Easyboy - Friends (Spooky Town Artifacts, 2009)

Easyboy - Sunny Day Garbage Pile


Easyboy is the solo stuff from Eric Farber, member of the insane electro-tribal awesome dudes Truman Peyote. Friends is his first (?) release of hypno pop jams and it's 100% worth your ear time.

I'm not sure that Farber was straight when he made this tape because it reminds me a bit of Farmacia's Nosocomio Manicomio and they were almost certainly fucked up on Robotussin when they made that tape. Now you could be a lame-ass and call Friends "bedroom pop" but it is so much more than that. It's amazingly weird with songs that aren't songs and plenty of found sounds that Farber most likely dug out of someone's attic.

There's all sorts of fun tunes on Friends that could end up on your next "happy times" mix tape or perhaps your "I'm gonna weird my friends out" mix tape. "Chest Swimmers" for example is some peppy garagey Jacob Berendes type song and then "Wrenchin'" could be a lost Dan Deacon/AnCo/Passion Pit collaboration. But the 54 second "Markers" sounds like grade school children got high and watched old Japanese cartoons. Friends is not the easiest thing to pin down but it's consistently fantastic.

Oh, and as always, Spooky Town shit is as cheap as it is fuckin awesome. Friends will only set you back $5.

Haiku Review: The Great Valley - Under Snow (Spooky Town Artifacts, 2009)

The Great Valley - White Hair


The Great Valley
Under Snow (download)
/trapped in a snowglobe/
/frozen boots stomping with zeal/
/tragic magic tales/

Quilt - Quilt (Spooky Town Artifacts, 2009)

Quilt - Disco Music For Trees


If I told you I went to a yard sale this weekend and found this tape stuck way back in the drawer of an old desk, and then I hypothesized that it came from a band named Quilt, some lost folk punk gem from the '60s, you wouldn't have any real reason to disbelieve me. Especially after playing that audio sample. But I'm never lucky enough to find cool shit like that at yard sales. I usually just come home with another wicker basket for my bunnies to eat.

But this Boston trio's debut release totally sounds like that. Like a bunch of friends using shitty equipment to record songs in the big echoey shower in their basement. And it sounds fantastic. It's music that you know was a fucking blast to make.

Nothing on here ever gets too much into a certain genre for you to nail down. It's folky, yeah, and it can rock out at times, but there's also plenty of drone elements. Lots of bang-clanking and jingle-jangling, monotonous drumming, banjos, xylophones, harmonicas, and all sorts of fun shit. But I think one of the key ingredients here are the vocals. All 3 share the microphone and there's hardly a single moment of harmony throughout the whole tape. They frequently sing together, but sometimes it's so dissonant, in the intentional and almost pleasant way. I mean, sometimes they're nice and melodious but when they're not, it's suuuper eerie. And it perfectly matches the occasionally unsettling guitars.

For a debut, this bunch really could have fared a lot worse. Like, a lot. Quilt is a thoroughly solid tape that fits rights in with the weirdo lo-fi experimental folk scene here in Boston. Totally worth picking up for a mere $4 at Spooky Town.

Prince Rama Of Ayodhya / The Great Valley - Divine / Journey (Spooky Town Artifacts, 2009)

Prince Rama Of Ayodhya - Aeolian Divinex


What we got here is a brand new split 12" from Spooky Town featuring the sitting-right-under-my-nose-awesomeness of The Great Valley and fellow foreign sounding locals, Prince Rama Of Ayodhya. Boston's got a lot of freaky folky weirdness (thanks in great part to the Whitehaus) but these two bands seem like a great pairing for a split. Two sides of the same coin these guys.

I've heard Prince Rama on CD before and let me just tell you that vinyl is where it's at for this bunch. Their sound is a hundred bazillion times better when it's scraped through a needle instead of zapped through a laser. Their side showcases what they've become so fucking good at: tribal, spiritual, droning earthly sounds with lead singer Taraka belting out songs in her inimitably spectacular voice. They're able to combine traditional acoustic instruments with electronics in a way that sounds anything but straightforward and normal. They take New Age and Indian influences and make something wholly unique and enjoyable out of it. I keep thinking it sounds like music that I would never listen to, yet I always find myself throwing it on and loving the shit out of it.

Somehow The Great Valley managed to slip through my radar undetected. That is, until they put out this fantastic as fuck split with Prince Rama. The Valley consists of two dudes with crazy names, Big Dipper & Diamond Mouse, who make some freaked out old timey folk. They sound like if O'Death was trying less to be like artsy Man Men and instead went to live with their certifiable uncle out on the prairie spending their days drinking moonshine and howling with the coyotes. There's foot stompin beats and disharmonious melodies, laid back ukuleles and humming organs, singing saws and scratchy voices, all of the elements for the perfect record to impress your friends with at your next ho-down.

Divine / Journey is a sweet little piece of wax that will satisfy your cravings for worldly & old fashioned crazy shit. And it's cheap. Like, $8 cheap. Only 300 were made, each packaged in a recycled record jacket. Hand made ftw! Go on and grab a copy.