Peaking Lights/ Wet Hair split on Bored Fortress Year 4

"Blessed" from Wet Hair is Shawn Reed from Racoo-oo-oon and Ryan Garbes. They're using a lot of raw electronic sounds, recorded straight into a mixer, there aren't a lot of additional effects all over this. The drums are separated and slightly staggered between the left and right channels and If they are programmed they're doing a great job of keeping the triggers sounding live, someone back there actually was hitting the pads.
This main sludgy dance groove though…….it just sounds stuck in this monotonous melody. The little improvised variances aren't enough to drag it past the almost drone of this foundation melody. It's a little maddening…this is at 33 so goes for a nearly seven minutes. It makes sense as continuation in the thread that Racoo-oo-oon started, take that drawn out improv psyche and layer it over the demo hip hop rhythm, but it's so peppy and repetitive I get a little crazy.
The vocals could be from another song entirely, it doesn't really follow any of the layers of melody and I hear almost an autotune or harmonizer effect while it unnaturally jumps around the octaves. It's a little like the Butthole Surfers and 13th Floor elevators collaborated for NNF.

Peaking lights takes the neo-psyche repetition to a more dense place with "Birds of Paradise" by layering hundreds of mono/underwater forgotten world music samples. (Is that a racist term? There was some some message board discussion about that I read recently…but is that just because of people's stereotypes in that genre?)
Everything has that sort of Dub haze which would easily work alongside something like Ducktails which is my standard for this layered dream tropicalia….
They keep this perfect minimal bass heavy sample going forever with echo buried funk and reggae guitar and overmodulated reverb kick drum, but the vocals are in their own post Pylon or Young Marble Giants world entirely. It's really effortless, and I don't mind the drawn out 7 minutes here…but it's just one of those personal things….conceptually they're going to the same place…I just happen to like Peaking Lights.
There's a pretty mysterious two word super slowed down sample at the end of this track I can't decipher…even at 78.
The inner 7" label is the info in awesomely bad tech fonts…NNF really has a way with the most unsettling graphic design.

NNF has made all the singles available recently…go cherry pick them you bastards.

Not Not Fun Bored Fortress singles Club Year 4!

Just got an email from NNF about new singles from Pocahaunted and Robedoor, probably Pocahaunted's last ever on the label....that would be exciting enough, and I was going to mention them today but just underneath was this announcement about Bored Fortress Year 4? Change of plans....I just was talking with Mike from Soundscreendesign about their 400 page 7" book, Touchable Sound...and guess what was in there...on practically a whole page? The Bored Fortress club year 2 singles...the ones silkscreened in different colors, with corresponding leaf glitter glued all over them...this is a chance to own a piece of history!!
It's like the franklin mint, only with awesome shit!
Why wasn't that in an email?

Looks like a great lineup this upcoming year...and another release from Robedoor? No Age? Ducktails? Not Not Fun has been curating the most interesting music and packaging forever....and this subscription will be no exception.
I'm rambling, but really I better get over there before it's gone.
I'm going to have to try to see what else is lying around the house I can put on ebay.
Get it.

But wait until I do.

Bored Fortress
Year Four
7" Club

NNF200-NNF205—6x7"

After a two-year hiatus NNF's split singles club is back in operation, with an all new roster of bands and visual artisans. All subscribers will receive two split 7 inches every other month – beginning August 15th and running until December – as well as club-exclusive gifts. Please select U.S. or INTERNATIONAL depending on your location (note: int'l orderers can pay using the paypal button, no need to email first unless you are ordering other items as well).

This year's bands include:
-Wet Hair
-Sex Worker
-Gnod
-Ducktails
-Infinite Body
-Taterbug
-Psychic Reality
-No Age
-High Wolf
-Robedoor
-Peaking Lights
-Rangers

This year's artists include:
-Carlos Gonzalez
-Zully Adler
-Robert Beatty
-Cody DeFranco
-Julien Langendorff
-Spencer Longo

Dylan Ettinger and the Heat on Not Not Fun

Just got an email from NNF about this Dylan Ettinger single. I'm always impressed with NNF's site, the volume of releases they continue to put out and the amazing bands they consistently are exposing me to.
Dylan has his own cassette label El Tule and has been busy putting out a bunch of his work out on his own, but I think this is his first release on vinyl.
Based on his myspace, he's working in a sort of dense abstract experimentalism. Heavy on effects and making all kinds of weird sounds vocally, or maybe with samples, it's reminiscent of Ducktails live show, with less emphasis on the cool Caribbean vibe and more towards the ominous, (although those things peek in, kettle drum, windchimes). Like 'Pushin', I can hear the attraction to the harder to place sounds, creating this overall scary funhouse...you're lost, messed up on something and not coming down anytime soon...and that's the scariest, to lose control like that...it's only when you give in and just let it wash in, who knows when it's going to end. Just go with it that you relax and appreciate.
I love this detailed complexity of sound. It essentially seems easy to put this together and just let the sound happen, as if you could set up the paint and watch the painting come together. This has insane potential live to be a new experience every time, and that's where this way of working really shines. The recordings are templates for an experience...the photo sadly captures a sliver of the scene.

From the great NNF, who also repressed the Vibes single, which I still have to get a copy of.

Vibes on Not Not Fun

I love Not Not Fun's sleeve art. There really ought to be a gallery show at some point of the entire collection of releases...all 12" or 7" size. There's something about it, it's collage, but not primitive xerox, or haphazard. Someone has a real eye for graphics...it's completely distinctive, and is half of whats great about getting these LP's and singles.

So I'm trying to figure out what I think about the Vibes project before I (you) order this and I came across a download somewhere of the 'You God it' cassette...been listening to both sides and it's very live jam funk feel. Amanda from Pocahaunted has got a great voice and really confidently uses it. There's a definite plan here she's executing, a definite direction. She's got this master plan for the track and then takes it there through quiet talking, loud vocalizations...it's the best part by far. I know this is a lot of NNF groups members, and this is some kind of supergroup or something.
It's just OK....I don't know that funk/psyche jam is really my thing, thankfully on the single it will be somewhat abbreviated...maybe a little more concise. I liked the darkness of Pocahaunted and Robedoor...this sounds more acessible or something....granted that was the tape, which has great tracks, but meanders at times too much. It's one of those things I wonder if i would ever listen to again once I'm done listening.... I don't know what's on this single, or if it's along the same lines, but probably.
Still love you NNF.
Sincerely,
7inches

Vibes

Psychic

NNF159—7" ($5)

Every family has a freak (or 2). Every deck’s got a wild card. We’ve got Vibes. Ante up. NNF’s loosest cannons return to the recording fray with, Psychic, a blown-out briar patch of basement garage fantasy masquerading as obscurist protest funk – and the band’s first vinyl statement. Recorded in Eagle Rock on a “last legs”-style 4-track, the EP’s four songs are jacked deep in the red, with fuzz bass, wah shrapnel, vocal sloganeering, and drum racket all fighting for tape room. Competition is fierce. Recent live faves like “Dead Horses” and “Night Court” appear in particularly revved-up form, as do the first two Vibes songs ever written, “Psychic” and “Prisms Of Fame.” All bases are covered. All soul trains are derailed. Here comes the judge. Black vinyl 33 RPM singles in full-color fold-over sleeves with collage artwork and lettering by Cameron Stallones, photographs by Caitlin C. Mitchell, plus a rant-y revolution scrapbook insert. Edition of 400.