Unusual Animals Vol. 5 on Asthmatic Kitty

Side A:
Jookabox - Dead Zone Boys 5:05

Side B:
Dosh - Lifestyle Insurance 4:24

Release date: May 19, 2009

Just noticed this latest release in the Unusual Animals series from Asthmatic Kitty and I haven't heard of either of the two featured and looked them up this morning.
Jookabox, aka Granpall Jukabox, is a across the era's, decade mashup-grabbag collection of influences that the next set of artists always seem to do. Just when everything is boring, the mixes...all the bands sound the same..then you stumble across someone like Jookabox. Especially at the pace that music can recycle and appropriate, and end up in the world...it's the thing that I love about music in the first place....the frantic pace that it's created and released in the wild. Nothing else...film, art...these things are so connected to giant institutions with so much money at stake...the moves are calculated, so bogged down in a thousand opinions, voices, compromises. It's an achievement when something great gets made out of that system...because it doesn't seem set up to succeed to me.
Anyway, Jookabox is kind of that example of the genius of a someone completely free from convention to work and end up with something completely new. I can at the very least get excited and appreciate this for how alien sounding it is. It's not always going to succeed....cajun influenced acoustic guitar + south bronx + ween = ? But that's where the magic happens.

And for anyone that has a tiny bit of interest in making music themselves, this is one of those musicians musician whose going to inspire you every time you hear it to get back behind that 4-track, throw everything away and start over.

Same goes for Dosh pages open at once....is this really working? Can I close one? No...it will never line up and make sense this way again. Then one stops or you close the one you thought wasn't working and that's it, it's done. Dosh is working in a more academic way. It sounds measured, weighed out and fused together, like the good days of DJ Shadow. A little in more of an assembage way. It's like accidentally having 5 bands myspacehypnotic, meditative...weird things happening over soft organ. Borrowing from out of print experiments in analog synth...have yourself a moogtastic christmas. A collection of those forgotton beauties, all collaged in an interesting way. The public service these artists do in reclaiming and recontextualizing.

Sometimes you get up really early in the morning and everything falls into place.

When David "Moose" Adamson was in grade school, his uncle took note of his developing interest in hip-hop and loaned him a four-track. They mixed tracks together and the young Adamson would write rhymes to sing over them, including a double-boombox sequel to Fu-Schnicken's "What's Up Doc (Can We Rock?)" called "Sufferin' Succotash (I Got Whiplash)" At first the beats came from instrumental sides of cassette singles, then from presets on his uncle's drum machine, and finally from his very own beat machine (a Christmas gift), the Yamaha DD-9. Since then, through various incarnations and collaborations with groups such as Archer Avenue and BIGBIGcar, Adamson’s musical interests and excursions have crystallized into a startlingly singular and eclectic songwriting strategy. Jookabox’s debut record, Scientific Cricket, samples a kind of primordial blues sound, children's sidewalk-chalk rhymes and Appalachian folk. But his latest effort finds him moving into new, unplumbed territories. Ropechain pinwheels kaleidoscopically through old-time spirituals, punk, chain-gang hymnal, deep house, and club music hip-hop, blending these disparate elements into a cohesive and unique synthesis. "Dead Zone Boys" gives us a sneak peak of what is to come on Jookabox's third release, due out early 2010.

There he was, this musically lucked child of a once-priest and a near-nun, 12 years old and piled high with a Radio Shack combo stereo, stacks of records, and pockets full of dubbed tapes. It was 1984 and Martin Dosh was orchestrating the soundtracks to his junior high school dances, playing only the choice cuts for the budding romantics and perspiring wallflowers: Run DMC, Prince, Devo, the Cars, New Order... Fast-forward to 2003 when Anticon proudly released Dosh's virtuoso debut, Dosh, a loop-building collage of shimmering Rhodes, atypical drumming grounded in groove, field recordings and spontaneous performance (much of the album was pieced together using the 100-plus hours of tape he'd recorded at his parents'). By then he'd developed his untouchable live one-man show (swiveling on his drum stool between a kit, his modified Rhodes piano, a few pots and pans, and a simple looping pedal with a 12-second recording limit), and took to the road.

This is the fifth in a series of vinyl-only releases. The series, entitled Unusual Animals, pairs Asthmatic Kitty roster artists with friends and sometimes-unlikely bedfellows. Each record includes a beautiful rendering of one of Mother Nature's stranger inhabitants by illustrator Jared Chapman. This limited-edition series expands the Asthmatic Kitty family to include some unexpected folks.

Go get it from Asthmatic Kitty. Anticon has them too, and from what I hear they are close to being out of copies of this so you have been warned.

Cam Deas on The Great Pop Supplement

Cam Deas - Untitled Blues Part 1 & 2 (7" on Great Pop Supplement, limited to 300 copies)

I just saw James Blackshaw at Mercury Lounge recently and have been on a bit of a instrumental acoustic kick lately, so this single from the Great Pop Supplement by Cam Deas fit right in. Another English acoustic instrumental guitar virtuoso? I guess we can't get enough.
I'm not saying I'm familiar enough with either of their styles to the degree I could tell them apart, and so far this is very similar.
It's interesting GPS says this should be approached as one long piece.
In 'Untitled #1', on his myspace It's huge sounding, deliberate slow strumming, he's picking a steel string...real tinny, twangy...but giant, booming like Blackshaw's recordings...or like Fahey. Not sure if it's all 12 string, or not. It sounds full, I think I'm hearing all those high harmonics, with a touch of reverb or echo maybe...or it's recorded in a church...there's some sustaining waves after the strumming stopped.

I'm listening to another one of his: 'five bells' and it's very electronic, with synth atmospheric stuff, so this 7" might not be completely representative of his stuff, but I'm going to track down a vinyl full length too....Insound has one.

Seems like there's some south american influence possibly...like Django Reinheart? He's another one.
I'm getting into this scene a little more...I'm such an amateur.

Get it from Cam Deas's myspace page, or contact Dom at thegreatpopsupplement (at) hotmail.com if you want to get a couple of things, like that Spaceman 3 12"....if there are any left.

GPS says:
Stunning 45 from Sheffield based Cam Deas- a debut 45 on wax. 2 heavy strummed blues across 2 sides of vinyl- best approached as 1 long piece. Sure, the names of Fahey, Basho, Blackshaw, Rose etc spring to mind, but this has a raw, slow building presence and an expressive approach all of it’s own. A potent brew- perhaps a departure from recent work on labels like Blackest Rainbow and Dead Pilot, released as a pressing of 300 numbered, date stamped copies in linen card, fine art sleeves with sticker.

