JUNGLE GYM. VAGINAS. Did you hear that? Say it. Out loud. JungleGymVaginas. Have you ever heard something so wondrous? So mysterious? So charming? So fucking hilarious?
There is ZERO need for me to describe the music to you. Because this band is called Jungle Gym Vaginas and that is ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW. For real. You think it matters what kind of music they make? Well you're wrong.
Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words is one Thomas Ekelund who created Lost In Reflections after being diagnosed with a "near crippling mental disease." How long after I don't know. All I know is that this was recorded in 05/06 and there have been many Dead Letters releases since then. Not that I think that context is necessary to fully appreciate Lost In Reflections. It helps, but it's not going to make or break the album.
Listening to Lost In Reflections is a strange journey of dynamic drone. However you don't realize just how strange until it's over. The first song, "The Room Seems Empty Without You," is a real slow burner. Something from way out west, like you've been dragging your feet through Death Valley for days on end with no water. It could be the foundation for some Godspeed song except here there's no grandiose climax (not yet). It's just you, the heat, and the endless horizon of sand and sky.
"Lost & Losing" goes from desert to ocean as you're floating face up, being dazzled by the sun beams shimmering through the water, listening to all the pops and cracks of the crustaceans scurrying along the sandy floor. Then "What I Wouldn't Give To Feel Alive" keeps you underwater, although now you're closer to death, hearing every little detail. Each guitar pluck echoes through the sea as if glimpsing a whale's heartbeat from miles away.
After you've made your way through the water, you become detached from Earth and drift through space. The stars buzz with their solar signals and the dust of the universe flows through your ears. And all of this up until now, going from land to sea to air, was the quest for "Himmelschreibenden Herzen." And the monumental 19 minute closer is absolutely worth that voyage. It's like traveling through a black sun, getting closer and closer to the core. Deafening bliss. Terrifying monstrous shrieking dark drone. Beautiful heavenly sunshine euphoria. Completely fucking amazing.
Lost In Reflections is something I couldn't even begin to imagine making. It's a record so deep and beautiful that I can hardly wrap my brain around it. This is of such high caliber, I'm surprised it's not exploding all over the place. Dead Letters should be a name up there with Fennesz and Eno. If Reflections wasn't the record to do it, I can't wait to hear the one that will.
Ok, this is going to be difficult to explain. I know I get really excited about a lot of things and routinely profess my love for them. But you see, this video is different. It's different because I love it SO MUCH MORE than all of those other things.
I love the rhythm. I love the flow. I love every single lyric. I love the story. I love the animation. I love the imagery. I love the dad. I love the dad's voice. I love the son's voice. I love the old timeyness. I love the (faux?) outsider feeling. I love the dad's long nose and weird hair and worm nipples. I love the opening line. I love the dad caressing the spider's delicate legs. I love the page turning. I love that the dad decided to teach his son a lesson about morals upon being woken up in the middle of the night. I love that it ends with the dad saluting the spider and wishing him "Godspeed." I love every single thing about this video. I love Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore for making this. I hate Garrett for not making more music. In the past 4 days, I have watched this more times than I can count. I am currently memorizing every word.
Monday, July 6 Daniel Harris at Weirdo Records (donate, 8:00, all ages) Harris uses instruments like the cello, glockenspiel, melodica, banjo, etc to make soundscapey folk tunes. Good stuff.
Tuesday, July 7 Animal Hospital, Quoins, Manners, Battle House at Great Scott ($8, 9:00, 18+) This is gonna be a great show. Animal Hospital is blowing it up with his electroacoustic ambient post rock fantasticness. Quoins is new to me and there's no music on their Myspace so... Manners you should know already. Chill acoustic folky stuff. Real good. And then Battle House, who I've yet to see live, sounds like a mix between Wilderness and The Shipping News, doing that grandiose post punk thing. Like I said, great show.
Friday, July 10 Big Bear, Child Bite, Ketman, The Gondoliers at PA's Lounge ($10, 8:30, 18+) Big Bear & Child Bite put out a split 7" and this is the release party. You get a free copy of the 7" just for going. Shit, even if neither of them were playing that would still be worth it. Plus, the cover art has awesome alien walrus spiders on it. It doesn't get any better than this.
Sunday, July 11 Nathaniel Bartlett, Loop 2.4.3 at 119 Gallery ($10, 8:00, all ages) Bartlett is performing as Immersive Music where he plays solo marimba and processes the shit out of it with his computer and eight channel cube of speakers to create "three-dimensional, high-definition, computer-generated sound projection." Um. YES PLEASE. Loop 2.4.3 is a couple of dudes making all sorts of transformative percussion. Super cool.
