Video: Jonas Reinhardt - Atomic Bomb Living

If there was ever a Kranky artist who could pull off the "forgotten film footage music video" it would be Jonas Reinhardt. His synth space kraut begs to be matched with some unknown sci-fi B movie, and "Atomic Bomb Living" lives the dream. Something to do with pterodactyl heads, a robot with clawed feet (to help with dancing on the rocks), and clam breasted, island bound sirens worshiping both.

"Atomic Bomb Living" is a track off the just released Powers Of Audition, which from the sounds of it, adds a whole ton of instruments and groove to Reinhardt's repertoire of vintage blorpy synths found on his debut self titled record.

Tom Vourtsis - The Driver (self released, 2010)

Tom Vourtsis - Green


Tom Vourtsis did it right. He e-mailed me, complimenting AGB, talking about which posts he liked, what albums he bought because of reviews he read, and then told me he makes music, linking to his SoundCloud. Clearly, I'm going to at least give whatever he made a whole hearted listen with my full attention. And if it's good, I'm going to write a review where I basically cream my pants over it. Well, guess what...

The Driver is a wonderfully delicate work of clicky drone, with each of the 6 songs named after a color ("Chrome" is too a color, stfu). I'm not too good at the "This song makes me see this color" sort of thing (although my wife is the fuckin queen of that) so I'm not too sure if the colors he's ascribing to each song are appropriate, but I'm gonna just say yeah, they're totally appropriate, because why tf not.

The tunes are something of the Mountains/Eluvium/Hecker variety, although at the same time not quite like any of them. Lots of digital processing, but also super organic. Smooth blissful tones washing under everything, with little water bugs skimming across the surface creating the tiniest of ripples that catch the sun rays. Warm air drifts through the green canopy, just enough to rustle the leaves while raindrops trickle down the branches. Sweet euphoric mind candy.

But it ain't all flowers and rainbows, sometimes the rare bald eagle makes an appearance, fucking shit up and taking out some of the smaller birds, being as graceful and majestic as nature can be. Beauty in the macabre, glory in the static bath, harmony in the glitch.

So yes, The Driver is fucking incredible. Absolutely gorgeous ambience that will cleanse your regrets and free you of guilt. And did I mention it's free? It's free. Download it now and you'll be swimming in awesomeness as fast as your internet connection can allow.

Blastfest 3!

Alright dude(ette)s, it's March, and March means Blastfest!

The Whitehaus, the coolest commune this side of of the Catskills, is throwing down the gauntlet for Blastfest 3. Check out this fuckin lineup.

Avi Jacob, Gregory J Mullen, Manners, Shai Erlichman, The Needy Visions, Duck That, The Woodrow Wilsons, Wolf Woolf, Tulsa, Ambitious Tugboat, Concord Ballet Orchestra Players, Debbie and the Bullets, Casey Rocheteau, Apollo Sunshine, Rene, Boy Without God, James Lindsey, The Great Valley, OH!OH!MINTS!, The French Cops, Girlfriends, The Meadowlarks, Turtle Ambulance, and more, YES MORE

So much fun is going to be had at Blastfest 3. You have no idea. It's going to be like the epic party you always wanted to throw but never had enough friends to make it crazy enough. Well, everybody at Blastfest is your friend (true story) and that means THIS IS THAT PARTY. The music is going to be sosososo fantastic and, get this, FREE PB&Js!! Just don't be a glutton.

They'll be celebrating the release of The Whitehaus Family Record Family Record, a 2xLP compilation featuring a ton of the people playing Blastfest and then some. And there's not just music, there's also a zine fair put on by the inimitable Papercut Zine Library (who just found a new home in Somerville!), plus a comic jam (?). Yeah, this is going to be pretty grand.

The whole hootenanny goes down on March 20 at the Cambridge YMCA from 11-11 with a "sliding scale" of $5-10 for tickets. Meaning if you can swing it, and you should be able to swing it I mean they're giving away goddamn PB&Js you guys, then you should drop a tenner in the bucket.

Haiku Review: Michael DuFault - MicroD (self released, 2009)

Michael DuFault - Palisade


Michael DuFault
MicroD (download)
/one-bit music cubed/
/genius in simplicity/
/silver tones evoke/

OOPs: The Music Of Primitive Man (Horizon, 1973)

Fiji Islands Dance


Tonga Chorus


I know, the title isn't exactly the most politically correct way of talking about old school tribes living off the map and off the grid. I didn't come up with the name and it's from the '70s ,so if you look past it you're getting yourself into some seriously amazing sounds from remote corners of the world.