Why are you so limited GPS singles? And why does the post office especially fuck with the singles from England? The Jack Rose one...I've tried everything...except I came across something in an old sonic youth zine (issue2) where you can unwarp a record by putting it between two pieces of glass in the sun...I'll have to try that when it stops raining...it's the last resort for that one.

AA on Softspot records - The Hussy interview pt2 podcast

AA is another romantic story of a band who went into the studio in the early 80's and recorded a perfect little post punk EP in an edition of something like 500. It got into enough hands of people who never forgot them...even making it to the US, and into the “International Discography Of The New Wave"....anyway the whole huge story is on AA's myspace.

It's one of those bands like Beyond the Implode...they were just making what they wanted for no one...it just happened to age really well. I have to say AA is exactly what you wanted the early 80's to sound like. Kind of dark, minimal, not relying on the synth too much, still rock and guitar based. The guitar tones are wavering... distorted...like this era Cure. I'm amazed to think the only things they had were chains of pedals to come up with this...but to use it like Gang of Four, or the Wire is of course as we all know now...is timeless. This easily slides in alongside that era.
It's everything that makes the new wave of this era sound so interesting to me. I'm pretty ignorant of it, so when a reissue like this comes around and the few tracks on the myspace are this interesting. There have to be other overlooked documents like this... then I'm in.
I don't think punk, for me anyway, really has the same relevance...this new wave still sounds contemporary. I think the good and bad thing about punk rock, is how tied it was to it's own politics. You had to live punk, it was a part of your daily life...there was nothing casual about it. You knew who else liked it immediately...and I'm even talking about the various aftershocks of punk...let's face it I don't even know what it was like to actually be there, but I think that msic is more about the scene and attitude then the songs...maybe that's obvious to everyone, but it's what always holds it back for me.

'Suicide Fever' is a great great song, no one has sounded this depressed, he's got a talking low almost Peter Murphy, Ian Curtis voice, that of course makes every one of these songs.

This is available from the usual mailorder distro's, Fusetron, Aquarius, etc and from Softspots myspace.

Softspot music is proud to present its flagship release, a limited reissue of the Essential Entertainment EP by Belgian band AA. Originally released in 1981 by Sexy Robot Records and limited to 900 copies, Essential Entertainment is an unrecognized gem of the early post-punk era. A unique and compelling sense of restless dread and frustration emanates from their stuttering grooves, spiky guitar arpeggios, and disturbed mutter-to-shout vocals. The music is clearly inspired by its peers: Joy Division, the Fall, and label mates the Cultural Decay. Essential Entertainment was AA's first and only release. Softspot will be releasing a limited pressing of 500 copies.


Podcast this week, Episode 57 (14min, 13mb) is part two of the interview with Hussy. I talked with Bobby about the split 7" with Sleeping in the Aviary. How you can't seem to get arrested in Madison, what's it's like recording with Heather, how they write a song, Justin from In The Red that mastered their single, and how people tell them they need a bassplayer.

Micachu & The Shapes - Golden Phone 7"

I caught 'Lips' on NY Noise the other day randomly and it completely blew me away. Strumming an electric to get this washboard sound, throwing in a completely off harmonic melody. The guitar is new again. Like Abe Vigoda or Half Japanese...there is no reference. It's pure deliberate ignorance of everything that came before it. Totally new. It was just so raw
The track on this single 'Golden Phone' is nothing like 'Lips', sounding. It's super produced, embracing dance, heavy machine beat..the vocal quality clean...she's just able to pull out all these completely different references and bring them together in completely interesting ways. I'm not saying everything is genius, I get lost on some efforts on the full length when it goes English hip hop, but the talent is insanely apparent. She uses a ukulele like no one else.

Another track on her myspace 'Turn me Weller', has the best use of a whirring vacuum cleaner sound ever. In high school my genius friend Travis, who moved to my small town in upstate NY from somewhere cool, would make mix tapes from tapes he found at the thrift store...he made me one called 'The Piver' out of a Springsteen cassette, he whited out the track names for his own and the line in the 'R'. He had a track called 'Sonata for vacuum' where he taped his mom cleaning the living room and their dog going nuts. For someone that just discovered college radio with a painstaking antenna placement in the attic, this was like a complete revelation. I got it immediately...and bought a 4-track that summer.

and being equally impressed, but in a totally different way. She's done tons since then, and it's all pop experimental...with enough I just went back through some posts and remembered talking about Micachu about a year ago sounds to completely confuse. OK, I've gone on enough...I'll probably ruin it by being too in love with it and the expectations will be too high.

This all started from spotting an old blogger draft for this single and thought I'd try to track it down this morning. It's too bad but it looks like it's import only...

Get it from Rough Trade or Accidental

Micachu & The Shapes Golden Phone 7"
This is a 24 carrot golden piece of alt pop and not to be missed! It's the second single from the critically feted Jewellery album and perfectly showcases the band's intricate beats, vocal loops and junk punk clatter.

Always one to go the extra mile, Mica has also created a second mix tape as a follow up to last years word of mouth must have first installment. It features contributions and collaborations from a wealth of young talent including The XX, The Invisible, Man Like Me, Rowdy Superstar, Ghost Poet, Dels, Elan, Lime Headed Dog, Dog Bite, Gold Panda and many more.

Blank Dogs waiting on in the red records

Been hearing about this single and double LP coming out on In the Red for a while and I must have checked the site out a couple times a week. That's the nice thing about an online store, I don't feel like too much of a nut, completely out of control impatient, waiting for the new Blank Dogs. There was some kind of delay....who knows, with the amount of records being pressed these days, it has to be inevitable.

Waiting
I think for me Blank Dogs can get away with a pretty big range of style and emotion, he hasn't pinned himself down with one effect or vocal style. It can be pretty pop styled or deadpan, but with all the effects used, that adds another layer of anti-emotion, so he has to make up for it somewhere.
It's just pure weird. He has a definitive style. He leaves his mark on everything obviously, but if I were going to make a band come up with a new Blank Dogs album, I have to say there's really nothing I could easily point to, to give them some direction. He's a great creator of simple melody that works, that's one. There has to be a lot of layers, it's low-fi, but not necessarily tape hiss or piling up bouncing tracks. The sounds are clean, but it's a process of adding and adding. Multiple vocals, with a hint of distortion and vibrato.
I will say that there are a lot more live drums on this track, which isn't bothering me, I have to go back and listen if this is the first single with that? Or I just never really noticed before....again it's just one of those things...there is no cut and dry formula for this.

