The Tranzistors on Cass Records

Here’s a completely mysterious single I saved for when I had time to go down the rabbit hole of the internet. Coming from Ben Blackwell’s Cass Records though, this single from the Tranzistors isn’t completely without context, having been released on Cass is probably enough you need to check this out. The band does exist on Facebook with promise of new releases coming in 2013, but this single is from way back in the catalog from 2006. Something along the lines of Jeff Novak’s blinding glitter, these guys are going even further dragging that late ‘70s sound right into the future with crazy synth.

A-Side’s "Yoo Will" starts with great organ stabs of '60s psych and then they turn this right into full super crazy spaced out glam. The vocal has all the doubled harmony of Eno's Bowie tracks from another planet. A rough squealing guitar like this just somehow makes sense flying over the low-end thick sounds. How they work this ring tone 8 bit guitar into this crystal clear sound is so weird it works. It’s a heavy dose of their future vision of piano keys and swapping epic pieces of smooth glam, with more polish and production sheen than anything out there. This bizarre doubled vocal takes in that glam androgynous direction of “Bang bang dot dot dot / Yoo will”. The drums are even panning back and forth between channels with a sudden fade out but this had to end, it moves fast and doesn’t wait for you. It’s hard to figure out exactly what is placing this so perfectly in that glam style, definitely the fun and weirdness of T-Rex, but I should be able to do better than that. Those chopped up bits of a digital sample is used like a new instrument; a screaming sweep of broken electronics with star wipes, a super gleaming mess that’s carving out a class all by itself.
B-Side's “Yoo Don't” has a great minimal simplicity until they get this over the top spinning mirror ball prom night Shannon Shaw style chorus. This minimal verse is jagged with some kind of soul, the back and forth guy/girl vocals, like Hunx without any sense of irony, they go to the next level, past the roof of the garage and out into space. A real rocket ship they’ve got here. Organ solo’s and wa ooo's from the heavens. How do they get those guitar’s lined up like that? In the way that Ariel Pink is hiding behind layers and layers they take that same raw surface right into the open with the biggest cleanest design. Get to work guys, we’re waiting.

From Cass Records, there's still time to mine his back catalog, and this gem is available.

The only way to hear this is go over to Justin Timberlake's new myspace. It might be too late Justin, but then again with bands like this still having their tracks available in this redesign might be enough to still check out every once in a while.

Ultras S/C's on Cass Records

Just heard about this Ultra S/C single from Ben over at Cass Records, featuring Cheetah (Immortal Lee County Killers, Quadrajets) Swank (Soledad Brothers, Pewabic Pottery) and Jemina (Be Your Own Pet, Cheap Time). First of all when was Jemina in Cheap Time? Where have I been...Jeff Novak and Jemina? Have to track that down, I'm curious what kind of duo vocal that would be, and how her typically dirty scuzz punk would work with Jeff's intensely crafted glam rock.
Well, this debut single from Ultra S/C seems to be a similar kind of combination of like parts. Sounds like it should be a real meaty blues punk sound if that soundcloud track is any indication. Jemina has a pretty ridiculous vocal, she manages to scream in her upper register while still sounding like there's a lot of control there. Nestled in this echo it's a real thick, clean sound. The guitar has that crisp electric distortion, jacked up high treble range...even going for a screaming wah. Nice to hear this kind of rowdy noise again...that track below completely devolves into losing their shit at the end, crashing everything actually kind of drowning Jemina out which shouldn't be possible, but they're pushing this pummeling noise all the way to the end.

You can pick this up from Cass Records, sample a completely different track "Black Face Time" below.

Top 10 7 inches of 2011 with Darren from VOS

TOP

Darren, from Velocity of Sound and I talked about our top 7" picks for the year.
Spoiler Alert.

Darren:

10) Wilco - Dpm records

9) The Ketamines - Hozac records 

8) Fresh and Onlys - Sexbeat Records

7) Raw Blow - self released

6) The Boomgates - Smart Guy records

5) The Vivian Girls - Polyvinyl Records

4) The Lower Dens - Sub Pop

3) D Watusi - Cass Records

2) Diarrhea Planet - Infinity Cat

1) Tim Cohen - Captured Tracks

Jason:

10) Natural Child/Liquor Store split on Almost Ready Records

9) Snakeflower 2 - Southpaw Records

8) The Whines - Mt. St. Mtn. Records

7) Ty Segall - Drag City

6) Jeff Novak - Trouble in Mind

5) Real Numbers - Floridas Dying

4) Grass Widow - HLR Records

3) Art Museums - Dul-Ci-Tone Records

2) White Stripes - Third Man Records

1) Jay Reatard - Shattered Records

Now go listen to us play excerpts and defend our picks - download the show here (48mb).

