MP3: Girlfriends - The Day I Was A Horse (Ampeater, 2010)

Girlfriends - The Day I Was A Horse


I love Girlfriends oh so dearly, and after listening to their debut tape on repeat a hundred zillion times in my car for the past 4 months I really regret giving them a half-assed "list review" of their A+++ tape. So here's my chance to make up for that massive error.

Ampeater has put out another one of their world renowned digital 7 inches, this time with 2 "new" Girlfriends songs. The first is a revised version of the first track on their tape, "Good To Be True." It's cleaned up a bit, polished, and the alien theremin solo is missing. Not too different. But the other song is "The Day I Was A Horse." Yeah, it's a Vaselines cover!

It's short and sweet, with the female Girlfriend having to sing a bit more than usual (obviously). If you know the song and/or The Vaselines, you'll love Girlfriends having a go at it. If you're totally oblivious to The Vaselines, you'll still love it because it's a great fucking song and Girlfriends are the best.

Download the new digital 7" here.

P.S. They played this song at Blastfest III on Saturday. It was awesome.

Haiku Review: Dropa - Sloppyy Seconndd (Breakfast Of Champs, 2010)

Dropa - Sun Spot 1


Dropa
Sloppyy Seconndd (download)
/raddest bedroom beats/
/endless slumber dance parties/
/rain cloud cough syrup/

OOPs: The Mausoleums - Blackened Fawns Cleanse The Earth With Fire (Chinese Workers Labor Union, 2008)

The Mausoleums - Totem Pole


I reviewed this beast a couple years ago and it looks like it's disappeared since then, at least in terms of finding a physical copy. These two years have done nothing to wane by obsession though, because this motherfucker still destroys.

It's like The Mamas & The Papas black metal. You know how Torche became the poster boys for pop metal? Well The Mausoleums are the fucking wizards of speaker shredding blown out black pop metal. Seriously seriously killer.

Download this regardless of your taste in music. It will blow your fucking mind no matter what you like. But you'll probably only enjoy Blackened Fawns if you're into the whole having your mind blown sort of thing.

THE POWER IS YOURS!

Black Pus, Sissy Spacek, Nautical Almanac, Wittmer & Knowles, Weyes Blood at Great Scott

Black Pus: whirlwind chaos, heavier and more metal than on record, surprisingly chill crowd, "Fuck the beat police!"

Sissy Spacek: dude had guitar with springs for strings, Wiese looks like a creepy pedophile (via The Lovely Bones), indescribable noise that somehow didn't (but should have) shattered my lens

Nautical Almanac: crazy ass rear projections on a giant's sheet distracted from the already distracted radio-scanning incomprehensible clatter

Wittmer & Knowles: performance noise, Germanic human robots played tuning forks with their feet, the mouth of hell opened up, dragged to a cacophonous world of guttural growling & strobe lights, wall of mayhem, sight & sound cease, robots collapse

Weyes Blood: shamanistic organ drone pop with Zola Jesus vocals and warped backwards tapes of wind & dust, the man made her blown out her essential mood-enhancing candles

Some photos below, shit tons more on Flickr.

Black Pus

Black Pus

Sissy Spacek

Sissy Spacek

Nautical Almanac

Wittmer & Knowles

Wittmer & Knowles

Wittmer & Knowles

Weyes Blood

Book Of Sand - How Beautiful To Walk Free (self released, 2010)

Book Of Sand - Hidegen Fújnak A Szelek


Awesome news everybody! The dude from Light (Dan) has gone from making fucked up doom metal with Emily to fucked up black metal all by his lonesome (with a little help on the drummin). So Light is officially no more, and not that I'm happy about it, but with 3 kick ass records, they had their time to crush minds with the doom. Now it's time to bring the motherfucking black rain down upon your sorry souls.

The filthy buzz, blast beats, and tortured screams are so refreshing to hear coming from a guy that just recently put out an hour long record of a single piece of glacial sludge. But even though the genres are almost polar opposites in the metal-sphere, there's still so much in common that you can tell the same guy is at work. The vocals haven't changed all that much, which shouldn't be a surprise because the singing in Light sounded like it was coming from a fucking screechy angsty demon and that fits just as well in doom as it does BM. Then there's songs like "The Night And Day Will Pass Away" which for it's breakneck speed is just as creepily foreboding as any Light song.

