The Ketamines (2 of 4) on Leaning Trees Records

The Ketamines continue to surprise me. Every time I start anticipating their earlier fuzzy psych recordings, they go and deliver something completely different. Like the other singles in this series they’ve continued to go off the rails. They’re in their experimental phase, pleasing themselves and hitting their stride in their own unique direction.

Right from "Take Me To Your Leader" I love how these guys combine abandoned garage with a hyper synth sound and their sense of sewn together melodies. It's completely bonkers like the Flaming Lips. Frankensteined chords and structures, forget the tempo, we're changing it, with an echo that goes straight from reverb to echo in a jagged Devo frantic sound. A talky vocal like some Camper Van Beethoven throwback, campy and bizarre talking about aliens but then really getting into such a great sense of timing, like a failed experiment they had to twist and break the findings to fit into a total success. Hearing some of the stuff Paul has recorded for Fist City and then the kinds of things he puts together himself with the Ketamines I'm in coomplete awe. LIke Matthew Melton or John Dwyer, every time I read the freaking liner notes he pops up. This runs right into "Lightworkers Lament”, gets more bonkers singing in a deep marching vocal, the effects heavy and winding all over. I don't know much about Pink Floyd but that mysterious English sounding prog is coming on strong here, like Blank Dogs covering the Kinks with a repeating off kilter stomp, a super psych with a haughty vocal that leads into a fantastic pop track "You Can’t Stop Time". This is schizophrenic in the best way. Don't think you ever know what to expect from the Ketamines, even after a couple of full lengths I'm thinking where the hell was all this stuff? How much do they think I can take? God this is a beautiful pop song, the kind of thing that wrote itself, once that harmony was introduced. It sounds like The Unicorns for christ sakes one of my favorite bands ever, in this flute and heavy drum treatment. Can't get enough of this song... of course you name the EP after this one.

By the B-Side I’m thinking Leaning Tree really got the good tracks, this is so much Ketamines. The lasers are back on "We Are One" and they built this seemingly out of a vocal with a slappy piano. Lay in the drums and I can't hear anything but a Ween sci-fi album about an abduction. Aliens came down for Prince when he was a little boy (true story) and he hadn't even dreamed of a purple latex studio - yet. I like this track is voiced by monotone aliens who are tying to convince us that ‘we are one’? "Right About Now" has tons in common with the Fresh and Onlys. Here's an acoustic near blasted understated layers of vocals right under this laid back density of a hazy dream you can't get out of for some reason. It's grey, but I know how this was put together, its not mysterious but then you’re slapping your forehead - damn of course this is the way you would do this. "Change Your Ways" reverses the flute and bass into free jazz vibrations. They go underground with a conga Jack Kerouac lounge beat here. It’s pysch in the way it starts to mess with perception and letting things unravel. It’s got so much experimentalism like Steropathic Beck’s 4-track experiments where the underlying nuts and bolts aren't so obvious. This isn’t the visible man, you’re going to have to spill some guts to see what this is all about.

Get this from Leaning Trees Records.

Feral Children on Leaning Trees Records

You can never judge a single by its cover…especially when its something like this abstract cut up photo pattern on the Feral Children single from Leaning Tree Records.
The random crate digging through new submissions reminds me of the days before the Internet when I spent my heard earned money on cover art alone. This unassuming cut and paste psych design could be describing basically anything and I think that’s why I had to put it on, the possibilities of where this could be going were too much to bear.

Feral Children delivered on A-Side’s "Reverb" which to invoke its name might even be going to far? It shouldn’t even be written, its just re-erb, the holiest of holy sounds. Catchy drums, weird soaring and crashing guitar tones in an AM loop caught between two melodies. The vocals trapped in the top of this net of new wave manic sound. This could be worrisome… nervous chatter over lush repetition and this lyric 'REVERB!" in a dance groove and then forgetting that this should be something to dance to. There’s a hint of warble when the vocals get passionate about where this should be going but it’s nothing compared to this warped tape melodic loop that’s coming from another place entirely. Like a piled up sample that’s never been processed, let’s say, anti-mastered to keep the hissy layers between takes. There’s a decidedly lo-fi feel to the bleeps here, as they fade out the bit rate reduces into gritty square groans and glitchy spirals. That makes this all the more exciting, listening to the residual electronics piled around. You didn't even know it until it started to leave. Like the Netflix stream that's given up on supporting the audio track, it's a hard edge mess of robotic vocals hanging onto this instrumentation.

