7Inches - Singles awards of 2010 extravaganza- PT 2

The Already Overpriced Single award goes to Best Coast, there have been plenty of repressings of this on Art Fag, but they keep flying off the preverbial ebay shelves at ludicrous prices...kind of reminds me of the old Vivian Girls singles, it's like people wanted them to be rare already or something. It's nice to know there are super fans checking this stuff out and willing to shell out serious money for them, so I'm not complaining. $82 for this Best Coast single is very tempting sometimes...that's almost 1/10th of pressing your own!



Winner of single 7" that has no business being pressed, but I'm so glad they did:

Portal 13 Globes on Chrome Leaf Records. Of course they are better live. I was actually a little scared they were going to sacrifice something on stage, or hang themselves...like a snuff film amusement park. Extreme is always good, they do it the best. When these two worlds came together at the merch table I was seriously protecting this thing in my bag the whole way home.


Least wanted single (two years running): Brian Jonestown Massacre, not only that it's always listed for 9.99 or some nonsense. It had to be listed at least every week for the entire year, not selling once. Haven't you spent at least 10x that in listing fees? Throw it away already.
Dig! is the worst documentary.... not the way it's made...but both of those terrible bands make me sick...and of course the Dandy Warhols would be successful over BJM. Indie Rock? Get lost. Overrated creeps. The worst pathetic druggies with delusions of grandeur...sadly full of themselves. I might have even liked the part towards the end when they fight with each other in front of 10 fans...but then they probably staged it thinking that anyone gives a shit.



Best packaging for a single: It's a tie between PIAPTK's wedding album of handcut picnic plate lathe singles in the shape of hearts, his letterpress plate series and the Records Digest book/lathe cut series that all came out this year and Sonny Smith's 100 singles art show and boxed set.
Both of these are so insane/amazing that I couldn't choose. An amazing amount of work all for the love of the single. We don't deserve it and I hope you get over to their sites and pick these up because I'd like to see both of them continue their unique brand of sadomasochism.



Best new 7" label: Olde English Spelling Bee, congrats guys, there is no way I can even keep up with your releases let alone research all of these insane bands. I'm officially overwhelmed. The tip of the iceberg was the Big Troubles single, and they've been around since 2009. Still the best.


Special award this year for the longest band name with a single: The world is a beautiful place and i am no longer afraid to die on Top Shelf Records, I like their massive instrumental, emo, post sound, they do it right. You can't even abbreviate that.



Noisiest split single goes to (split decision): Mucky the Ducky and Hexlove and Aids Wolf and Satanized on badmaster Records, two singles that push the limits of what is even music, and that's a good thing.


Most obvious sign of the 7" apocalypse: Scion is not only promoting live garage shows at the Knitting factory but pressing records, which are unbuyable...it's one thing someine there has crazy taste and puts together shows, have free streaming songs from these bands on their 'radio' station but then to go and press records, you have no chance of getting? Thank god for ebay.

Portal on Chrome Leaf Records

Holy shit, I forgot I'm going to see this Wednesday...let's just say when a metal band with a guy who plays with a cuckoo clock on his head from Australia finally makes it to Brooklyn...you get tickets months ahead of time and see that shit.
It has to be the most extreme sounding, theatrical metal I've heard of in a long time, pure gutteral growling, the most evil sounding vocals....but the clock and tuxedo jacket puts this in a new context for me. It makes so little sense outside of the usual metal symbolism I'm completely into it. They are taking all aspects of this to the ultimate limit, the guitar is technically insane, the spectacle is completely weirdo. They raised the bar. If you want to attempt this, it's going to take a lot of dedication to be in the same league with these guys.
Is that what happens when this extreme technical metal is transformed through our aussie underground counterparts? It's because they are hanging upside down isn't it. I don't know if that has much to do with it, or this is down under's answer to Norweigan Black Metal. There will be books about the cultural conditions that led to this specific branch of metal.
It's going to be insane, and this single on Chrome Leaf better be at the merch table because other than aquarius records (search for Portal) this is going to be impossible to get...and you'll want it after watching 5 seconds of this video:



Aquarius says perfectly:

PORTAL "Lurker At The Threshold" (Chrome Leaf) 7" picture disc 9.98
These masked mysterious weirdo death metallers just drifted through town, their show, like their sound, a grim, almost dada-esque twist on classic death metal, a swirling chaos of gnarled buzzing riffage, blasting loose limbed drumming, and the creepy grunts and growls of hooded front man 'The Curator', the whole band masked and draped in black, spewing huge swells of twisted sonic malevolence.
All three Portal full lengths were huge favorites around here, every one a dizzying assemblage of warped blackness and fractured death metal fury, murky and muddy and washed out, frenzied and freaky and gloriously fucked up. Visually and sonically like a metal Faxed Head, Portal's death metal bears only a slight resemblance to regular death metal, which is precisely why it's so appealing.
This super limited picture disc 7” compiles 2 of the 3 songs from Portal's 2006 demo tape Lurker At The Threshold, and while re-recorded versions of both these songs found their way on to the Outre full length, these older, more raw (believe it or not) versions are well worth checking out. “Omnipresent Crawling Chaos” explodes in a blast of murky metallic grind, frenzied and frantic, but so blurred and smeared as to render it a strange shadowing deathmetalscape, all lurching and lumbering and blasting, a swirling black sonic cloud. “13 Globes” is another chunk of blown out grinding metal crush, but with some cool woozy warbly minor key melodies, stuttering start stop rhythms, and insane tangled riffage, all wrapped in a melted murky lo-fi blacknoize gauze.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Pressed on super thick 70 gram vinyl, super striking picture disc adorned with creepy Lovecraftian artwork, either already out of print or darn close, so get one while you can...