O'Death

{image from venuszine}

Nearly as tireless as their moniker, O'Death has toured much of it's existence since the formerly SUNY-enrolled gents banded in 2003. Gleefully filtering Americana through a warped and rusty sieve, the result is raw, minimalist bluegrass with a twist of goth and maybe a little punk. Gothic Americana, I can get behind that.

Newest release Outside is expected from Ernest Jenning Record Co. next month...as in three'ish days from now {april. already? jiminy}. You can plan ahead and preorder that freaknastiness here.

O'Death // Bugs

Papercranes - growl & rawhide

{image from rainphoneix.net}

When Rain Phoenix recorded the Papercranes' sophomore album, Let's Make Babies in the Woods, she aimed to push past the cushy production comfort zone. Without breaks or retakes, the writing and recording was an exercise in stream of consciousness. Non-linear, managed chaos production. Reminds me of the creative process I was encouraged to take in Hyper Island work sessions. {do you people not realize that if i don't cross things out in my silo'ed, structured, process-oriented list i will flippin lose my shit?!! all right fine, i'll do the boneless-boy dance while spouting social media ideas. be cool chirgotis. be cool.}

Anyways. Her efforts are largely successful, with whiskey-soaked vocals dragged over granite lyrics and dredged in shale instrumentation. To call up a neo-Janis comparison can't be too far a stone's throw.

Papercranes // Sea Red

the Dough Rollers

There's something endearing and mildly eyebrow-raising that LA kids think Son House Jr. is the shit. But we're a culture with hipsters snubbing any apparel post '81. Betty Draper is majorly hot, and we suffer rochambeau tourneys to vie for PopPop's retired Tart Arnels, (regardless the fact nobody's remotely farsighted. LASIK, hellooo).

The Dough Rollers ensemble are currently Malcolm Ford (vocals, mandolin), Jack Byrne (guitars, vocals), Julia Tepper (fiddle, vocals) and Andrew Barrett (washboard, jug, kazoo and piano) - that's right, jug. what of it. True disciples dedicated to ragtime revival, they lean in to each other in dens, on rooftops, in opera houses. Follow each others toe taps and finger picks, with Malcolm's raspy yowls wading us through the Mississippi Delta.

You thought Jack White has some overamplified guitars? Pffft.
You think pomade is too sticky to be edgy? Slick those bangs back, bro.
The "devil's music, accused of inciting violence and other poor behavior.^[129]" is making a comeback.

The Dough Rollers // Where Shall I Be?

Go here if you can't abide speaker recordings.

My Gold Mask

Back in the day - which was a Wednesday, mind you - Nick Armondo was strumming his acoustic in the den of his Chicago flat. A few rooms over, ladyfriend Gretta Rochelle started belting along with a depth of vibrato he wasn't familiar with since their days in punk rock outfit Bang!Bang!
"That's neat," he mused. "wonder what else we could do with that."

A few more den sessions and they found a practice studio to expand their bojanglin'. It wasn't a 4-star space, heck there was even a tom tom and kick drum leftover from the last tenants. Rochelle, no percussionist, ambled over and figured out how to attach the pedal and tap out a 4-beat before adding her pipes. ::wtf wunderkind:: Armando got apeshit on his nylon-stringed electroacoustic, and so My Gold Mask came to be.

Finding inspiration in lucha libre masks (they've always wanted a gold one),
their pug (who doesn't?)
and well..each other (but Mates of State they are NOT),
MGM's January release A Thousand Voices EP has them pounding out east-Indian influenced cadencies outside of their comfort zone. They perform as a duo, Rochelle's vocals ranging from rasps to operatics, Armando's guitar distorted to sound as un-guitar-like as he can get it.

"Violet Eyes" - provocative, dissonant, nostalgic for more noir times - has her prowling through the lyrics over his ectoplasmic riffs. You'll want for ripped stockings and an EMF meter.