Stay tuned for an upcoming TOP 30! with Styrofoam Drone as I reserve the right to completely change the entire list.

Cheap Time on Cass Records

Here I am saving the best for last from Cass Records, I finally got to spinning this last night. I think maybe because I just knew it would be perfect...
See... I get the fever when I listen to the dudes from Cheap Time. I get the rock and roll fever and I start thinking about cases of terrible beer from the gas station, T-top trans-am's, and peeling out in the school parking lot. If I had the chance I would recut the soundtrack to Dazed and Confused with Cheap Time, Hunx, Ty Segall, Bare Wires...and I mean it as a compliment...the same way that movie captured, in such a mythical, romantic way, that time period I think Cheap Time is doing the same thing musically.
It's not literally the same 'sounds' if you sat down and played that era against this one, but they capture that same feeling of no holds barred rock, the classic rock/garage fringe bands of the '70s maybe. The bad ass beginnings of rock.

A-Side's, "Another Time" has Jeff's main vocal real loud and upfront in the mix, a little distorted with smoother layers of singing underneath, all of course with that punchy, pure garage sound. Just that guitar tone is enough to make this recording, the brittle, thin sounding treble heavy sound gets even dirtier in the solo. They have to hold back a little bit and not show their whole hand to get away with something like this. Jeff sounds a little like"Pretty Vacant" Sex Pistols sentiment here, that similar cultural, anti authority whine...just here, it's not a commercial gimmick... and Cheap Time wasn't put together by some garage punk Barnum.
The track is about that endless search for something, being unsatisfied can be a good thing, to get you to excel and really push yourself....it's also the same thing giving the Republican Right a base of support that doesn't want to tax the rich because, "that's going to be me someday. My 7 Inch record label will make millions....billions, and I don't want to give that to anybody" I didn't even mean to go down this road, but Cheap Time is that freaking deep. If I were in English class in high school I would carve this into my cloth trapper keeper, and then break into the main office to play this single on the loudspeaker like Rock and Roll High School.

The B-Side, "Immediate Future", has a Stylophone synth sound sound that punches right in on top of this layered guitar that makes perfect glam sense. Could they go a synth punk direction? Yes. You can hear the arm windmills, the big strums while Jeff delivers the vocal narrative in a low register attitude, barely humoring the harmony changes on this track. Proof that he just doesn't have a lazy go-to style to crank out the hits, it's pure innovation baby, every time.
Cheap Time reminds me how much you can do with 2 minutes, the incredible range of changes, you wouldn't know it from the initial punk structure.

And of course there's Cass packaging, I hope to god he actually found an old dot matrix printer and ran these paper sleeves right through them to get this front image. It's like those awesome homemade newsletters with publishing software from the Mac Classic. It's a testament to perception...if you could only see what they get away with on film sets sometimes. If it's not right in front of your face, it's barely slapped together. Maybe that's how we got to iphones because at first even the Atari looked freaking amazing. This picture of a living room with a drum kit might as well be a sweet Christmas card from 1982. On the reverse of this sleeve is that great broken typewriter font, and this says "No. 4 in the Cheap Time Singles Series"???
Jeff - what the fuck man? Did you start a shattered records club and I missed it? Where do I sign up? I want a lifetime subscription option to the Cheap Time single series. I don't care what it costs.

But enough already, I like the hell out of it. Get it from Cass Records. Cheap Time is a god damn national treasure.

Cheap Time
MAMA-057 "Another Time" b/w "Immediate Future"

Jeff Novak and the boys strike back with their most straightforward, no frills punk rock they've ever done. The Aussie influence on these songs is undeniable and Novak's guitar tone is as close as possible to the Saints' "I'm Stranded" without having to pay Ed Kuepper royalties. If you like the idea of Cheap Time but feel they sometimes overdo it or put too many weird tangents in their songs, just buy this single and enjoy. Consider this your "no tangent" guarantee!

