Jeans Wilder showed up a while back on this split with Best Coast from Atelier Ciseaux. I remember liking his take on the super fuzzy, no-fi, shitgaze sound. Glad to see there was this 7" in the works of some solo material, thanks to La Station Radar. Three tracks: Simpler Times, Burnt Toast and Cold shoulder
"Simpler Times" is using a sort of organ percussion primitive beat heavy on the reverb. I know this entire style gets shit on by critics and labels alike, but when it's done well it can still be interesting...and I'd say it might even take some balls to work like this following in what people could so easily dismiss. You're going to really have to be innovative or confident to think you're going to get away with this these days....and he readily owns up to it calling himself "lo-fi", which I guess can be good that Jeans knows there's a larger history at work...or it's trying on a label...but that's definitely not the case here.
I like Jeans' myspace description under "Influences" he says "old 45's played at 33", I'm definitely hearing that sludgy warped slow tempo at work in everything on this single.
There's layers of vocals, all in different harmonies with a staggering amount of instruments sounds. Maybe I can relate to this kind of construction, throwing everything you have at the recording process and then gradually strip elements away. Take a huge equalizer, and focus in on frequencies...the whole time bouncing it back down to 2 tracks. I understand It's too hard to start with a blank canvas, give him a huge cube of marble to chip away at. He'll come up with something. I think that's essentially what's going on in "lo-fi"...that's what I'd like to believe anyway. Gary War starts with all known frequencies...pressing the Pink Noise button and then filters all the other things out to get tracks.
From Jeans Wilder on the B-Side we actually get some acoustic guitar...I think people forget (I know I do) that Bill Callahan started out as the lowest no-fi-er back on his first couple of albums, and it's reminding me of that, super raw... the best kind of mess. Just taking an acoustic, which is of course a part of the singer/songwriter classic aesthetic and then getting that to work in new lo-fi ways. This dares to veer off melodic course...the vocals get screwy, falsetto and experimental. There a bass or synth sound that is so overblown it's taking up the whole sound wave.
Cold shoulder gets as minimal as the sleeve.... all with just an electric, tambourine...or closed hi hat and massive cloudy vocals. A holy shit guitar explosion shatters the mood, the messiest anti-guitar playing ever committed to vinyl. Sheer madness. I like that the three of these tracks are really going in all different directions...which equals the potential for something really groundbreaking.
I won't be surprised to see more and more of his work getting attention over the next year. It's going to be one of the great examples in lo-fi and is going to remain surprising.
Cold graphic style for this one...that I see working for the whole sound. If you can remember the days of "Industrial", where it was about machines virtually creating the sound, then lo-fi is some kind of alternate industrial. There's so little of the actual person playing music behind the sound, this genre could kind of be an extension of that anti-human sentiment of the late '90s. Hmmmmm.
Get another hit 7" overseas import style from La Station Radar...or check the usual distro's: SS or Fusetron.
andrew Caddick is jeans wilder
We are also pleased to announce the first LP of jeans wilder
Past releases :
- split with Jen Paul Lp - 12 inch on la station radar (link here),
- split with best coast(7inch) on Atelier ciseaux
- many tapes ( on Night People - bathetic Records - trivial pursuit)
"NICE TRASH"
will be out this fall
on la Station Radar and Atelier Ciseaux
(CO-RELEASE)
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