My Gold Mask // Violet Eyes

Archie Bronson Outfit

On first listen to "Shark's Tooth," I felt like my brain was involuntarily jangled from earhole to earhole. Lots of reverb, lots of steel serration, lots of shaking a sheet of tin. My head nearly exploded, no joke! I had to turn that shit down, son!
Then I realized I was drumming on my desk and robotically shimmying my shoulders. Maybe even having a daydream about riding a stag armored with uzis, shooting down enemy cyclopses. Hey-o, Bronco!

The good stuff comes from a trio that became mates at Kingswood School, Bath. Just look at the guys, you know reverb comes easy when you have that kind of lavish beard to help with the acoustics.

Their most recent LP, Coconut, came after a four year hiatus post Derdang Derdang. If you'd like nothing more but to have your ears ringing with sound heavy on ferocious, primal squalling from these lads - you'll have to cross the Pond to catch them on tour.
Nbd, you can take my battle stag.

Archie Bronson Outfit // Shark's Tooth

Forest Fire

A post from two musings:

1. Skyped with an ex-pat bestie yesterday - whenever I talk to her, (by that meaning I try not to look at myself in the small corner screen and wince over my flourescent-washed complexion. C'mon, you do it, too.), I consider the finger on the collective cultural pulse. What the Old Country thinks of the music scene of the New Country.
2. Mood rings came up in a morning conversation - makes me nostalgic for lost pieces of 7th grade jewelry and aura readings.

And so, "Fortune Teller" comes off the '08 album "Survival" that the French music review La Blogotechque rated above "For Emma, Forever Ago" and "Fleet Foxes." A Brooklyn quartet favoring lo-fi garage ramshackle ramblings, the instrumentation makes me think dissonance and dark burning embers. Recorded mostly live in less than five takes between Brooklyn and Portland, the nonchalant approach may be a shoulder shrug as to why they haven't broken through like better bearded, tightly produced counterparts. The tracks are a little looser, the mortar between shellacked not so thick.
Not that I don't dig it! Clearly, I do. And if the French like you, hell, who cares? They don't like much of anyone.

Forest Fire // Fortune Teller

Mochipet

FROM TAIPEI. via the Bay Area.

does a bitchin resume of labels a label whore maketh? he's recorded on the following:

-Bpitchcontrol (Berlin) [Ellen Allien's label]
-Tigerbeat6 and ViolentTurd (Oakland) [Kid 606's labels]
-Component (CT)
-ExNihilo (Belgium)
-Detroit Underground [awesome]
-Voxxx (Chemnitz)
-Deathsucker (UK)
-Intellectos (Boston)
-Schematic (Miami) [Otto von Schirach's label]
-Reconfiguration (China)
and his own Daly City Records (Daly City)

Many people consider this hip hop, and Mochipet himself claims that his favorite music is "anything not electronic." Well, then.


Mochipet at Bangface, London

Mochipet // Master P on Atari

Two Fingers

If you've ever listened to Amon Tobin you know he can go deep and tribal. He was spreading Brazilian sound around before Crookers and the Twelves took over blog house.

His new project with Joe "Doubleclick" Chapman, Two Fingers, takes that deep down to the next level of the inferno, mixing that DEEP (did I mention it's deep? and tribal) sound with a lavish recordful of British and American MC's. They. Bring. It.


Two Fingers and the MC, Sway, recording in Montreal

Two Fingers // High Life featuring Sway

Shitkatapult - Strike 100 compilation

Shitkatapult is the mostly electronic label out of Berlin started in 1997 by Marco Haas, who is also the artist T Raumschmiere. Sascha Ring, who is the musician Apparat, helped run it for a while but has gone back to strictly makin his own music.

Strike 100 came out at the end of last year to mark the 100th release by the label. It's 2 discs of ambient fuzz that alternates between soft and prickly with also some environmental sounds, though many of the songs do have annunciated beats, and vocals even.

Man it's really hard for me to decide what to upload.

Okay okay okay. One from each disc: Felix, for whom google turns up sparse info, at least in English, and Fenin, whose English isn't very good but who knows the word "homies." A lot of these guys seem to cite reggae and dub as influences, which I find interesting.


Flier for an Apparat CD release party. I might have died.