Splitting (the inner label says spitting...oops) really goes nuts again with the glitch darkwave electronics and drum machine. I think he's going for some kind of transition period...easing us into his live drum period, or a less electronic direction...at least that's what I got from the live show. He wants to evolve and not get hemmed into a particular home recorded no-fi electronic style. I always wonder if this is the artist, always wanting to evolve? You don't want to do the same things over and over, or is it an evolution because of the success? He realized standing over a laptop wasn't going to work on tour, so recruits a band to learn the material and rock live. That in turn influences what happens the next time he goes to record.
But then again you listen to Splitting, and we're right back where we started with this guy....perfect.

In the red has it and says:
BLANK DOGS: Waiting / Splitting 7" single

To coincide with the new album we are releasing this companion single featuring two songs not found on the album or anywhere else.

Crystal Stilts - Love is a Wave on Slumberland

Finally, a new single...I just was disappointed after that UK single that basically was everything already on the album. So, UK, are you up to speed now?
Great.
This A-Side sounds really hopeful, or let's say optomistic. Love is a wave? It's more like what was I worried about? The drums are off in the distance, keeping the usual Frankie time, which makes this, as usual. She is the key to the debut album....and the Vivian Girls for that matter. She is a machine...pure consitency. Making frantic exhausting pounding essential.
'Angels prostituting?'....they really lay it on thick, like the Velvets, I guess they are playing with that contradiction; happy sound with fucked up depressing lyrics.
The thing I'm worried about with this sound as a listener is where do they go from here? Have they painted themselves into a corner with this sound? Would I be happy to listen to this for a few more albums? I guess they are going to answer this eventually.

Not with the B-Side 'Sugar Baby', this is just way to optomistic. I can understand the lyrics more...I'm not in love with this. The darkness is kind of gone, it's like they are reinterpreting that 50's reverb too much... it's too surf rock. He's even singing with emotion!!!! Why is he trying to sing. It's just subtle but it's enough to make this sound like it's coming from a different place. Would I have liked them if this was the first single I heard?
Strummed guitars...too kitch, I get it, this is kind of done ironically? I want sincerity! Be honest and work with those elements...I love them, but don't reference them...ike you are a cover band for an era. Disappointing...this song is not in line with what I was loving about them in the first place.
I mean these are the questions you ask yourself, how much am I falling for everyone's shit?
Do I even know what I like?
Damn!

Get it from Slumberland, it's on white vinyl, and I like the label on the 45...very classic:

We’re thrilled to be able to bring you this ace single, featuring two brand-new songs not to be found on their album. Love Is A Wave is a firm favorite of the band’s live show, a perfect two-minute pop nugget in the best punk rock tradition. Fired by an insistent fast-strummed riff, an eager beat and barely-contained feedback, Love Is A Wave is an instant classic that stands tall with tunes like “Never Understand” and “I Heard Her Call My Name” in the noise-pop pantheon. B-side Sugarbaby is no slouch either, sounding for all the world like The Clean if they had been produced by Lee Hazlewood back in Arizona in the late 50s. With a spookily evocative keyboard line, breathless backing vocals and undistorted twang, Sugarbaby could be from 1959, or 1969, or 1989. But it’s pure 2009, and another great example of how Crystal Stilts have managed to mine rock’s past and create something entirely new and crucial for today.

Br'er on Edible Onion Records

Darian from Edible Onion records asked if I wanted to give one of these super handmade releases a listen. I'm seriously grateful he was able to send me one of these Br'er singles which are limited to just 300...the work that went into this is really impressive.
Both sides of the sleeve have windows of vellum where a painting on inner sleeve shows through. There are even painted cutout cardstock inserts with credits handwritten on the reverse. Not even the vinyl single itself escaped painting, the inner label is color coded and lettered as well.

The handmade painstaking quality of the sleeve absolutely reflects what's happening on the record. It completely adds to the entire experience of this recording....here's this delicate object that was literally painted by someone hundreds of times in their apartment, in countless steps of complication...drying, cutting, lettering...it's preparing you for the work...the blood and tears that went into the songwriting.

Benjamin Schurr has an amazing vocal quality on both of these sides, it's what I keep coming back to over and over. The thing I can't get over to even pay attention to the music...it's really the focus, for me, on both of these tracks. He's got an intimate high falsetto voice...a little more conventional than say a completely schizophrenic Xiu Xiu, or hoarse cracking Conner Oberst but it has all the epic tragedy. The content of someone completely stripped bare, and (pun intended) ....pulling it off.
There can be too much sharing, and this confessional intimacy can easily fall apart if not just carefully finessed. It's a careful combination of ingredients. It's nothing you can even duplicate...you know if you have it or not. Is that 'have-it' going to be different with everyone? I don't think so...I think when someone is completely sincere in their openness, it shows in the music. It helps to be talented...to have an ear for arrangement, to be skilled at composition, when you open up your diary to the world, and it better be honest. There's nothing easier to write off then being overly self aware....who wants to listen to an egotist? Himself.

As much as I'm really examining the vocals and why something like this is immediately of the caliber of Jeff Magnum, I do want to get into the orchestration which is insanely complex, and when I say orchestration, I mean it, I'm not just referring to an arrangement of the guitars and bass. This is an array of weird percussion, a beat consisting of multiple objects being struck in odd time. There's a harp, a saw...nothing ever gets gimmicky, or overused. You wonder what got these guys together in Philadelphia to construct this. It all works under a pop umbrella, but the pieces are impossible to pin down. Like watching a choir ring those bells individually, each person plays one ringing note...it doesn't even make sense on an individual level. I know they have to be amazed listening to their own song. It's a magic trick every time.

It's completely live sounding, this has been recorded all at once in a room, and there's no tour dates listen on Br'er's website and I'm beginning to wonder if, like with everything too great to be true, everyone has since moved on to other projects. This being so taxing emotionally and musically, they couldn't keep that kind of effort up forever, and it just collapsed under it's own weight. God, I'm writing their obituary already...they just have me in that tragic mood, where the most beautiful things are ephemeral...like the availability of this single.

