoping to avoid judge-y looks during the clatter that would surely emanate from the car stereo. They insisted against my protests, and you know, things were actually okay through the first few tracks but then "No One Fed Me So I Stayed" started blaring on the speakers and the bomb was dropped "Do you actually enjoy listening this music?" It took a little while for the mushroom cloud of atomic-awkwardness to clear and needless to say they didn't play any more of my CDs in the car. Despite, the rocky first go, I unabashedly dug Reveille and, now listening as an adult in a place of my own, shielded from taunts of the unconverted (ha!), I can say the same about Midden.

I've been a fan John Dieterich's elastic and kinetic guitar fireworks in Deerhoof but had never ventured into his improvisational work and Tashi Dorji is a name that sounds familiar but I'm pretty sure I'd never heard him play. So Midden functions both as an educational course for yours truly and a portrait of slammin' six-string skronk etched in ethenyl. 

Each guitarist takes one channel. My guess is that it's Dorji on the left and Dieterich on the right. I love the inauspicious beginning as the first side begins with several seconds of near silence before the twin guitars start chiming. Bent notes build quickly to a thick, noisy thrum early on then the duo briefly approaches "regular" guitar jazz and even settles into a delicate moment before later kicking up dust in a Hototogisu-lite shitstorm. And that's just the first side.

Supposedly, this recording documents the first time Dorji and Dieterich played together, but the two are so in sync with one another that I'm struggling to fathom that this could be true. They have the uncanny ability to ride same the dynamic shifts blow by blow. It's a seamless journey through peaking levels and tempered valleys.

Throughout Midden, the most notable trait in my mind is that both players inhabit this nether region between dissonance and consonance; there's no real melody or harmony but there's the specter of both amid the gristle and grind. It's difficult to properly describe but this is the kind of out there record that could get the uninitiated into out there records.

If Midden can be this excellent as a first-go, the possibilities are scary if these guys started playing together regularly. Could the world even handle it? You know what, fuck what the world can handle. I'm ready so let's do this. Tashi and John gimme your best shot, blow my mind.

Gilgongo is killing it with this recent trio of LPs, all of which are worth tracking down.

Derek Erdman - Coyote (Archives Vol. 1) [Sanzimat International]
Ohio has birthed too many great troubadours to count (Tommy Jay, Peter Laughner, Jim Shepard, Pollard/Sprout, and on and on) but one that had never showed up on my radar is Derek Erdman. This probably isn't too surprising given that Erdman is a particularly odd duck when compared to those above.

In addition to Erdman's solo material, Chicago's Sanzimat International has collected material from Erdman's groups Beauty Pageant, Double Decker Bus, The Future Cobras and Witch Duck amounting to 30 tracks recorded between 1991 and 2004. (Dates for each track aren't specified, and it's not clear if the tracks fall in chronological order) The tape flies by, however, as the 30 tracks comprise brief songs and even briefer interludes (some lasting a handful of seconds).

Coyote really runs the gamut: rolling piano pop with titles that double as lyric sheets ("Everybody Likes That Girl", "Do You Want It, Do You Need It, Do You Love It"), post-Violent Femmes frustration pop ("On Again, Off Again"), melodic tape experiments ("Carom", "Crayons"), soundtrack-y pieces ("Thirty Minutes Over Dilemma"), spacey synth-goofs ("Gorf-y"), various flavors of GBV-ish balladry ("Teenagers & Hamburgers", "Hello Claire" (twice), "Hoping That You'll Never Know", "The Ballad of You") and morose noise-sludge-pop ("I'm Thinking About Getting Married"). Sometimes it's just an unholy conflagration of all of the above ("That's Portrayal (6-Hour Megamix)").

Most tracks hew to a rough-ish fidelity but "Drunk" (credited to Beauty Pageant) is a lightly polished 90s pop tune that would have felt right at home on college radio (and maybe was!) The two tracks credited to Double Decker Bus stand out with the K Records-style shamble-pop of "You Will Never Know" and "It Really Happened" which sounds like the communal goof-folk territory Happy Jawbone Family Band has been mining in the 21st century (a la "No More Smoking Pot in the Bathroom").

All of the above is great stuff, but the track "He Knows That I Love Him" which arrives at the tail end is the reason this tape must be owned. A minute and a half of gentle pop bliss. I swore that it had to be a cover, that I already knew the song, that I'd been hearing it all my life. I searched and searched and have never come up with anything, leading me to believe that Erdman tapped into some eternal pop spirit of the late 20th century and delivered this song straight from the gods. The track feels so familiar and comforting in all the right ways, a gem of sweetness and charm. Utter perfection. Take it easy on your rewind button now cause you'll be needing it when you get this tape in your clutches.

There are one or two moments on Coyote (Archives Vol. 1) that can be annoying ("Zork-y") but overall it's eclectic and endearing, and for someone who has no clue who Erdman is, it's quite the adventure.

[EDIT: Sanzimat International sent in a photo of the full archive from which Coyote was culled]

Men's Recovery Project - Make a Baby [Vermiform]
Men's Recovery Project is one of the more fascinating 90s "rock" acts; they were a hardcore band morphed halfway into a neo-Residents outfit. (The metamorphosis completed on their masterpiece of a final LP, Bolides Over Basra, one of the more cherished records in the AO archive.) Anyway, they have a record called Make a Baby and I'm obsessed with my baby so it's getting a review. (You'll likely be seeing some random baby-themed selection each month on AuxOut for the foreseeable future.)

With 8 tracks on a 45rpm 7" platter, the Project wastes no time packing Make a Baby with weird hardcore ("Why We are Lazy"), bleep-bloop interludes ("Ant Propolis"), jokes ("Man Urinating, Laughter") and Commercial Album rejects ("Man Hole"), obviously that's a compliment. The pinnacle is the final track "Enjoy Life" with its Flipper-level philosophical insights into what it takes to be happy: "Work hard/Show promise/Make friends/Establish trust/Fall in love/Man a vehicle/Make a baby/Win approval" I followed this path exactly (seriously!) and I'm living proof that it really does work! I oughta negotiate a little endorsement deal in exchange for the MRP records I'm still on the look out for. There's no substitute for inspiring testimonials.

Make a Baby is one of the cheapest MRP project records you can score ($2.75 on Discogs as we speak) and it's one of several essential documents of the 90s' most entertaining prank-punk wackos. So, yeah, buy it already.