Monday, December 23, 2013

TV Ghost on Kind Turkey Records


I still listen to that Atomic Rain single from 2008, which is an eternity when it comes to seven inches. Five years ago, Blank Dogs was putting out impossible to get singles records left and right and Captured Tracks wasn't even a label yet for god sakes. TV Ghost's discography now reads like a who's who of underground labels, Die Stasi, Columbus Discount, Sweet Rot and In The Red. I don't know what kind of connection Bobby over at Kind Turkey has with these guys but they agreed to release the first recorded material from TV Ghost way back in 2007 on his label. The discog description for it is the best:

The earliest known recordings of TV Ghost. Recorded by the band sometime in early 2007 in Lafayette, Indiana onto 4-track cassette monaurally. The cassette was then dropped into a puddle on accident, after which it was soundsourced for this 7".

A perfect document of the era - some might say the very height of blown out, buried, overdriven, melted input levels and this single is the extreme of all examples. You can say the most important thing about any release is the year it was recorded and this is no exception. A prime early example to be studied.

With a blast of that heavy messed up fuzz "Amputee" pounds in just like that first single but with an epic dirge quality. This has even been pushed passed Times New Viking's upper limits of overloaded frequencies (thanks to that missing ingredient...a puddle). They get into a high/low teetering mess that is extremely dark thanks to this organ creeping through haunted house blasts and Tim on vocals has always been working in that basement laboratory space tinkering with bubbling beakers even in the very early days. It's a sonic end game with no where to go from here, the last straw has been chosen, needles in the red have been broken. This is as loaded as you can be and still sift some kind of melody out of this sludge. A drunken mess of extreme's, a melody rising up and down, back and forth in a crazy huddled duality. Wailing vocals off in the background of this mix ask how they got to this place and that imagery of the supernatural coming out of that static in the TV set. This track has been lurking between UHF channels for the last five years.

If there was a dark force in the teetering blasted wrath of the A-Side, "The Mold" is some kind of ancient jackhammer, only ending up psych because everything is so unclear. The rhythm and tune are pushed up against a wall and knocked to the floor. It's a blur of emotion and sound, if there was a case for modern psych, this sort of thing is it. It's attempt to mess with your senses literally with this blown out fuzz could definitely do the trick, you'll be left cleaning your ears. TV Ghost began out of that mess they specifically bring to the table. It's mysterious and creepy because they leave so much up to the imagination, the instrumentation is unclear, you struggle to pick out a single phrase or lyric because these ghosts don't even exist on the same plane of existence as we do. Luckily this recording bridged the dimensional gap but not without losing some fidelity mind you.

On Kind Turkey Records, Dark purple vinyl pressing is sold out, but recently repressed on Green.


1 comment:

  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaRv3GJ3LG8

    ReplyDelete