Get it on Edible Onion

Side A
I'm A Kid Again (Geltabs Version)

Side B
I'm Sorry Mom (Angelic Version)

Edible Onion is proud to announce its first vinyl release, a 7" single from Br'er, featuring alternate recordings of "I'm a Kid Again" and "I'm Sorry Mom." The two tracks orginally appeared on Br'er's debut full length "Of Shemales and Kissaboos," and have long been audience favorites in Br'er's live sets.

The version of "I'm a Kid Again" featured on the 7" was orignally recorded by Audio Confusion in Mesa, Arizona, during Br'er's first US tour. "I'm Sorry Mom" was recorded mostly live by Dan Angel in Philadelphia on his digital sixteen track. The songs as they appear here capture the raw, chathartic sound that characterized the group's early live performances, and differ dramatically from their melancholy readings on "Of Shemales and Kissaboos."

As with every Edible Onion release, each "I'm a Kid Again/I'm Sorry Mom" 7" is packaged in handmade art. For this release, each record jacket has a hand painted outer jacket, with vellum windows cut out to reveal a hand painted inner jacket. The painting was done with a mixture of acrylic and watercolor paint on oak tag (outside) and American Masters printmaking paper (inside). All of the text is handwritten.

The release is being done in a limited run of 300 records.

Railcars on Gold Robot records - Full length from Stumparumper

Gold robot records, who released that ultra limited Bonnie Prince Billy has this released this pop-chaos single from Railcars. I'm loving that this is a mini Ep of 5 songs, the recording quality...it's highly produced, clean sounding bursts of really insane compositions...that come together as short little beauties.
His voice is sometimes all far away distorted, he's goes from that Xiu Xiu emotion, that bare crying vocal to quiet whispering in 'Bohemia is without a sea', where the percussion track is amazing. It changes sounds every measure, forced through effects, of rhythm...crazy.
As much as I'm hearing that XX influence, (he produced it by the way), It's very Handsome Furs at least I'm hearing it in 'There is ice; it is blue'. The direct driving use of mechanical sounding drums, using all this technology and manipulation in a really up front way, nothing is trying to sound like anything it's not. It's the best kind of electronics, out in the open, it's not imitating anything, it's barely working with things you recognize at all. It's dirty, glitchy, overdriven...and I really believe that's where those moments of genius happen. Railcars is orchestrating the whole thing, but you can't control some of these sounds and when the layers fuse together....well.... it's perfection.
I can't help but appreciate the complexity of this, where you would approach putting this together...if this happened in an afternoon, then half the bands out there should just give up.

Sunset Rubdown also comes to mind also, but this is poppier, catchier...there's nothing introspective or quiet about any of these tracks, they are trying to overwhelm you... and it's working.
I've been listening to this all morning trying to hear all the parts...to get a handle on just a tiny part of the instrumentation. It's such an impossible to pin down melting pot, how can this come together and sound so great?

From Railcars:

Aria Jalali's experimental pop/art rock project, RAILCARS, based in san francisco, is now putting the final touches on a new album that will be released on super thick 12" vinyl record (pressing of 1000) through Stumparumper Records on august 4th, as well as online, via itunes etc.

The album is the wildly anticipated follow up to last years "Cities Vs Submarines EP" which was produced by Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart.

No podcast this week, instead you can download this EP 7" Aria has so kindly offered to make available...definitely go buy it though. Consider this a backup in case this has sold out...it definitely will.

Buy the 7" at Gold Robot who says:

Artist: Railcars
Title: Cities vs Submarines
Format: 7-inch heavyweight 70g vinyl
Run: 500
Cover Art: Claudia O'Steen
Release: September 2008

Tracklist:
A1 - There Is Ice; It Is Blue [mp3]
A2 - Saints Are Waiting For Me, Outside My Door
B1 - Concrete Buildings
B2 - Through The Trees Lay Smokestacks
B3 - Bohemia Is Without A Sea

Recorded in the kitchen of Xiu Xiu frontman Jamie Stewart, cities vs submarines is a ten minute journey into Aria Jalali's most vivid, reoccurring dreams. Railcars is an attempt to bring the images that have haunted Aria's mind to life using drum boxes, synths, and noise pedals with sentiments recreated in lyrical form.

The current four member lineup for railcars' live performances was established by Jalali when asked to play some shows with Handsome Furs in April 2008, however Aria Jalali has also performed railcars sets by himself, with only a laptop, guitar and pedal effects.

I also just found another one of his singles the 'Postmodern EP' on Filthy Little Angels, but it's import only and will set you back 6 pounds, but I'm seriously considering it.

Don't forget a full length 12" is coming out on Stumparumper any day now...can't wait for that.

Kid Icarus - Das Black Milk split on Summersteps records

Got this in the mail the other day from Eric who is in Kid Icarus and runs Summersteps records. Nice Star Trek sleeve, I actually has a bunch of Star Trek 45's that were little comics and they had a record in the back. When you heard a chime you had to turn the page. But what did I care about the 70's star trek? Nothing. I listened to them, but I had no idea what the hell was going on.

Immediately this is really sounding like something off Copper Blue from Mr Bob Mould, not exactly the same deep growl of endless vocal harmony layers, but close. It's fuzzed out guitars, and I think the melody is what's so Bob...and the line about 'Pandora's box'.
The stops and starts, underlying acoustic, it's sparkly, crystal clear production is definitely in the same ballpark.
What happens when you have a self titled song about the band? Is it a song about the band? How you started, the members, what you're going to sing about on upcoming albums?...I started thinking about how genius this idea could be...like Art Brut's 'We formed a band'.
A couple lines lead me to think he's actually singing about the NES video game which is hilarious:
You don't save a princess in this game / all the keys that I'll never find / my hearts at 999.

Das Black Milk is a pretty awesome name, and when I saw there were drum machines involved, I thought it might be right up my alley. There are a couple tracks here, starting with 'Art in a Blender' lots of drum machine, I like the verse melody, it's pretty catchy, the vocals are loose, not taking themselves too seriously, repeating the title of the song. 'Wanna be King' the second track kind of has a Peter Murphy sound...or JAMC, it's the nineties, we're serious about sounding really tough...drum machine cramps. Lots of clean production and two very different glasses of Das Milk.

Extra points for this being on randomly colored vinyl...this one is kind of a grey/purple/white swirl.


From Summersteps records or Kid Icarus blog:
Kid Icarus / Das Black Milk split 7"
SUM 0023 7" Randomly Mixed & Colored Vinyl EP $5
(postpaid in US and international orders add $4)

Summersteps' own Kid Icarus have teamed up w/ local misanthropes Das Black Milk to produce two new exclusive tracks in a special limited vinyl presentation (on randomly mixed colored wax). The Kid checks in w/ a studio upgrade of one of their earliest & most enduring tracks while the Das Black Milk boys rail against the banality of small town existence, crank up the drum machines and get real gone.