Drenched in lo-fi echo crunch and laden with loops. These tracks have the hypnotic quality of drone while still retaining some of the traditional song structures.
Every time it's like "I can't believe I'm still actually listening to this." But I'm pretty sure everyone feels that way when listening to Apple Jackzzzzz'sNaptime's Over. You see, the very first thing you hear when you hit play on this CD is a bunch of fart sounds. And the maturity level only drops from there. If you can make it past the first song, though, you're golden.
Naptime's Over is self described "Inner Child Rock." Still not getting it? There are songs like "I Just Want A Bigger Penis" and "Faking Sick > School" with lyrics such as "Liking cookies is not a crime. Why should I have to do hard time?" The songs are filled with poor rhyming and the occasional swear. It's written (and sang) in a style that makes it sound like a 5th grader wrote (and sang) it.
Listening to Apple Jackzzzzz is confusing. I'm pretty sure it's meant for electro obsessed ironic 20-somethings longing for the nostalgia of their childhood (yes I purposefully just described hipsters). But it's easy to think this is geared towards kids upon first listen. The drum machine beats and Casio melodies are super fun but nothing that's super amazing. It's like some Brooklynite thought it would be a good idea if Raffi made an synth dance rock record and knew there was no way in hell that would ever happen so he took matters into his own hands. I bet there are plenty of music critics who would tear this a new asshole because it's not really of objective high quality.
But Naptime's Over is SO much fun to listen to and not just for nostalgia's sake (although that has a lot to do with it). There's an infectious charm that, yeah, makes me feel like a kid again. Whenever I laugh listening to Apple Jackzzzzz singing about the sweet shapes that peel out of Fruit Roll-Ups, I know I'm never going to be 100% mature. And I'm totally fine with that. Something tells me I'm not alone.
I must be a serious fucking idiot. I first heard Walk With Me about 3 months ago and became instantly obsessed. I felt about this like I felt about last year's And Still, Wanting by Prurient. It was love at first punishment. But the weeks went by and I stopped listening to it as much and I still hadn't blogged about it. I think I went almost a month without listening to it again and when I finally stumbled across it on my iPod Monday night, I almost punched myself in the face for not reviewing it yet.
Walk With Me is the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. You think it's sweet old grandma at first but it's not. Sorry little girl but it's a wolf. Which is great for me because it pleases both of my sensitive and masochistic sides.
The contrast on this album is what makes it. The light and the dark. The docile and the sadistic. Anyone can make a nonstop ear fuck but Crumer must have taken notes from Mogwai with their near-patented loud-quiet-loud method. It's like Walk With Me is saying, "Look at me I'm a pretty little Max Richter princess wait no I'm a motherfucking Merzbow demon whose sole purpose is to tear your lungs out through your chest and shit on your fucking heart."
And the final two songs on this masterpiece flow together in such a beautifully disastrous way, it brings a tear to my eye and a drop of blood from my ears. "Walk With Me" starts out with an unwavering Niblockian buzz that slowly accelerates down the runway until it gains enough speed to take off and becomes a fleet of twin engine Cessnas flying in perfect formation. After dazzling the audience with their majestic skillz, one of them fucks up and crashes into another, sending them all careening into a fiery spiral on "Pining" where they explode on the ground in a massive mountain of molten metal. Fucking epic.
Jason Crumer has scrambled right up to the top of the noise ladder in my heart, sitting right next to Prurient. I knew that I'd eventually find my noise record of the year but I had no idea it would come from a guy I'd never heard of. Now I sit patiently and wait for him to come to Boston...
How serendipitous! I was supposed to be to work yesterday at 11 AM but showed up at 4 PM instead. Whoops. But hey, night off! Right? I still had time to catch Steve Norton's show at Weirdo Records. Which, if you've never been, is a TINY place. Like, the size of a large walk-in closet. And that's not counting all the CD racks and such. Luckily, including Norton, me, and two employees, there were only 6 people. So not exactly cramped but not too roomy either. But these are the best kinda shows.
So Steve's forte is reed instruments along with some strange percussion and bird call things. He started with some tin can rattling, shaking everything between two drumsticks like he had Parkinson's and was trying to use chopsticks to eat his food. Then he moved onto the saxophones (alto and soprano) which made me feel like I had teleported into some strange future where classic instruments could be played backwards. I don't know what he did but he is able to make the sax sound like it's being slowly rewound on a cassette tape. So bizarre.
