Jacob Faurholt - Geek Love Is the Best Love [2012]

Take a listen to Jacob Faurholt's music and you'd probably assume he's holed up in some medium-sized town in Ohio, laying down finely-crafted Americana in a bedroom. You'd only be half right, because it's beaming to you from a Dane in Berlin. Anyway, regardless of location, these songs are real well-realized, mostly wistful ballady tunes of past lovers and their associated nostalgia -- you know, music for when yer feelin' down and want to stay there a while. Hints of Daniel Johnston and the whole Dylan/Young school of singer-songwriters are apparent (when he sings "I'm guided by voices, not the band" it sounds like he's channeling the capital-B Band as well as Robert Pollard's group). I've been spinning this EP quite a bit the past couple months, and it definitely rewards repeated listens.

Geek Love Is the Best Love was released in association with Raw Onion Records. It's up for free on bandcamp, along with a slew of releases going back to 2005. So if this is your kind of thing, dive on in.

Sonic Death - Gothic Session EP [2012]

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.

Wavepool Abortion - ЖЕРТВА АБОРТА [2011]

Don't remember how I came across these guys, but the songs have been more or less stuck in my head since I first heard them. According to their bandcamp page, Wavepool Abortion (charming name, right?) are from Moscow, and they churn out blissful pop tunes that swirl 'round and 'round the toilet bowl until being ultimately flushed into punk oblivion. As the toilet metaphor might suggest, the fi is pretty shit on this tape, but not in a 'oh they're just playing an aesthetic for the sake of itself' sort of way. I don't know why I feel the need to defend the lo-fi-ness of everything I post matching that description -- this shit is streaming below so my scribblings on the matter are entirely unnecessary.

Originally released by DZ Tapes on cassette in a batch of 100, I don't know how many (if any) are left, but you can order one from the link below. Or just download for the wonderful price of 'whatever you want.'

Order ЖЕРТВА АБОРТА at DZ Tapes
More insanity available at DZ Tapes

MaoTzu - Doodles [2011]

Here is a sweet submission from Chicago. It's another one-man avant-pop project, this one by a certain Jamarcus Drake, and it's pretty crazy. Supposedly created by turning on some TV show and making music while the show is muted, the songs are meant to be partially formed by the subconscious inspiration provided by the shows' images. Or something. It doesn't really need any backstory to be appreciated -- this album's worth hearing on its own merits. The different songs all have pretty different moods, and the music ranges from weird ambience to fully-structured pop (but still kinda weird) songs. There seem to be quite a few instruments one here, all played by Mr. Drake.

The fifth song, 'The Good Ol' Jay Turser, Back in Action,' sounds like Future Days-era Can, which I've really not heard a lot of people steal from very often. Some other sounds I can hear in various parts of the album are Pavement and Sonic Youth-isms, but there is too much originality throughout (jazz breaks, unexpected vocal harmonies, drum solos, boogie piano, beatboxing, wildly optimistic-sounding guitar melodies, etc.) to dismiss this as derivative or something. I dunno, hearing this will give you a better idea than I can provide in words. Best heard in sequence, all in one go.

This album (as well as two other releases) are available for free on MaoTzu's bandcamp.

Don't take lyrics for the truth, I'm probably just sad and high

Dan Melchior - Red Nylon Valance 7" [2011]

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!

Buy the Red Nylon Valance 7" on SDZ
Listen to/download it [cheap!]

Wire - Red Barked Tree [2010]

Wire has made some wonderful music and certainly gained acclaim for it. But most of the praise goes to the 'holy trinity' of Wire albums (you know which those are). When the eighties started up the band called it quits, but reformed in 1985. Here's an interesting anecdote courtesy of Wikipedia:

[Upon reforming] Wire announced that they'd perform none of their older material, hiring The Ex-Lion Tamers, (a Wire cover band named after a song title from Pink Flag), as their opening act. The Ex-Lion Tamers played Wire's older material; Wire played their new material.

Fast-forwarding to the present, here is the latest album from Wire. I like it, especially the opener 'Please Take' ("fuck off out of my face; you take up too much space"), and the aptly titled 'Two Minutes,' which is the closest you'll get to any Pink Flag-ish stuff. The title track is a great. Makes me want to go to the redwoods or Sequoia or something. But really, I don't think there's a bad song on the album. If you're familiar with and/or dig A Bell Is a Cup ... Until It Is Struck (1988) and Send (2003), this is probably for you. If not, you should check out those records anyway because they are fantastic.

Buy it straight from Wire
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