Jeffrey Novak on Sweet Rot records

Jeffrey Novak has done it again, this time on Sweet Rot. I have to say I'm loving Cheap Time and all the solo singles I can get my hands on. I hadn't even heard about this when I saw it on the shelf the other day, so I rushed home to give it a listen and see if this was still available anywhere.
He has this really amazing layered stylized pop punk approach. It's reminding me of the Kinks better tracks. There's always a playfulness that comes out in the weird experimental composition. It's really contemporizing where so many things from the 60's left off and avoids sounding dated by completely embracing this sound...or the best parts. Harmonizing with the distorted guitar. A deliberate bassline, with his stutter verse talking delivery and layers of vocals chorus. It's always interesting, there's so much going on working together seamlessly.

Short Trip Home is the A-Side. I really wouldn't imagine this is from the same guy in Cheap Time, it's very different...the way it meanders around the tune, the complex carefully places pieces. It's a really introspective side of Cheap Time.
One of A Kind, the flip, is equally as great, they're right. The effects on the vocals...it's warm sounding but a little off in the distance with a little distorted vibrato on it. This weird ending of vocal sounds, off beat drums, cowbell is a perfect example of how he can really put these elements together that sound simultaneously crazy and amazing.

Goner records has it, I got mine at Academy

SRR-11 - JEFFREY NOVAK "One of a Kind" b/w "Short Trip Home" 7"
After turning quite a few heads with his self-released debut LP and Shattered Records 7", Jeffrey Novak (Cheap Time) is back with another two song hit single of A+ worthy pop. Both songs are so good, we had to flip a coin to pick the A-side. His second LP "Baron in the Trees" will be coming out next year on In the Red Records. This is a one time only pressing on black vinyl.

Pink Reason - Electric Bunnies on Die Stasi records

This single, number 8, I think for Die Stasi is a split from Electric Bunnies and Pink Reason, I'm not sure I have a clear view of the Bunnies yet or Pink Reason for that matter, and that's exactly why they were both warranted another single and picking this up.

The Electric Bunnies are sounding different here then I remember them (big surprise) from a single a little while back on Columbus Discount...that seemed a lot more jokey, saying 'sweet robot' with robot vocal effects and glitchy keyboards, it's not rocking out garage, low-fi...I think I saw the academy annex call it 'sci-fi pop', and I like that as good as anything. They aren't painting themselves in corner anyway. On 'Colorful Teardrops' they have the same kind of elements as their other singles...keyboard melody and drone, completely off key layered electric guitar notes, backwards drum machine...then the echo vocals come in...all heavy on the repetition. It's like they played this little melody accidentally and looped it.
Although that melody is enough to drive you a little insane.

The second track on this EP, gets away from the slow niceness and brings a little noise...this is live room sounding track, yelling right after the drums kick in. Guitar echo feedback screeching in between verses. They are just weird, and I appreciate that, playing with a lot of styles...whatever works for them, they might have it down, but I'm still trying to find their sound.

The Pink Reason Side. Hey Girl has this Blank Dogs but fast energy, weird keyboard and warbly effect vocals, but it's really rocking out the whole time, half talking low vocals, strummed acoustic, hard to place, and that's what makes this whole single so great...it's snapshots of the past...a couple of polaroids, CVS 4x6's and digital C-prints, all in one tiny mysterious package

The second track 'Watching You Fall' is the best....it's taking me back to old Sebadoh, or Eric's Trip....super muddy, sounds kind of live and overdubbed later. Real deep groove...off in the distance. Dark vocals...layers and layers of retakes, punching instruments in, boosting levels with no compression. There's a huge layer of mystery thrown on top. It's a different era Ariel Pink, nailing something you don't know why you like but you do. This sound just feels like it's from another world, it's going to be hard to figure out....good luck. I feel like I'm in the same place I started, no closer to developing any kind of theory about where either of these bands have been or where they're going.
Oh well, I'll have to get another one when it comes out.

From Die Stasi records

Both bands take a stab at some pop with the Bunnies making a mosaic named "Colorful Teardrops" and Pink Reason teaching a lesson in pachydermy called "Hey Girl." Enough ivory on that one to return a couple tusks! "Rest your head on a cloud while flower petals sprinkle from the heavens" is a down-under style Thumper and the Electric Bunnies second offering on this one. Make sure your stereo is fit. And then we got some vintage Pink Reason drag: "Watching You Fall" Some say its Kevins best track--it sticks to the ribs, boy.

PINK REASON/ELECTRIC BUNNIES split 7" is HERE!

DOMESTIC PRICES--
1 7"=$6.50 ppd
2 7"s=$12 ppd
3 7"s=$16.50 ppd
4 7"s=$20.50 ppd

Foreign/wholesale orders or combined shipping questions email: diestasi AT gmail DOT com

Black Dice - Tour only single on Catsup Plate

Last night I caught Black Dice at Bowery Ballroom, after a pretty exhausting weekend of Northside fest shows, and I just happened to check the merch table because ....you never know there just might a single...even from an opening band, I'll always pick it up.
I asked the guy behind the table if this weirdo camouflage was Black Dice and sure enough it was. He pointed to a tiny stack of about 50 on a shelf next to him. "That's a tour only single and we only have this many left and then they are completely gone...forever. "
You already had me at 7"...
I was so excited this made it home ok and I put it on this morning to check it out.
The show was impressive, I've seen these guys in the past, but I don't remember it being this intense. So completely overwhelming, it takes everything over in volume and just continuous pummeling of sound and experience. There's nothing else but Black Dice making noise.
It's also weird to hear this live and I get self conscious I'm actually at a techno show, and everyone is on E or something. But just when that bass snare bass gets too repetitive they're on to the next idea.
They must have some kind of copyrighted processor because they just have this particular fucked up sinister sound. I think that's the other thing that saves them from ever crossing that terrible line. They want to rock you a little bit dance, but you're too scared to move...it's a nice combination. So I think 'What the fuck, this is good' and that's the end of it.

