When these punks rolled through Champaign last month people went wild for it. Definitely one of the best shows I've seen in town in quite a while. Snotty tunes by people who know how to beat you on the head with groovy punk rhythms and treat yer mind to excellent pop melodies. Somebody on their bandcamp likened the sound to Mika Miko, which isn't real accurate but not totally off either. Hardly an unfavorable comparison in any case. Slut River are further proof -- if you needed any -- that Iowa City has an excellent scene despite (or because of) its prairie isolation. Get this one.
The actual 7" has five songs on it, while the digital version has seven with a slightly different song order. I'm going off the physical release but I bet the other songs are just as good. Just make sure to spin it at 33 1/3 unless you wanna hear chipmunk vocals.
If the blues stylings of the Chaw were a little too polished for your primitive ass, give these Russian mudslingers a listen. Instantly bringing to mind heavy Japanese sounds à la Blues Creation, High Rise/Mainliner, Leningrad Psychedelic Blues Machine, or American heads like Purling Hiss or an old Black Keys album mixed under the influence of cough syrup, Moscow's Vice Versa play the kind of feedback-drenched rock and roll that I should by all rights be sick of already, for all its simple premises. But bands like this keep dragging me back in. There are some really fine moments on this demo; at some points, like on the 10+ minute 'Stranger,' the racket reaches the stratosphere where you'd expect to find Les Rallizes Dénudés. During the less noisy passages Vice Versa sort of resemble the somberness of St. Petersburg's Sonic Death, but without the acoustic instruments. Highly recommended, especially if you're into the stuff mentioned.
This was released earlier this month and you can download it for free on bandcamp.
I got another DMCA takedown the other day (probably time to switch to a new file host, eh?), this time for Tyvek's Time Change 7". This one seemed particularly arbitrary -- Tom Waits I can understand, Suicide and Can records released in the '80s, okay, I can kind of see it -- but Tyvek?? The fearless Detroit DIY garage-punk troubadours who played Bitchpork just last weekend? The totally nice dudes (/+ladies in various lineups) who in the summer of 2010 did an all-ages early show in my friend's basement for those who couldn't get into Schubas on account of alcohol laws? What I'm trying to get at is that they're hardly the kind of band who would send a DMCA (not that I wouldn't remove links if they asked, but I imagine they'd just go ahead and ask). So let's explore this takedown notice for a brief second:
So the claim was filed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Uh huh. As you can see, the canned lawyer assures us that they have "a good faith belief that the links/files
identified" are "examples of links/files available through your site
that are not authorized by Fox, any of its agents or the law, and
therefore infringe on Fox's rights," then lists a host of Allegedly Infringing Links (there were about a hundred more links in the actual email than what you see above). Of course none of these links can be viewed, to see what the content of them actually was, so there is no way of verifying if any of it was in fact owned by Fox. But I guess that doesn't stop them for shutting them down, because hey, Fox didn't authorize them, right?
In the particular case of Time Change, what do we know? Well, we know the record was released in 2011 while Tyvek was touring Europe, and came out on the Paris/Bordeaux label Les Disques Steak. This label appears to be about as DIY as any other imprint the likes of Tyvek have worked with, so it's hard to imagine some business relationship between them and one of the Big Six (owned by Rupert Murdoch, to boot).
There is the possibility that the origin of the claim is Fox Music, which handles publishing business, but I find it hard to believe. Is it even typical for DIY bands to formally publish their songs? What I think is most likely the case is that Fox made some erroneous (or fraudulent) claim.
I'm not writing about this because it's unique. None of it is news to anyone that does a blog for music. At best these takedowns are collateral damage of the Culture Industry's war on 'piracy'; at worst they amount to censorship. The whole thing just makes me really nervous about the future.
Anyway, to make up for the takedown, here's some Tyvek videos for you to enjoy:
For those of you who dug the recent Wavepool Abortion post, here's some more '60s-indebted fucked-up rock and roll from a Russian two-piece. Compared to that band, though, Sonic Death have a darker, more folkish sound. Perhaps you could say Sonic Death are the Stooges (I'm thinking 'Gimme Danger') to Wavepool Abortion's Beatles -- or perhaps neither of those bands resemble these. In any case, the vocal harmonies and acoustic chord changes make some great tunes with that world-weary resignation that Russian bands are so good at communicating. The Gothic Session EP came out five months ago, and has been pretty frequent in my rotation since I heard it around that time.