Felix - Outside on a Cold Day

Shitkatapult // Fenin - Lastkahn

Forced Exposure

The IDM boat draweth nigh, along with a bunch of other stuff. For real, WRIR got this massive shipment in from my favorite music distributor of all time Forced Exposure.

I won't bore you with the details, but my love for Forced Exposure is so great that I as an audience member once made David Day, another audience member and at the time Forced Exposure's college radio contact, stand up in a room of maybe 200 at a CMJ panel discussion to talk about his company.

In the 80s and early 90s Forced Exposure was a zine published out of Boston (on newsprint), focusing on punk and obscure music as well as literature, with contributers like Lydia Lunch, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth.

Now they distribute music, ranging from rereleases of 1920s fiddle music from Baghdad to the entire Shitkatapult catalog to re-pressed Norwegian psychedelia from the 60s to free jazz and composers and ambient noise to English warehouse bangers. Look at their index of releases for March. Dazzling.

Basically half my career as a music director has been spent begging FE to send me stuff. Incidentally, they supply a lot of the electronic vinyl to Plan 9, too.

So anyway I am fulfilled, and guess what, I consider it both my job and my pleasure to share my musical joys with you. My next several entries will all draw from this boomshower of sweetness that arrived in the mail last week.

So there, too, music distro isn't dead after all, is it? Just shitty music distro. Thank you, Forced Exposure.

Mi Ami

Yes, I like this band for other reasons besides their name. Please.

More dirty freakouts.

But also, they have good taste in cities/locations. Yes, there is the choosing to name themselves after my favorite city of my entire life so far, but there's more.

They're hitting up Belfast on their European tour. And not only that, they're playing at the Menagerie, at the Ormeau Road on University Street. Shitty dive not without highly unprincipled paramilitary affiliations. They play Reggae and Soul and won't let you wear football colours inside, and it's the only bar I could reliably find Newcastle Brown, too. I have mad respect for a band who can manage to book the best seedy bar in a foreign city.
UPDATE: Belfast informant tells me that Menagerie was freed from paramilitary associations and is now owned by David Holmes. I guess that explains why the music got better. Informant assures that Menagerie is still way seedy.

But anyway, and perhaps even better, Mi Ami is coming to Richmond. (To the Triple.)

We are all travelling through space and time.



Pressure

Mi Ami plays with Thank You at the Triple on March 8th. Vaya con dios, dudes.

Hell

Hell has been active as a dj and producer for 30 years. He is also the founder and boss of the label International Deejay Gigolos (Miss Kittin & the Hacker, Dopplereffekt, Terence Fixmer, Fischerspooner, Tiga, Vitalic, Jeff Mills...).

This track I'm posting is from his new album Teufelswerk. He's divided it in two by the themes of Night and Day; Kruder of Kruder and Dorfmeister helped produce the Day half. Drops in late April and I completely cannot wait... there's a Hawkwind cover on it. Hell's last album, NY Muscle, is so so brilliant.

Hell is short for Helmut btw.


The Angst & The Angst Pt 2


Hell was German GQ's Man of the Year in 2003.

Bonus: In 2006 Hell also produced this track, which I love, for G Rizo.

Eye Wanna C U

Here We Go Magic

DIY DIY DIY DIY DIY DIY

so down for polyrhythms

ATAVISM RESULTING FROM OVERCULTIVATION OF HUMAN SOCIETY

face paint and amniotic fluid have turned out to be pretty hip among civil types in the end, though, haven't they? my ski instructor lives in yogaville.




Only Pieces

god, i keep liking stuff that's been featured on npr. decrepit. only bangers after this, fur real.

tUnE-YaRdS

Eventually from Portland's Marriage Records. This chick, Merrill, was into anarchy puppets and Christmas music when she was younger. You can actually hear that in the music. She attended Smith and sang in a "brazen" all-female a capella group, too, and later went to Kenya, all of which you can also hear.

She recorded her whole album, BiRd-BrAiNs, on a hand-held voice recorder. She also booked her own tour all last year, which led to the thing with Marriage and this past month to opening for Beirut.



Sunlight