TONSTARTSSBANDHT - Midnite Cobras on Psychic Handshake Records

Psychic Handshake first caught my attention with that dreamy Ethan Hawke 7" sleeve from 'Dead Wife' the one with that a bull ring in his pretty face....is that photoshopped or did he really do that? Probably...it looks like it's from the Reality Bites days....haven't heard Dead Wife yet but looking through my drafts folder how could I pass up looking into a band with a name like Tonstartsbandht on the same label. The A-Side Midnite Cobras is a god damn blasting fuzzed mass of heavily textured, overblown out peaking distortion but mostly I'm surprised they sound like they've concentrated on the vocals, here they have massive echo, it's slightly reminding me of that No Age wall, but they separate what's happening melodically in the layers, it's not just another unintelligible texture. Then it stops completely and shifts gears into a little ambient guitar, the chorus about midnite cobras is just barely there in the distance...it's sort of a drum circle animal collective vocal experimentation punk. It's pretty amazing where this goes by the end of the 4 1/2 minutes. Completely surprising.

Electric Dragon Sword on the B-Side is seriously tape warbled blown out classic guitar riffs with more massively echoed vocals, this one is a sabbath reel to reel tape that has been lost at sea and painstakingly reconstructed with some CSI shit laboratory, and you can hear it.

What really won me over is some of the other near acapella folk battles insanity like Andy Summers...it doesn't have the catchy mass of Midnite Cobras but it's just a completely new direction to take the blown out sound.

Here's another case of Montreal, Canada harboring some amazing talent..it never ends.

TONSTARTSSBANDHT - Midnite Cobras - Psychic Handshake - PSY 005 - 7" - $ 9.25 ***"Listening to impossibly-named Canadian rockers TONSTARTSSBANDHT is a bit like having your mom snatch the blanket off the bed at seven AM. You will wake up, you will be startled, and there will be nothing you can do but move. Below, the band with no picture and no pronounceable name makes an anti-sound with lo-fi alchemy, and if we could discern a single phrase other than "Midnite Cobras" we'd sing along beyond the refrain."--RCRD LBL

Here's the single from Midheaven, I'm into their new site, it looks great and is super easy to put a bunch of stuff together for labels I'd be having ship stuff separately anyway...so it's always convenient.

Psychic Handshake says:
Other distros that carry our records include the following: FLORIDA'S DYING ALL DAY RECORDS ACADEMY RECORDS PUKE 'N VOMIT KILL SHAMAN FAN DEATH NOMINAL RECORDS TIC TAC TOTALLY P. TRASH (Europe)

so there's no excuse.