Hypnotic chants, exotic instruments, dance songs, folk songs, "songs about work, war, love and celebration." There's over 40 songs, most under a minute long, and they're all endlessly fascinating. There are 80 second clips of a Finnish Lapland joik or 45 seconds of a Dusun bamboo stick orchestra. There's a Motilón Indian musical bow solo, using what might be the earliest known stringed instrument. Akawai women and children sing while grating cassava root, Cuna shamans chant away a young girl's fever.

The back cover describes what every song is about, like the "Cuna Puberty Celebration" that says "This male chant, the Yayganagadi tune, is accompanied by two flutes and maracas. The girl being honored remains with her family inside a specially built circular hut while the other members of the village make the fiesta." Or the "Walbiri Blooding Ceremony" which consists of "Chanting accompanied by a bull-roarer, a wooden slat attached for a string, which makes a whistling noise when whirled. During this ceremony the Walbiri, Australian Aborigines of the desert regions of Northern Territory, cover themselves with feathers using blood as an adhesive."

These songs are from a world completely unknown to me and are perhaps centuries old. But the funny thing is, is that there are so many similarities found in contemporary music. Give Eye from Boredoms one instrument, or strip Animal Collective of all their electronics, and you could have the great-great-great-great-grandchild of a Fiji dance or Tonga chorus.

You need to download this. Some of it is more interesting than enjoyable, but the majority of it is definitely both.

DOWNLOAD

Locrian - Territories (At War With False Noise / Basses Frequences / Bloodlust! / Small Doses, 2010)

Locrian - Procession Of Ancestral Brutalism


Where the fuck do you start with a record like this? I guess the first thing I should mention (in case you didn't notice) is that Territories is too much of a monolithic beast to be contained by individual labels or continents. It took FOUR labels to put this thing out. That right there should clue you in as to how fucking massive this record is.

Then there's the fact that this isn't just André & Terrence playing, like most Locrian releases. Nope, they've recruited, like, every awesome metal dude around. Mark Solotroff (of Bloodyminded) on vocals and synths, Blake Judd (of Nachtmystium) on guitar, Bruce Lamont (of Yakuza) on sax and vocals, and Andrew Scherer (of Velnias) on drums. DUDES. We get it. You're trying to make to most badass record ever. No need to go overboard (just kidding, always go overboard please).

What Locrian usually go for is black. You know, black metal, blackened ambience, black doom, black noise, all the black one record can handle. But combine their entire discography's blackness and you still can't muster even a half hearted fight against the epic black hole that's Territories.

This record is fucking incredible. It opens with a super textured lurching hunchback of a song, with piercing squelches of feedback over a gurgling swamp of vocals and noise. The next song chills out a bit with some not-too-scary low end drone played by a mourning sax and commiserating synths, accentuated by spurts of crashing cymbals. But the third song is where they fucking kick it into gear. All out black metal fury that totally fucking annihilates in the most gorgeous way possible. I don't think I've heard them delve this far into the BM yet, and it's so. fucking. good. It's not especially fucked or twisted that way I normally like my black metal, but it's not too straightforward either. They balance the blast beats and wall of buzz with droning static and plodding thunder in a way that makes me think "Why don't they always do this? It's unbelievable." But then I listen to the rest of the record and remember why.

Territories finishes with 3 more songs that really get into some true terror, blackened rumbling, traipsing thrumming, soaring static, and more of that torturous feedback. Clouds roll in and shit gets dark, heavy, and scary as fuck. Helicopters flying in launching tear gas rockets to stop the rioting masses, decrepit malfunctioning machines topple, rusted tetanus infections, doomsday alarms, the demise of our society. And it all culminates with a black metal march of triumph over the decay, proof that even in the Future American Dystopia, no matter how debased and degenerated we have become, it's still going to be fucking beautiful.

Have A Nice Life at The Stone (NYC)

Pictures first, then the review. BAM!






See 'em bigger on Flickr.


Connecticut's devastatingly amazing metal/shoegaze/whatever duo Have A Nice Life played their first show ever at The Stone in New York on Sunday night. Living 5 hours away and being in the middle of the Salem Film Fest at work wasn't going to stop me from going. The only thing that could have stopped me was the fact that The Stone is fuckin ridiculously small and you can only buy tickets at the door, so hypothetically I could have gotten all the way there and still not have gotten in. Luckily, that wasn't the case.