What makes Book Of Sand stand out amongst the hordes of BM bands is his lack of focus on the necrotic decay, instead finding inspiration in things like veganism and feminism. A BM dude that cares about chicks and animals? Fuckin POSER. Haha. I kid. Not only are animals THE BEST (do you see that bunny up there?) but he's also a whole-hearted supporter of VHEMT (The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement). See how that works? He's SO metal and self loathing that he thinks the entire human race should be wiped from the planet. But seriously though. What the fuck ever. Politics and ideals and moral arguments are all fucking bottom rung when it comes to music. I mean yes, it adds another (possibly cool and interesting) dimension but this guy could prance around in a rainbow tutu sprinkling glitter in his trail, and How Beautiful To Walk Free could be about flowers and marshmallows and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. The fact that he put this album out makes him the coolest motherfucker ever.

Lucky for you, How Beautiful To Walk Free has that same style of glorious hand made packaging that the 3 Light releases had, but they made, like, 5 times as many copies of it. It's still limited though (only 1000 made), so make sure you grab one of these hot bitches. Just look at how badass this packaging is.

Feedback Makes Everything Better

Wayne Rogers of Heathen Shame at First Night 2010
I'm going to be redesigning AGB a little bit and I figured while I'm at it, I should take a poll and see if there's a strong feeling out there for me to do anything differently. Because you, dear readers, are the reason I do this, and my sole purpose in life is to make you happy.

Feel free to elaborate on anything in the comments, especially if there's something you'd like to see that isn't one of the options listed.

So just check away on those little boxes down there. Check as many as you'd like. Maybe if you wish hard enough, it'll come true!

Show Worthy 3/15 - 3/21

Tuesday, March 16
Black Pus, Sissy Spacek, Nautical Almanac, Gerrit Wittmer & Paul Knowles, Weyes Blood, DJ 2xA (Double Awake) at Great Scott (8:00, $10, 18+)
Whoa everybody. Calm down. Just because Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale's solo noise project Black Pus is playing at Great Scott with Sissy Spacek aka John motherfuckin WIESE is no reason to freak out. So everyone just chill the fuck out. Don't get too excited. It's just another show.



Seijiro Murayama & Jean-Luc Guionnet by wot nxt via
Wednesday, March 17
Seijiro Murayama & James Coleman & Greg Kelley, Keith Fullerton Whitman at Outpost 186 (8:00, donate, all ages)
Murayama is the dude from Absolut Null Punkt (along with KK Null), he's played with Keiji Haino, and he put out that collab with Lionel Marchetti on Intransitive. He's just plain awesome. He'll be doing percussion shit with Coleman on theremin and Kelley on trumpet. Guaranteed to be rad. Plus KFW is opening. Holy shit?




Saturday, March 20
Blastfest 3 at Cambridge YMCA (11am-11pm, $5-$10, all ages)
I already did a whole post dedicated to Blastfest 3. Fuckin read it! It's going down this Saturday.




Sunday, March 21
Barn Owl, JaJuNo Trio, Tom Plsek, Mystic Out-Bop Review at Griffen Theatre (Salem) (7:00, $10, all ages)
Guys! Cool shit is coming to Salem!! That means I don't have to drive or take the train to have fun and see awesome experimental music. This is the first show in the Sonorium music series (put on by the Qfwfq Duo) and they're making sure they're on the map right from the get go bringing fuckin Barn Owl to town. Plus JaJuNo trio is playing, who consists of James Coleman on theremin, Jules Vasylenko playing the saxophone, and Noell Dorsey "singing." I wrote about them when they played at The Piano Factory with Lord & Karhlheinz, and Audrey Chen & id m theftable. They were incredible. This show would be so fucking cool if it was in Boston, but it's in Salem, and that just makes it a hundred million times cooler. Can't wait to see what Sonorium's got up their sleeves for round two.

Haiku Review: Michael T. Bullock - A Mountain (Coming Around) (Homophoni, 2008)

Michael T. Bullock - A Mountain (Coming Around)


Michael T. Bullock
A Mountain (Coming Around) (download)
/twisted contrabass/
/expectation filled silence/
/vacant raucousness/

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.