Vastieu Ramen - Tongue Night (Bonbon Bruises, 2009)

Vastieu Ramen - Side B (The Guy Who Cut Himself In The Neck 3 Times In Brazil / Moron / Telepathy / Dummy / Ajinomoto Marina / Kanebou Mogu / Tongue Night / Gryptodon)


This Tetsunori Tawaraya guy is pretty active. In addition to Vastieu Ramen, his solo project, there's 2up (with Keiichi Nakano) and Dmonstrations (with Nick Barnett and Aaron Wade). Not to mention all of the graphic design and art he makes. I have no idea if his newest tape Tongue Night on Bonbon Bruises is anything like anything else he does but I do know one thing. There's only one place that can be the home of something this utterly fucked up. Yup. Japan.

Tongue Night is absolute insanity. I'm talking the kind of insanity like a mad chemist in his bubbling luh-bor-a-tory who just drank a potion that turned him into a screeching werewolf who's sole desire is to make the most ungodly blistering noise. The kind of insanity you catch a glimpse of in a dark alley of some half humanly creatures making music from shredded electrical wires and smelly dumpsters. Only Japan. Obviously.

This shit is spastic and chaotic, frantic and frenetic, and 100% nonsensical awesomeness. I don't think I've ever heard fake free jazz freak folk noise before but I'm sure this is the best of it's kind. If Tetsunori is a totally normal down to earth guy, then I feel like I don't know anything anymore. He just has to be the craziest motherfucker in the world because that's the only way Tongue Night could ever get made.

Red Horse - Red Horse (Rel, 2009)

Check out some more of the beautiful packaging on Flickr.

Red Horse - Side B (untitled)


Red Horse is a band that has gained a mysterious cult appeal, at least in the Boston area. The duo of Eli Keszler and Steve Pyne rarely do live performances and they've been around for years before they finally released their self titled debut just a few months ago. There have been plenty of people (not so) patiently waiting this record. Well, if you had any expectations of this album, I assure you now that they have been surpassed. Red Horse is brilliant.

Half of the fun of listening to this is figuring out wtf the sounds are coming from. Pyne is a regular DIY engineer, crafting "massive hand-constructed string instruments, motor-automated resonances, homespun multi-layered Leslies, speaker arrays and sculptural electronics." And then Keszler's got his bowed percussion and drumming the shit out of anything within arm's reach. So before you hear any of the music, Red Horse already has an appealing aesthetic behind it.

But the music is so much more than novelty, which could easily be the case with whacked out home made instruments. Red Horse walk the delicate line of nonsense noise and the freest jazz your brain can imagine. There is a cohesive form that works it's way into the skittery droning realm that Keszler & Pyne have firmly planted themselves in. They take the dabbling of your regular basement freak's CD-Rs and BAM take it up a few dozen notches.

Red Horse is so much more than I ever could have hoped to have on a Red Horse record. Listening to Keszler go all spazzlike with his drumming that sounds like the endless rain of Kerplunk marbles is pure heaven. And I can only assume that it's Pyne who's throwing down that positively disturbing drone.

The two of these guys are like fucking heroes. Anyone who has any dreams of making avant garde/experimental/noise/ear fuckkking music should start taking notes. And start practicing. 'Cause Red Horse have brought the fucking thunder.

The ( ) Moppers - Manifest Destroy (Slow Destiny)

The ( ) Moppers - Side B


The ( ) Moppers are a couple of mysterious dudes. Minimal to no internet presence. No MySpace or web page as far as I can tell. I think they're from San Francisco. Discogs lists them as having only two releases totaling 56 copies. That's about all I got. Manifest Destroy (Slow Destiny) is a cassette (37 copies released on Custodian, Color Zoo Containers) with hand made artwork, each one being entirely unique. Cut and paste collages with humans that have animal heads. That sorta thing.

The music on Manifest Destroy was recorded live in '04 and is, umm, pretty weird. It's droney and minimal but probably not the way you're thinking. As far as what instruments are being played, your guess is as good as mine. There's some super low end bass that wobbles back and forth, testing the elasticity of my ear drums. And I mean super low end. Like the depths of the ocean floor low.

While I would definitely describe this as minimal, there's tons of stuff going on. There's lo-fi crunches coming from god knows what. Maybe a shitty drum machine? It sounds kinda like that freak-folk all the kids are talkin' about these days. I mean, The ( ) Moppers aren't folky but there's that feeling that they would wander around the room, finding various toys/pots & pans/sticks/pipes/forks and record whatever sounds came out of them. Occasionally an actual beat shows up for a few seconds but then it disappears into The Nothing (I try to throw in Neverending Story references as often as I can).

I'm not totally sure what this is "about" or what their "goal" is. But does it really matter? It's highly experimental, simultaneously thick and sparse, and I'd give Manifest Destroy (Slow Destiny) a solid recommendation. If you can find a copy.