I got in line around 8:00, there were maybe 15-20 people already ahead of me, and HANL was scheduled for 10. And they were the only band playing, too. No openers. No headliners. Just the best fucking band ever playing in a tiny room packed with about 100 die hards (sitting in folding chairs, wtf) and stacks upon stacks of amps.

HANL added a couple more people to the live lineup to make things go smoothly. In addition to Dan and Tim (on vocals and bass respectively), there was Dan's brother Will (of Afterlives) playing keyboards and Cody Kestigian (of America Addio) playing guitar. I was really hoping there would be live electronic drums or something, but they ended up just having the drum track pre-recorded, for mostly obvious reasons I guess.

So much power, emotion, and fucking volume. They rocked so hard. Everybody fucking loved it, although I think there were plenty of people (myself included) who wanted to toss the goddamn folding chairs out the non-existent windows and just rock the fuck out. When you're watching Dan turn into a screaming madman singing songs about his deceased father, the last thing you want to be doing is chilling out in your little wooden chair.

Here's the set list, complete with 2 new songs:
Collins
Deep, Deep
Bloodhail
Waiting For Black Metal Records To Come In The Mail
I'm Dr. House
Hunter
Earthmover

I swear to God when they played "Earthmover" I was going to fucking die. That shit was unbelievably epic.

Once they finished playing, they had a tape called Time Of Land with 4 new songs that they were selling exclusively at that show. Can't get it elsewhere. And it was 1 tape per person, too, so I doubt you'll be seeing any copies for sale on eBay or whatever. Although you'll likely find it for downloading pretty soon (maybe even here?).

BUT, good news for everyone, more Have A Nice Life shows are already planned. They're scheduled to open for Alcest at Cafe Nine in New Haven, CT, and I'm pretty certain they'll be doing to same at Unit 11 in Allston, although that has yet to be confirmed. But seriously dudes, do whatever the fuck it takes to make it out and see HANL. Totally won't regret it.

Haiku Review: Oreaganomics - Atlas Drugged (self released, 2009)

Oreaganomics - i don't want to b human


Oreaganomics
Atlas Drugged (download)
/warped, fucked, and busted/
/dried mud crumbles out speakers/
/beats from the badlands/

Harsh Noise For Your Wall

Danny Milanese, who makes fucked up tunes under the Ultra Bonbon moniker, also apparently makes visual art. Paintings to be precise. And he’s got a new series that he’s working on called Harsh Noise For Your Wall, which, if you don’t know, is a terrible/hilarious pun referencing the idea/philosophy/genre Harsh Noise Wall.

Full article on diskant.

Dire Wolves - Magickal Mayan Age Of Musick (Dynamo Sound Collective, 2010)

Dire Wolves - Side A


This is like the most obscure supergroup ever, but it's still totally a supergroup. Dire Wolves is Jeffrey Alexander (Black Forest/Black Sea, Secret Eye Records), Dan Letson (Forest Dweller), Matt McDowell (Sagas, Bravepriest, a bazillion collaborations), and Ian Bonnet (Whitetail, In The Belly Of The Whale, etc). And unlike all of the recent bullshit "supergroups" like Them Crooked Vultures or Monsters Of Folk that totally suck ass, Dire Wolves fuckin kills it. These dudes are so awesome.

Magickal Mayan Age Of Musick is a drugged out spider's web of psych noise drone in the form of a 20 minute cassette. Sometimes it gets in a warbled bluesy groove that could be filtering out from some no-light smokey basement club, sometimes it'll dissolve into a empty hazy tin of nothingness before it jolts into a spastic on-off freak out that makes more sense as "noise" than it does as "psych jam." All 10 minutes of the A side, however, are fuckin nuts, scanning the radio and jumping all over the place from semi-ethnic garage meanderings with lazy drums to balls out The Heads-channeling to twinkling interludes to wah-wah blazin electronic static nastiness.

Not sure if these dudes actually know what they're doing or if they're just having a good time fucking around making absolutely ridiculous psych noise tapes but either way Magickal Mayan Age Of Musick is definitely not to be missed. Only 50 were made so grab one from Dynamo! (which just so happens to be run by the dude from Hunted Creatures. Bonus!) before they run out.

Hong Chulki - Amplified WC (Ghost & Son, 2010)

Hong Chulki - Amplified WC (excerpt)


Hong Chulki just became my new dude crush. He created a sound installation in a public bathroom consisting of 2 feedback loops. One of the elements had an exposed audio cable and aluminum foil attached directly beneath a ventilation duct, the idea being that all of the near imperceptible vibrations would cause the cable and foil to randomly come in contact and scream violent bursts of electronic feedback. The other loop, made up of an 8" monitor and piezo mic, oozes screeching metal and bone rattling buzz.