B-Side’s "Ancient videotape" reveals mellow loops of guitar notes, slow keys and even breathier vocals with explosions of choral high notes pinging into each other like this possible violin? Stretches of fast, quick notes work against this Tortoise like instrumental (the band, it’s also a slow tempo) and ghostly vocal. A repeating electric deftly holds this together with high notations weaving around while a subtle, hardly tapped out kick beat softy pounds. On this side Feral Children have gone in an almost instrumental Explosions direction in that timid delivery waiting for a massive release. Like You Forgot It In People the magic with these two tracks is how they can find a commonality in such different jumping off points. They make this feel cohesive from what should be a split from two different bands. It’s a weird mellow charm like Rex that can be so comforting… and on a B-side where the flip had muddled indie dance creeping back on the scene. Where the heck are these guys from? (Sakatoon! - ed) (NOT THE SEATTLE FERAL CHILDREN - ed)

It's one dollar fifty cents from Leaning Trees Records! Get this.

Shooting Guns / Cult of Dom Keller split single on Leaning Trees Records

I'm super bummed that I apparently didn't make it to this in time for copies to still be out there direct from the label, but this is a really great sludgy stoner split single from both of these bands I haven't come across before from a completely new label north of the border in Saskatoon. Shooting Guns are locals who started back in 2008 and from the sounds of their side are distilling a Sabbathy metal and post rock doom into their own special brand of thunder, while The Cult of Dom Keller out of Nottingham, UK are taking a psych bludgeon to their heavy mess. This was one of those singles that felt like a real discovery, out of nowhere of bands heavily in their own niche and then coming together on this tiny record. A label like Leaning Tree, putting these two together is someone to keep an eye on, and I'm just sorry it took me so long.

The A-Side from Shooting Guns, "Down and out in Detroit" is a thick sludge of electric in weird minor keys, setting the tone of technical craft and Earth like low end. The drums and a wall of bass are waiting in the wings to lay a solid foundation underneath the crackling electric which now in hindsight seems fragile and thin, against this huge rhythm section. The track keeps pushing along in a kind of see-saw sway of kick and bass drum, between a thick, southern metal and the deep woods of Norway. Guitars work into a piercing hum, one EQ'd heavy on the low end while the other takes the opportunity for a solo in human vocal frequencies, the wind whipping at the it's back. This is long hair music with one foot in some kind of medieval mythology and the other in a leather spiked jacket looking down at the city on fire. An instrumental at this pace barely has a chance to get enough speed down the runway but somehow takes off, blackened pieces falling away behind it, sparks dropping off over the water.

The B-side from Cult of Dom Keller" right away feels like they're coming from a bit of a lighter side of things, as if the JAMC were brought up layering dense fuzz in a firebreathing side show. Huge echo distortions swirling around, a kind of shallow echo depth of The Mummies, almost garage but just really foreign sounding rock. Shoegaze, heavy on the Deadbolt spring reverb,a surf sound with menace, but the vocal of something like Disappears. A huge sense of distance, the chorus going in a '90s english Lush direction but keeps climbing, adding a piercing wah in a real droney psych that's impossible to pick apart. Focused on the melody, I'm into this buried vocal style and by the end this is taking off... a massive, but paper thin, tortured kind of sound.

I want to hear it all again.

Take a listen below and be on the lookout to see if this is still in stock anywhere or they must be touring with copies...hot commodity.



Teargas recordings have a different single from Shooting Guns....or possibly a few copies of this one could pop up over there....it's a great one.