This single is completely unlabeled except for the Catsup plate CPR726 in the lower front corner.
Let me just say this is a different direction from the pure sound glitches on Beaches and Canyons. 'Chocolate Cherry': Right away they've sampled something and pitch shift it up and down with some vocals on top really slow. Then it works into an electric guitar chord, slowed down into another sound. There's warbly waves of high pitch ear splitting sound, but this doesn't really go anywhere. Maybe this is a unlicensed sample and someone could tell me that's the catch here...that would explain why it's so limited.
The B-Side 'Pop STD' is more manipulated samples, it sounds like the source could have been slightly reggae or dub, it's got that slightly delayed. An acoustic guitar is pitch shifted to create a new chord progression. I'm into pasting their sound on top of samples like this, but I've gotten this from Girl Talk, Panda Bear and a thousand others. I like when there's no frame of reference...they do that so well, it's weird to use a crutch like this. The last track 'Bob' does more of the same briefly...I guess they are evolving...and maybe like animal collective came to this otherworldly pop place after years of pure sound collage, Black Dice is finding something new in DJ mixing culture after going as far as humanly possible with pure sound.

From Catsup Plate records:

Ordering info
All copies currently with Black Dice on tour.

Black Dice's "Chocolate Cherry" seven inch comes hot on the heels of their album Repo (which is Catsup Plate's favorite Black Dice record) and finds the band pushing themselves further "out" and paradoxically making some of the poppiest sounds to come from their camp in some time.

If Repo was the sound of Black Dice making a funk record then "Chocolate Cherry" veers more towards soul, if you can believe that. The title track is all clipped ecstatic vocals and stuttering disco soul. "POP STD" pins a laconic guitar line and backmasked vocals onto a plodding drum line. And the record closes with the amazingly titled "Bob" which somehow merges insect like buzzing, an incessantly lazy rhythm and what this writer likes to think is a sitar drone (but probably isn't) into a piece of druggy brilliance.

Silkscreened on heavy chipboard in four colors by the fine folks at VG Kids.

Single edition of 500 copies only. All initial copies are to be sold on the band's Spring 2009 US tour. Any remaining copies will be made available upon the band's return.

**Northside Fest** Grooms - Blues Control - Kurt Vile and the Violators - 6-13-09

The Grooms have the best drummer I have ever seen. The most entertaining to watch, looking like he's flailing around, but completely in control, throwing his whole body into it. Dedicated to these crazy half beats and never ending fills, totally in his own structure. He's pounding the weirdest way...he half falls off his stool from rocking back and forth.
I hadn't expected to catch the Grooms at the Less Artists More Condos annex on Bayard Street but I'm glad I did....they were the best thing all night.
I loved this space...it was big enough to not have the DBA problem of being packed early in the night and impossible to get into...it's cavernous...it looked like it must have been a photo studio. It's great to see a show in these places that aren't even venues. There's something about seeing bands here that makes you feel like you're in on something important...no tickets, the band is setting up their own equipment...piles of empty cans on top of an amp. But what happens when they get knocked over? Someone grabs a trashcan and sweeps the whole thing into it. It's a beautiful moment.
But back to the Grooms...a perfect three piece...bass, guitar, drums. Really Sonic Youth inspired, weird guitar tunings, distortion is an instrument. Slide guitar with a beer can, bursting into walls of sound...he even sings along with the guitar melody like Thurston at points. Songs are built around indiscernible chords....an anti-melody, coming down out of it to hint at something, rework the rhythm. Minor chords into a high phaser melody, rising out over the wall. The drums are following this lead, changing the whole time from all out fill patterns, rim shots, muted crashes...perfect...I loved it. I'm gong to have to get this album...the myspace is great stuff. I had to get up this morning and put on Daydream Nation just to make sure I wasn't completely insane...and it's the next best thing until I pick this up.


Blues Control were up next, I got this single from Sub Pop a while back and wanted to see what they would bring live. They have an extensive setup with multiple racks of keyboards, power for everything...pedals lined up, two guitars...unfortunately it just didn't work. There's a wall of sound and then there's just a wall of sound. The rhythm would start on a flat drum machine and then all the sounds would just pile up improvising on top of each other. It's two people trying to make as much noise as possible...there was just nothing to grab onto...nothing to keep me interested after the first 5 minutes of pounding on a synth into delay...distorted guitar chords. There's no energy, no direction. It's all jamming around itself. It's fun to play, and hear what things are working their way out of the cloud.... the sounds you didn't even play, I just wanted something?


Then finally Kurt went on around 2, 2:30...half of the Violators must have been playing another show or something...we had to wait for them to show up...so how was it with the band? Just ok.... I really wanted to like it so bad...Constant Hitmaker is amazing. It had nothing to do with the sound, the time...I tried to block it all out. The band must be a recent addition, the drummer is playing along with a click track and the few songs I recognized were extended versions of the concise little jems of experimental intimacy. It was huge here...so Kurt can yell and really get into it, but the vocals are lost and the refrains go on forever. He's really channeling Dylan, I know its crazy, but there was this folk singer, acoustic guitar, storytelling in an outsider way.

**Northside Fest** These are Powers at Death by Audio -6-12-09

These are Powers are evolving.

They also screened their video last night for 'Easy Answers' from All Aboard Future. It was full of forest, candlelight ritual and symbols of consumption. Anna is dressed in a jumpsuit and sunglasses holding a boombox crouched down singing into the camera....looking very hip hop. She's singing now, in the classical sense, snarling more...getting sexy.

There's a different feel for this band compared to a year ago, Anna's dressed in sequins, clearly comfortable with her lead position in the Powers, talking with the crowd and throwing balls of tin foil and coiled cables. It's a confident TAP, they mentioned their recent tour through China and I have to imagine this has something to do with their more dance centric performance. Everything performed was from All Aboard Future (which is missing Cockles, their greatest song) which is more electronic, less experimental. On a purely musical level it's a different direction...embracing the 4/4 rhythms, the handclap and leaving the sinister ghost-punk behind. There's a heavier focus on the live performance, the bass beats and Anna's vocals, which used to be another instrument, tribal and dangerous, not breathy dance phrasing... nearly hip hop.

Bill Salas is amazing at managing to achieve a balance between the electronic and analog. Bringing the thunderous bass shaking machine kicks with cymbals, or conga. They undeniably move the crowd and Powers are clearly loving the reaction... Anna is a force, a real presence....but it felt friendlier and more accessible. They are an impressive live band, and have come up with a compelling composite of experimental primitive dance, but they've changed up their own rules, nearly thrown out the old formula and are on to moving more and more crowds.