Moon Pool + Dead Band on Cass Records

Got a couple new ones in last week from Cass Records, who have been chugging away since at least 2006? I'm thinking of an old Black Lips / Dirtbombs split, the Trachteneburg Family Slideshow Players or Lee Marvin Computer Arm. Really? Get with the program, they've been around since before 7Inches even existed. This is Ben Blackwell from Detroit with a hefty amount of writing and podcast experience in addition to putting his money where his mouth is, completely into the scene and a huge inspiration for 7Inches.

So I threw (carefully) this one from Moon Pool & Dead Band on the turntable this weekend.
I love this sleeve, super mysterious, like a freedom of information act document that's been censored, most of the cryptic info has been censored out...with minimal old typewriter font, blurry and double-struck on the reverse, printed directly on the paper 45 sleeve itself..... an old mystery, asking to be deciphered.

So the A-Side, 'Patsy', has a repeated hypnotic beat with a slightly glitchy solo synth electronic sound that works as the primary melody over those Daft Punky subsonic bass rhythms...it's pounding away... this understated beat, really giving it a chance to sink in, like a stereolab rough backing track, listen carefully because that slow change the beat is going through, isn't really happening. Learning this is from Detroit, it makes perfect sense...this sound is sort of those forgotten synth sounds, maybe a little less hip then the latest plug ins. It's like time stopped in this dark warehouse and this sound was left to evolve in it's own style vacuum. It's definitely sounding dark, like that angry dance that's a solo experience in the corner. The way the main back beat is buried, the last thing they're trying to do is move asses. It's the long decay of this techno house sound, either the far off last echo, or the first reemergence.
The B-Side, 'Patsy (Jack Ruby Version) sounds to get even lower, like hearing that breakdown section from LCD Soundsystem where they're playing across the street in the basement. It's all low bass beats, and muffled midrange. The Jack Ruby changes are subtle, maybe even making it more mysterious, and buried deeper in the layers of rubble, the main voices and melodies are now distinctively absent and it's like an experiment to see if this buried rhythm can still work.

Get this one from the rock that is Cass Records, releasing great packaging and bands since at least 2006. That's not their motto.

Moon Pool & Dead Band
MAMA-058 "Patsy" b/w "Patsy (Jack Ruby Version)
Oh shit! What happens when a dude from the Sights/SSM hooks up with one of the geniuses behind noise-mongers Wolf Eyes? Old-school Detroit techno jams, plain and simple. This single is MP&DB's debut on vinyl and the dirty danceable vibe is undeniable. Analog synthesizers and sequencers to the max. This may be just the thing Electrifyin' Mojo needs to hear to bring his ass out of retirement.

2 of Detroits finest from Cass records.

The terrible twos are in the Abe Vigoda land of punk for me, putting together weird tempos and changing direction, but with a synth under the whole thing. More guitar driven based on other tracks from their myspace and even more punk in delivery and lyric especially in Pipebomb Pipebomb where it's all teetering on the brink of collapse in nightmare oscillating synth...everything seems to have that haunted house feel of the unknown.
The other side is of course heavy hitters the Dirtbombs who are back with a dose of cramps garage-soul...this is the last few copies of this one and that will be it.

Cass records says:
First off is a triple tour split single between Detroit's finest weird punks Terrible Twos, Alabama's wild man Dan Sartain, and the crappy Dirtbombs. This was sold on their West Coast tour back in May, we have some leftovers and once you buy one your life may be complete.



Bird on the line is on Micks myspace and this is syrupy slow trombone bleating number, that's vaguely Tom Waits in tempo and dirty dirty brass, rain and liquor. The guitar line is barely falling off the strings. Mick is straining to get the notes out in something I wouldn't immediately pick out as being Detroit based...maybe some kind bayu swamp in the automotive waste.

Cass:
also available is the debut from "aw shucks" Mick Bassett and the Marthas. Mick writes a song that not only gets in your head, but it'll make you think as well. Does "getting in your head" mean making you think anyways? i don't know. he gave me "the keepers" on a cd-r over a year ago and i kept bugging him to let me put it out as a single. he wanted it on the b-side (weirdo) but my year-long wait is now everyone's gain. you will love it. i promise.

you can dig it all over at www.cassrecords.com
any other questions?

later...ben