This shit sounds fucking AWESOME. I'm talking gut inverting drone and brutal squalls of demon static storms, throngs of beetles digging through your ear canals, all 3 heads of Cerberus snarling while the sticky blood of its last meal drips down the back of your neck. The best part of this is that it's purely improvised without Chulki doing a thing. "Improvised noise without improviser." Chulki fabricated an independent system that would create noise according to its environment. I know it's been done before, but I haven't heard it done like this. Because this is just too fucking cool.

Only 90 copies made on 3" CD-Rs with surprisingly charming artwork. It's Ghost & Son's debut release so show some support and grab this piece of history.

V/A - Peeling (Gaarden, 2010)

Dustin Wong - Breezy Comfort


Compilations only interest me if they do 1 or more of the following: A) Introduce me to new bands while incorporating bands I already know and like, B) Have exclusive songs by great bands that I won't find elsewhere, or C) Generally have a cool "mixtape" feeling. GREAT NEWS. Peeling accomplishes all 3 in spades.

Before I go any further, I need to press upon you just how fucking PUMPED I am that there is a new (and exclusive) Et Ret track on this comp. Et Ret was the genius behind the unheard masterwork Gasworks and then he kinda fell off the face of the Earth. Never heard from him again. Apparently he's been hiding in Germany waiting for Gaarden to put out a comp that he could contribute to. His piece "Today's Cake" starts Peeling off with a subdued acoustic guitar with minimal processing and lots of resonance. It's a damn shame that it's not even 3 minutes long. Maybe it's just a diving board for his second album?

Ok, so, here are names you should already know and love on Peeling: Matthew Robert Cooper (aka Eluvium), Jason Urick, and Holy Sons, all of whose songs are fucking fantastic. That should be enough to get you jonesin for the other 10 tracks of magnificence. Like Tests' (don't say that out loud) skittering river of synth static. Or the Lexie Mountain Boys and their basement cult wall of trash can chants. One of my favorite tracks is Dustin Wong's (of Ponytail) "Breezy Comfort" which in two words is able to capture everything perfect about the song, something I probably couldn't do in 20.

The sequencing on Peeling is impeccable, too. Not only does it have ridiculous flow from one song to the next (the first 5 tracks, especially) but the album as a whole retains a general mood of joyful ease even while jumping from genre to genre. The transition of electronics to acoustics and back again is refreshing and seamless.

However, I have one singular problem with Peeling. Electric Kastle's (Martyn Leaper of The Minders) "Jubilee." UGH. It's not that it doesn't fit, because it kinda does, I guess, but I just can't get into it. Guy's voice just gets on my nerves. I think I wouldn't like Electric Kastle in any circumstance, but it makes it all the worse with him popping up in the middle of this otherwise totally fucking awesome compilation. Sorry dude. I bet plenty of people will appreciate "Jubilee." It just won't be me.

As if you needed any other reasons to buy Peeling, the Holy Sons song is only available on the CD version and completely absent from the digital download version (licensing issues or something, don't ask). And the artwork is fucking sweet: 4 color screen printed bi-fold cardstock (find the gnome!) and a letterpressed track listing insert. 150 hand numbered copies britches. ACT FAST.

P.S. I've got two sets of relatives visiting and my birthday on Saturday so things are going to be a little quiet on AGB for about a week or so. Make me proud and learn the words to this while I'm away.

Haiku Review: Josef Nadek - [zak] (TVK, 2009)

Josef Nadek - [zak]


Josef Nadek
[zak] (download)
/heaving rancid pus/
/masochist's empty workshop/
/ears leak yellow brain/

Tim Hecker, Mountains, David Daniell at Cambridge YMCA Theatre (Together Festival)

David Daniell was brilliant. Mountains played a song that sounded like the surf armed with a megaphone coming to turn your soul into water. Tim Hecker was deafeningly indescribable. He played "Chimeras" and I died.

Tim Hecker - Chimeras


Tim Hecker

Tim Hecker

Mountains

Mountains

David Daniell

Dan Friel - Obsoleter (Spooky Tree, 2009)

Dan Friel - Pink Helicopters


It’s harsh and melodic, massive and hollow, gritty and lush, and creates hypnotically blissful ear candy that spans the grand desert jungle.

Full review on diskant.