According to the fellows at Aphonia Recordings, this is what the band had to say about making this record:
After a little break we started work on a new session. Seven fresh songs were recorded on a Tascam cassette Portastudio, sitting in the already known bathroom. At this time we used a clean slightly reverbed guitar sound, the drum section was shaded with maracas. The sound is soft, psychedelic vibrating, like The Cannanes meet Vivian Girls on The Seeds cover party. The lyrics are all about dark love emotions and solitude. All of this has been called GOTHIC SESSION. The first track with the western spirit and refrain “I take off all of me/ You will not get pleasure” is entitled ‘Pleasure’ and is like a roll call with Stones ‘Satisfaction’. The second called ‘Now (Son Of A Bitch)’ and has at the end the converted quotation from Misfits “I am goddamn son of a bitch/ you better think about it baby”. Third song named ‘Marzipan’, and has a sample from an amateur slap porn video, whose plot is about pining for the attention from a girlfriend. The fourth acoustic-postpunk song ‘Streets’ laments the loneliness in the city. Fifth ‘To Me’ is classic garage-y amateur guitar rock. The sixth track ‘Huuuh-uuh-uuuh’ is an acoustic ballad for two voices. The last one ‘Floor’ is a confluence of The Jesus and the Mary Chain with Buddy Holly and back again. On the cover, we photographed against a background of the crucifix as Bible sellers in East European chic.
Gothic Session is available at Sonic Death's bandcamp for a mere $5 of your mortal money. They also have a self-titled release for $0, and while they're both good, Gothic Session is the better set.
In honor of the passing of MC5 bassman Michael Davis, I give you their third and final 'regular' album, High Time. I won't say too much about it, but this is the Five so you should be getting this regardless. It's probably their best overall, though obviously Kick Out the Jams gets points for being a live thing. But the production on this record is so good and full, I think I have to say it's my favorite. 'Future/Now' gets pretty psyched-out, but mostly they've got some real strong, turned-to-11 r&b sounds going on here; I honestly have a hard time seeing how High Time, judged on its actual merits (the sound and the songs, and ignoring the commercial hindrances presented by saying "motherfuckers" on a record and the whole White Panther Party thing), could not have been successful. These songs are a perfect fit for the radio sounds of 1971, and they'd been pioneering this stuff, yet success eluded them. The Man had it in for them I tell ya.
I prefer side 2 on this record but the whole thing is good.
By the way, does anybody know if the Five's performance at the 1968 DNC in Chicago (everyone else scheduled to play, besides the Five and Phil Ochs, chickened out) was properly recorded? All I have ever seen from their show is this (soundless) clip supposedly taken by the Department of Defense:
Another groovy single from the great French label SDZ Records, this one by the prolific English singer-songwriter Dan Melchior. This is way different than the Drosofile 7" I posted from SDZ a coupla weeks ago; while that release had a dreary, sickened, post-industrial decay sort of sound, this is '60s-indebted psych-pop. It's probably lazy writing for me to say this sounds like Syd Barrett, but what else could I reliably compare it to? And it's not like Syd is bad to be compared with, right? Anyway, this came out at the tail end of 2011, so it's still quite new.
The a-side has been stuck in my head for a while now. It's a song any head can relate to, seemingly about getting lost on the wrong side of the astral train tracks ("I lost my balance and the echoes started dancing down the hall ... I don't like it here at all"). If you like Piper at the Gates of Dawn ... okay, I'll try and stop it with the Syd Barrett references. But seriously, this song is great. Check out the video:
The b-side is a liberally psyched-out blues sort of a tune, with a couple of acoustic guitar tracks picking away at your (and Dan's) sanity before the synth comes blaring in. The lyrics are about getting bit by a dog and contracting rabies(?) Anyway it's got it's own subdued freakishness, and I like it nearly as much as the a-side. And what do you know, there is a (recently-released) video for this song as well:
Dan Melchior has been in the game for longer than most people in the garage-psych field, and it's totally apparent in the craft he shows in these recordings, from the melodies to the choices of instruments to their timing in the songs. Get into this already!
Here is a sweet little EP by the late great Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr, aka Jay Reatard. The title track is a freakout ostensibly about the Kristallnacht (heavy shit, man), followed by a bubblegum synth-garage tune in a transition that is disorienting to say the least. The third song, 'All Over Again,' continues in a similar vein, and Jay shows how good he was at such twisted pop. The EP closes with 'Feeling Blank Again,' which is more or less classic Reatard nervous angularity. This record is a great way to spend eight and a half minutes of your life.
This came out on In the Red Records but I can't find a link to order it from them.
I don't know how much there is to say about this record. I love Tyvek and their loose, urban-decay-of-Detroit-informed noise. They sound like your friend's punk band and they're totally fun live. First song '4312' is about as catchy as you can start an album off, and the rest continues from there. The indignant title track is one highlight, and 'Pricks in a Car' is pretty brilliant also. I dunno, if you've heard Tyvek before, you already know what you think of them. If not, this is a good album to start with.