In between each reed instrument, he would do some haphazard percussion, such as when he emptied a box of tiny wood panels and tin can lids on the floor, throwing them around, organizing and reorganizing over and over again, like he had OCD. But every little sound mattered, including dragging the things back that went flying across the floor, scraping them along the wood floor, or putting the instruments down on their stands. Everything had this kind of premeditated feeling while still being completely improvised as if he had an insanely fast brain that would see something and know exactly what to do to make it sound perfect.
And he saved the best for last. The bass clarinet. Man, the things he can do with that clarinet are fucking astounding. I have never heard a reed/brass/woodwind instrument be played so differently than it was meant to, including Greg Kelley's trumpet. I'm pretty sure he was circular breathing at times. And he could make it sound like a didgeridoo without repositioning his fingers. It was all in his throat and it was the most amazing thing ever. Sometimes it didn't even sound like a clarinet, sometimes it just sounded like some tight snare drums. Other times it sounded like it had a filter of static. I have no idea how he did any of those things but trust me this guy is totally worth seeing live.
If you live anywhere near Boston then you know it's been fucking gray as hell and raining for what feels like 2 months straight. Fucking bogus. Thankfully, we got Sperm Whales here to give us our antidote, a big dose of vitamin D.
Endless Sea Of Clouds is a shimmery minimal ambient affair with lots of guitars and electronics, each taking their own turn. It's kind of like a cross between Eluvium and White Rainbow, except with Whales, I don't get the same psychedelic third eye mind expansion feeling that comes with White Rainbow's stuff. Imagine running through the forest to get to the beach and you're on the right track.
One of the best parts of Endless Sea Of Clouds (other than it's highly appropriate name) is the third track, "Floating Forward." It reminds me so much of one of my all time favorites movies, Flight Of The Navigator. I don't know if it sounds like it should be in the movie or if it just gives me the same feeling as shooting across the Everglades at Mach 10 but either way it's the fucking best.
Sperm Whales hasn't done anything especially innovative with Clouds but sometimes it sure feels like it. All of the varying instrumentation and (faux?) field recordings constantly come as a surprise. Maybe its just because I have it in my head that this is a guitar loop record but there's plenty of plinking toy piano sounds, electronic wackiness, and chirping birds. Like when "Prismatic Inquisition" comes on with it's 8-bit melodies and cacophony. I can most certainly say I wasn't expecting that. Nor was I expecting to hear the sound of grabbing a coin from Super Mario World on "Reproductive Adaptation." That's probably one of the most pleasant surprises I've had in listening to a record in a long time.
Endless Sea Of Clouds is a record that delights me to no end. The name of the record, the artist's name, the music itself, the packaging, it's all perfect. The CD comes in a little burlap pouch with an insert and an elaborately designed CD-R.
Wednesday, July 1 Jakob Olausson; Concord Ballet Orchestra Players; Sus & Jakob; Peace, Loving at PA's Lounge ($7 21+/$10 18-20, 8:30, 18+) Jakob's on De Stijl, with a folky chill out echoey fanciness that I'm sure translates into a fantastic live performance. Sus & Jakob involves Olausson and some girl named Sus making eerie ghost in the woods rattling drugged out flutes and percussion kinda shit. CBOP and Peace, Loving are hometown awesomeness that rounds this show out to be totally fucking great.
Friday, July 3 Sick Fix, Coke Bust, Smart Cops, Blank Stare, Foreign Objects at Gay Gardens ($donate, 7:00?, all ages) Not much else going on this week so I thought I'd throw this punk/hardcore/thrash/garage stuff at you. You might be interested. Smart Cops are Italian punk, so there's always that.
Saturday, July 4 The Boy Who Spoke Clouds, 7 Ton Hand, Live Footage, Topu Lyo, Skidmore Fountain, Mike Thies, Birdorgan at 119 Gallery ($10, all ages, 2:00pm) Fourth Of July BBQ going down at the 119 Gallery in Lowell. Cookout starts around 2, music around 4. The Boy Who Spoke Clouds coming all the way from fucking Australia with their smoothed out minimal sound/maximum instrument folk. This show is gonna be killer. Tons of awesome bands. Mike Thies with his electro-acoustic beats and Topu Lyo with his processed cello, this shit is gonna be amazing. I know it's the 4th and you probably already got more plans than you know what to do with but if you end up in Lowell, make sure you stop by and check this out.
Alright guys. This is it. The one you've been waiting for. The drone record to come from some new band you've never heard of and completely kick every other drone record's ass. And where did they come from? Chicago. Duh.
By now, everyone has become supersaturated with drone. It seems like every kid these days is mashing the keys on their thrift store synth and burning it onto a CD-R in about as much time as it takes me to eat my morning bowl of Kashi's Honey Sunshine. But The Golden Sores know the virtue of patience and quality. This is their second record (the first, Ashdod To Ekron, I reviewed on diskant and is available as a free download) and sweet Jesus they've already made their masterpiece. I mean, Ashdod was amazing and all, but where the hell are they gonna go after A Peaceable Kingdom? I can't really imagine them making anything better.