**Northside Fest** Ducktails at Cameo Gallery 6-11-09

I saw the first Northside fest show tonight after picking up the 7inches press pass and headed across the street to catch Ducktails at a space I've never even heard of . In the back of what used to be Anytime, down a hallway is a black box called Cameo Gallery...

I think it's pretty amazing that Williamsburg alone can throw a sxsw-type show celebrating itself. Not that it doesn't happen in some form weekly at any number of alternative spaces but it says something to put it all together under one banner....to give these bands and venues recognition. Let's take a minute to realize there's something pretty amazing happening here. A crazy concentration.....a music vortex that makes specifically this part of Brooklyn really exciting...it's thanks to the bands and these venues that are a part of this thing.

I don't know about CBGB's or the village...those scenes that get romanticized, that you hear stories about the good old days of music, how it couldn't be duplicated....the documentaries...I think you have to realize right now there is something here in Williamsburg...it's not going to be around for ever. I'm just starting to appreciate that. Don't take it for granted!

There's a long history by now of bands/projects existing of people crouched on the floor playing with two hundred effects pedals. I think what makes Ducktails different is the manipulation that's going on in a more human way than say....standing at a laptop, or a sequencer or something. He's using some pretty primitive devices by any standard....the basic delay pedals , most replaceable keyboard... the cheapest mixer...it's inspiring and then crushing because you realize there is no way you could do that.

Lawrence Lessig says we're moving into an age of the remix...not just tied to music anymore, he's talking about remixing across mediums. It's all over youtube...people engaging culture by reediting video, responding to each others videos...we aren't passively consuming entertainment anymore. It just all tied in while watching Matt Mondanile have this sort of interaction...this spontaneous conversation with himself. He has a clear idea of where he's going to end up but the performance side of this is listening to how exactly he's going to get there. It's essentially button pushing and dial turning but that he's remixing himself. Taking his own material and manipulating it. All of this in his own specific world music slant. He plays a piano melody from a cheap keyboard into loops...it's clear the notes themselves don't matter, he's stumbling across the keys, but they are working into layers...if it isn't right it fades away, or that piece gets captured and looped further.
It's a process that's been changed by Ducktails, having been completely ruined by terrible DJ's or just audience scaring noise bands. To completely change the context he reached over by the end of the set and grabbed a guitar to solo on top of the looped tropical haze... the layers of indecipherable rhythm or reference.

Between Ducktails and Real Estate Matt is playing nearly every night in or outside of Northside Fest...but Ducktails is different because you aren't seeing the replication of a song your watching an imperfect permutation of a conversation...a really good one.

The only problem with this is that it might devalue the recorded full length for sale at the end of the stage. It's about an ever changing conversation, so the one that gets documented isn't that important in the end...it's different every time.

Go listen. (24Mb)

Black Panda on Super Secret records

This mini EP from Black Panda is another one I got in the mail the other day from Super Secret records. I can appreciate that Super Secret has it's finger on the pulse of the local Austin scene...not the fuckers that show up once a year to probably turn the place into a theme park shithole, and then leave.
Their town gets a lot of attention every year and the local bands I'm sure are completely overshadowed by this mess that rolls in...I think it's great that a local label probably sprung up out of this local scene...with or without SXSW, they are pressing their friends stuff and they are into it. I can't argue with that. They have a clear vision of the audience and the people they want to be a part of their label.
Undoubtedly little of this stuff would see the light of day any other way....so good on you Super Secret.
With this one from Black Panda, Yoshi has some pretty specific ideas about vocal that's going to determine the audience. The vocals have so much attitude and texture, from half growl, to exhaustion... but they seem a lot louder in the mix. I want the instrumentation to have the same attitude...it's a little muddy and quiet...like some punk singles from the late 70's...they wanted to highlight the singer...which is what they are doing here...I think that's my jaded garage hozac/sacred bones/columbus discount ear. There are some really puzzling lyrics...bluebird GHQ? Something might be lost on some kind of translation.
This really could have been recorded 30 years ago...you'd either say this is timeless or unaware. I saw a lot of Stooges references in other reviews..... but let's see where things go. It's definitely informed by that kind of thing, straight up raw rock.

This is on Super Secret records.

The Teeners on Super Secret Records

This came in for review from Super Secret records the other day and I'll be damned if it isn't a one sided hardcore/punk single. I'm sure that's not really the first...but it is the first to have grooves on the blank side and nothing coming out....did I have to play it? Yes I did....just to make sure there weren't any secret messages.
It makes it nice for me I have to say...I don't have to get up but once to just put the needle back at the beginning...none of this flipping sides over crap!
Thanks Super Secret, you made my life a little bit easier this morning.

Here's the thing with this genre, it's all in the subtlety, the little things in recording and style but even more it's their live show. The record is a document, but an imperfect one. A band like this is a little lost on me. I will never be able to keep up with all the hardcore and punk singles that are out there...it's a huge field that gets bigger everyday...there's a lot of pissed off people out pressing singles, and they should. That entire genre was and still is the 7" format. Someone needs to write that book, it's just definitely not me. It's like reggae/dub scene...the whole world was the 45 single, you were lucky to last long enough to make it to a full length. I saw this documentary where someone would record and in the same day press a record and play it that night and then a few weeks later they take the piles of singles that didn't sell and melt them back down. You had to put your money where your mouth was and spend a couple hundred bucks and xerox the sleeve ...like The Teeners. Draw some rats doing fucked up things... call it a day. We have a show to do.
It's abrasive distorted yelling...I started listening to the Mayyors because it's my only frame of reference, the speed, the energy. Johnny is impressively gutteral, he's punishing himself for something. Lisa provides a steady pummeling foundation and probably is releived this tempo is brief. It's that fucked up angry punk garage sound with chords, 3 quick songs to grate your teeth to and hope you don't run into these guys.

You know if you're into this.

From Super Secret:

New Teeners 7" Gold out now. The second 7" from Austin seminal garage band. Get your copy soon while they last. $4

Well they're probably really nice guys...isn't that how it goes?

Real Estate at Music Hall of Williamsburg 6-5-09

I ended up seeing Real Estate opening for Love is All Friday at Music Hall of Williamsburg. I was there to cover Love is All, but I wanted to see Real Estate rock a huge venue like MH. The kick drum was turned up insanely loud...I've been to this venue before and haven't heard this insane pounding bass before....I had to literally hold on to my beer or it was going to shake off the railing. Even on the balcony it was deafening...but it made sense with their wall of sound.

