No Babies "Yo No Soy Como Tu" on Gilgongo Records / Upset the Rhythm records

I really admire completely bonkers punk jazz/noise like No Babies. To sound so chaotic and disjointed in a very composed and deliberate way like borders on impossible. The jerky spastic flailing of this entire record when really examined closely can't possibly be arranged or even written down but how the hell else are they even able to play together? Unless this is improvised? Either way the construction is insane. Like that guy on the edge of town welding junk together into a massive teetering pile of stuffed animals and car doors, it's awesome but beyond dangerous.

A-Side's "X Plus X" hit those Deerhoof, Erase Errata, and Black Dice buttons with huge sax skronks, which immediately signal intelligent stuff for super smart people. Jasmine is yelling in this free jazz mess which slows down to a snare falling down the stairs. Everything is in this crazy back and forth sound, just swaying back and forth, really fast with extremely unsettling John Zorn style harsh experimental sound "YOU KNOW ME BETTER THAN I KNOW MYSELF". "Conference of the shark" X-Ray Specs horns and kick lining up in a weird way. Who can even follow this Hella, Zack Hill style blastcore, but Jasmine is guiding it together following the seizure phrasing of the drums and sax. Robotic talking and screeching takes the place of melody like they're reexamining what they were supposed to be doing in the first place. "Your Lies" gets into a slow dirge beat, the horns just rising out of the distance. The way they come in just of key here, as of it's impossible to tune together or they just flat out refuse to make this conform. This has the most incoherence pushing your boundaries. Before you know it they're blasting in more strange machine beats under screaming up the scales. It's composed of a thousand little fills and the fact she invented something as compelling as the mathy blastcore is really something.
B-Side's "One size fits all": all of this is so against pop melody or structure like Z's or Child Abuse. A solid part eventually lands directly on the pieces with some sense of structure I recognize but its like a slow running chainsaw trying to get through sheet metal or thin aluminum cans all lined up, sparks flying as it catches and then gets stuck on an edge and you floor it only to have it escape out of control. This perfect emulated form of chaos takes weeks.
"In the great west" has a nice break beat and crazy scraping guitar. There's ways these would work separately but together they briefly meet playing with the ways that instruments can rhythmically fall in and out of sync ignoring notes and melody almost alltogether. More punk like the Pens or Foot Village- challenging as hell and its exciting. Chopped up Marnie Stern and put together by the Coathangers. Unpredictable and bizarre. Those are hard things to manufacture unless you really are breaking some new ground. She matches the sax sound and harmonizes with it is a moment of genius, really shocking and unexpected. Is there any universe where these guys are out there playing any of this live?

Get it from Gilgongo Records

Whitman - No Babies 5" split anomoly on Folktale records

Chris at Folktale Records sent me this freakishly small 5" record, the likes of which I dumbly can't say I have another example of anywhere actually....the great thing is that it fits into a CD-R record 7" style sleeve, which honestly almost made me put it in the pile of CD's I'll never get to. Sorry about that Chris, lesson learned, and let it not be said that 7Inches covers the occasional non 7inch from time to time.

No Babies on the A-Side (?, there's not even room in the gutter for matrix labels) does "Morlocks take Manhattan". Why does this seem so crazy, it's throwing me off just looking at this thing...it's kind of like altogether reinventing the CD format. Here's this object that's the same feel essentially, but only has two tracks....take that CD's!
This side has No Babies sounding clearly like they're in a live room space, performing all together, one take, starting very quietly at first with the hint of a low string instrument, a cello maybe and a post punk off time beat. Minimal electric notes pierce
the soothing female vocals, but it's short lived. They explode into Foot Village bursts of spastic tempo rhythm with yelling vocals and saxophone (?) squeals. These organic sounding additions sound great being a part of this raw performance, and I think I'm questioning exactly what's there because of the sheer free form cacophony style in this middle section. There have to be a heck of a lot of people jammed into this basement space and that deliberate dynamic contrast catches you off guard. I appreciate the vocal about riding in the pouring rain, just barely forgetting about the past few weeks of nothing but and bringing a change of clothes to work again because I just can't bring myself to wear rainpants AND a jacket. Pointless.

Whitman offers, "Here's to denying our existence" on the other side which has an equally minimal soft beginning. Slow acoustic loud picking and a chorus of layered vocals, like an old John Davis single, without the crazy accent....and they then also bang in heavy distortion meltdowns on the left then the right channels making you jump...it could be from a cassette, massively hissy and dense with the layers of destruction.
This brief lyric is all the track needed:
"About a quarter of me hopes that you're happy - and the rest of me hopes you're dead."
This can't be longer than 60 seconds...and the only trouble I'm finding with this format is you have to be really careful about placing the needle down - just a hair past the starting point of this and my turntable wants to automatically reset the needle back to the beginning. Whitman is working on kickstarting his long overdue full length with various packages of color vinyl and playing in your livingroom. Oh the shows I would have in my aptartment like Aimee Mann in Portlandia if I win that lottery I never play.

Not only is it the tiniest record, and reason enough to pick up but, it's packed with a nice printed lyric insert, catalog and download card, with a great skull painting on the cover which is mirrored on the record inner label as well... overall a nicely put together package, with some equally as unusual efforts from both these bands.

Get this one from Folktale Records who have a ton of great releases:

This record starts off with the forlorn and familiar plucking of Los Angeles based, Whitman's guitar, which is shortly joined by shaky vocals that deliver some of his most brutally honest and straight forward lyrics yet. Then things take a bit of a turn as your ears get pummeled with shrieks of white noise and tape garble. A short but haunting journey, showing you Whitman at his best. On the flip side, current Oakland residents No Babies start their song off with a catchy beat, bass clarinet, and vocals that are surprisingly melodic. This is a pleasant surprise for anyone who is used to their energy packed live shows, but it doesn't last long, the beat picks up and chaos ensues, leaving you with an exhausted but satisfied feeling in just under two minutes. This is a one time pressing of 549 5" records on black vinyl. They come in full color covers with art by Anthony Fonda and Christopher Payne and include a lyric sheet and MP3 download card.