The drone on Kingdom is made of the kind of heavenly tones that are essentially instrumentless. It could be coming from a guitar or a synthesizer (and, in fact, comes from both) but you'd never know and it doesn't even fucking matter. It's the kind of unwavering/wavering blissful static that keeps you turning up the volume every 2 or 3 minutes as your ears adjust, gently demolishing your eardrums.
I can't heap enough praise upon The Golden Sores and what they're doing for the drone community. Not only are they showing all the impostors how it's fucking done but they're giving us euphoria seeking music obsessors some of the highest quality shit out there. This record is so good the Sores could break up right now and it would hardly even matter.
Coolest thing EVER sidenote: I literally screamed and blushed like a little girl when I saw that I'm in the thank you list on this record. It consists of about 15 names and I'm one of them. I assume it's because I reviewed their first record but whatever the reason, I've only felt this cool once before in my life (when Aidan Baker knew who I was). So, yeah, if you're reading this Sores, thanks for the thanks. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
Final note: I just realized that my review of A Peaceable Kingdom is strikingly similar to my review of Ashdod To Ekron. I think, if anything, this is a good sign. I'm happy to know my opinions are steadfast and that The Golden Sores have thus far been consistently awesome in all the right ways.
My wife brought this back from Mass Market as a gift after meeting the creator. Carl Annarummo, aka Triptych Trencher, and his wife were there as part of The Greying Ghost selling their wares (poetry zines, etc) in addition to this lonely 3" CD, Hallway For Chronic Liars. What a fantastic surprise it was to have my wife do some (semi) blind buying for me and have it turn out awesome.
I absolutely fucking love how this album starts out. It's one of those slow claps, oft parodied in cheesy comedies, that gets more and more chaotic as it turns into flatout applause, and as the claps get rowdier, a static buzzing gets louder. Eventually they both drop out and crazy oscillating electronic factory sounds are joined by strange radio transmissions. Then shit only gets weirder from there. So awesome.
You endure everything from the operator informing you that you have the wrong number to nightmarish thunder storms, and high end insect chirping to thick enveloping crunch. And that's all in the first 5 minutes. The following 10 are fucking intense insane noise lying somewhere between the physical and the ethereal. But at about 15 minutes in, after some laughing children fade out, all goes silent until the final 3 minutes where we're treated to some throbbing disharmonious screeching. These crazy noise guys, always keeping you on your toes.
I love discovering new noise, especially when it's local, and I also love finding out about new labels in the process. This one's on Grimeology Records, based out of Burlington, VT, who also happen to have released stuff by A Snake In The Garden and Vestigial Limb's recent Divine Wind. Sadly, I think Triptych Trencher is no more, but we'll always have Hallway For Chronic Liars.
There's a not so new trend going on right now. And not just in music, either. All media. It's new and old at the same time. I know I'm not the first to point it out and I'm also a year or two late in doing so, but I'm doing it now because it's relevant to me.
There's a new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum right now called Surfland that features the photography of Joni Sternbach. Her work is focused on what I consider to be a dated pastime, surfing, and she uses a photographic technique that originated in the 1850s, the tintype. The photographs are portraits of modern day surfers from New York and California. The tintype process used makes the images look as old the process itself. There are so many layers to her work that it's almost easy to overlook just how stunningly gorgeous the photos are.
The independent music biz is currently thriving on the mixture of vintage and contemporary themes and techniques. I know that has always and will always be the case, but it feels to me that for the first time, everyone is taking their ideas from the 60s folk/garage scene and the disco-laden 70s. I know it's obvious but I'm only pointing it out because it seems so similar to what Sternbach is doing with her work.
You should really go visit Sternbach's first solo museum exhibition. Seeing the physical tintypes in person is absolutely amazing. It's going on until October at the PEM so you got some time.
P.S. Gary War is part of the Homegrown Fest going down at Church in July. He'll be playing Friday the 17th along with Sightings, Bobb Trimble, Infinity Window, Magic People, and a bunch more.
I Want To Review Your Music If you make music and you want it reviewed on my blog, just send me an e-mail. I would love to hear what you're making and give you a little more exposure in the process.
Disclaimer All of the music on this site is for promotional and sampling purposes only. If you enjoy it, please consider buying the record or going to see the band live. They will appreciate it, I promise. If you own the rights to a song on this site and you would like it removed, please contact me and I will do so as quickly as my tiny paws allow.
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