I loved both of their singles, and was a little confused where they were coming from...I couldn't quite place it into anything else I was into. It's really polished, a little bit country...shoegazey....latching onto huge grooves, but not devolving into a masturbatory jam....ever. They are concise, packed with changing melody.
Real Estate is the perfect moniker...songs about suburbia, that complacency of modern life. The mundane realities...or obligations to get caught up in...the distance... the alienation of a cul de sac.
Great loungey basslines...for a minute I was back in high school at my first show The Ocean Blue at a local college...something about the vocal quality...and when they hit certain chord progressions, but then again their music is just a vision...a dream of the good old days. The uncomplicated high school vacations...the crushing boredom. They are that summer haze...the drunken day at Coney Island, nothing can go wrong, and if it does, oh well, you're just kind of lying there watching everything happen anyway. Wrapped in a wall of reverb, they play with huge peaks and valleys. The rhythm of the waves back and forth...slowing down for a washed out vocal by Matt Mondanile.
Both of these projects are really great, to hear what's going on when that Ducktails sound when expanded into a 4 piece. it's completely it's own with a lyrical element, but keeps it's tropical fog. It's inexplicably catchy, it's hard to think of this outside the context of the indie single...it has palace-like potential in it's own beautiful logic.

You'll hear the major compression I had to try to put on the low end to keep it under control but it was peaking constantly, still it's so worth hearing. Click here to hear it. (18mb-20min)

Sneakers on Permanent Records

Just heard about this single from Permanent records (in Chicago) who have been releasing a few things lately I've been meaning to check out...but then a 7" comes along and I had to see what this band was about.
It makes perfect sense that a store like this would get into the pressing game...if you have a store like this you are obsessed with music. Who couldn't see themselves, if given the chance, owning a store someplace like this just to supplement your record buying habit...you're obsessed anyway, why not try to make it a full time job? I have to say it's a little bit of a dream of mine too.

The only thing I could find out about Sneakers was the track 'Chick Freaked out' on Permanents myspace. It's female vocal heavy echo delay on top a really stuttered fuzzed out guitar over a some nice drum work. It's super speed bluesy in double time...the beat is really carrying this into more than your standard garage punky recording. The vocals are wailing, I like the washed out yelling vocals over this tight catchy rhythm section. I hope they keep up this energy on the other side.

I admit I checked it out when they said for fans of Wavves, but I don't really hear the connection. It's a pop Los Llamaradas...I didn't know about the other project, Cave either, but this drummer is great. The one track of Cave on the myspace is kind of Health sounding, but those guys are all over the place anyway. It's feedback distortion droney dark...with a pounding tribal percussion underneath.

You can get this right from the myspace page, they have a paypal button right below the release...

SNEAKERS-Children Into People 7” (Permanent/PERM005) $6.99 “The fifth jam in the Permanent Records label discography is also our first 7”, the Sneakers "Children Into People EP". Sneakers consists of Rex (Cave’s drummer) and Zach (former Cave bassist) and "Children Into People" is their debut vinyl release. The grooves within contain some of the catchiest weird punk jams you’ll ever lay ears on. For fans of: Cave, This Heat, Wavves. 7” with tri-fold cover. Limited to 500.”

The Hussy - Sleeping in the Aviary split on Science of Sound records + podcast interview

Bobby also sent me their first single, 'One Time' from the Science of Sound... the Fistful one and this came out at nearly the same time, but technically this was conceived of earlier so it'll go down in the books as the first.
Science of Sound records based in Madison, The Hussy and Sleeping the Aviary's hometown, released this black and white glossy sleeve split between the two bands. Bobby told me how he'd beena huge fan of Sleeping in the Aviary and it was pretty amazing to not only appear on this split but actually sit in on guitar for them once.

The first track on the Hussy side, 'One Time', is a more abrasive Hussy than the previously reviewed single...dirtier and raw. It practically sounds recorded live in a huge room sound, Heather and Bobby have tons more attitude here supporting each others verses and the whole thing is in danger of flying apart the entire time...completely off the rails. I think the vocals back and forth supports this great garage punk pop sound...making it even bigger, even more fun...singing along with themselves...good naturedly yelling at each other.
The solo towards the end is just ridiculous, clean gated overdrive...where in between notes there's just a hint of feedback, low crunchy feedback.
At the end there's all kinds of radio static, flipping around channels with lonely piano chords.... nice segue to 'I Got Soul' where the dirty guitar is still on 11, full of their sludgy distortion. The huge sound is even more cavernous, the drums heavy hitting with tons of low end. Lots of reverb...even on Bobby's vocals, when he's singing 'Yea I've got soul...yea I do.'
They're referencing that electric blues history...well, at least I think they definitely have that influence poking through with pieces like the backwards blues scale on 'Snakes'. Heather takes main vocal duties while Bobby frantically keeps up this up the guitar line which breaks up in stuttered off beats when Heather bashes the snare and kick at the same time.
No....We don't / we don't / even care.

Yes you do Hussy.

I have to say on this effort... that does it, I'm hooked...this dirtier sound is right on the edge of being completely in the red, it's more blown out and completely fits the garage punk sound even better.

Bobby graciously agreed to provide the track 'One Time' from this single to download. I'm also playing a bunch of stuff behind the podcast interview so you get a sense of their stuff.


The Sleeping in the Aviary side:

'Automatic'. Right away I'm getting like an At the Drive In energy, it blows up right out of the gate with up front distorted vocals. They combine that manic energy with little weezer-like distortion harmonics. The vocals 'oooooo' in harmony that match the high distorted guitar, which keeps building layers of higher and higher notes that almost become synth. There's a lot of great changes, it's impossible to keep up with the vocal pace and the constant guitar bursting into new chords and time changes. Extremely tight and catchy...there's no chorus, just an ever changing melodic assault.

'Radio Waves', the second one, begins with distorted bassline and vocals, written by Phil, who plays and sings on this one. I haven't heard someone go all out in this minimal direction since the Pixies...it's really got that energy when it blasts into the chorus. The same high hat tempo...catchy and taking chances...it all ends in unintelligible screaming with the entire thing collapsing, drum sticks and coughing like less than two minutes later.

This split is available from the Science of Sound for $5...easy on the wallet...pick one up...great pummeling tracks from both bands that will increase your heart rate.

For the podcast this week, Episode 56 (14mb-15min), Bobby and I ended up talking on the phone about Hussy's local tour, he and Heathers earlier projects, both of their singles out now, how it was working with the labels... and how Jeff Novak ended up in a picture holding a copy of their 7".