RECOMMENDED, though that’s irrelevant

This is the first review I’ll have written for publication following the dismal, world-changing results of the 2016 US presidential election. You don’t dream of the first record you’ll listen to after such an event. My commutes to and from work are usually accompanied by headphones to drown out any potential nonsense in the interim between leaving the office and entering my home. On the morning of November 9^th, I turned to music to drown out the silence.

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You heard this before? Picked up my mail and have a formidable stack of new releases to play. Get in on it 9p-midnight CT http://chirpradio.org

Surprised it took this long.

RECOMMENDED

As anyone carrying the endeavor of music-related crit or commentary or coverage knows, suggesting or claiming an influence based on what we’re hearing is tenuous ground to tread. I mean, I did not like it when people compared my earlier writings to the Bangs/Creem/Meltzer/etc “canon” or my comedy releases to The Jerky Boys or Crank Yankers – short-sighted, stylistic illiteracy, if not outright inaccuracy, in each case. Conversely, when there’s no way a band hasn’t studied at the altar of, say, Unwound or The Fall and they react with dismissal and denial, well that’s irritating, too. If you’d like to see this in action, and feel the need to piss yourself off, check out the Talkhouse pieces by the singer of Protomartyr and his issue with his band being compared to Interpol. No one this side of 90% deaf didn’t hear Interpol all over the excellent Under Color of Official Right, loud and clear. Dawg actually buys a “I don’t listen to any new music unless it’s a band that’s opening for us” (not a quote but a decent approximation) one-way ticket to Embarrassmentopolis.

What does this have to do with the third Alto! LP? How many times have I ended the first paragraph of a Still Single review with that same basic question? Well to answer the former, LP3 keeps pushing one possible influence/historical reference point into my head as I gladly listen to it repeatedly: Sonny Sharrock, and maybe even the ¼ Sharrock Last Exit. But in the often uneasy “influenced or not?” dance between writer & written-about, this is one of the rare win-wins. If no one (well, I guess it’s gotta be the guitarists or nobody, huh?) in this all-instrumental union has ever been shredded to tears by Sharrock’s ‘80s/early ‘90s output, then there’s no shame in that, seeing as how the still-obscure (in the “tastemaker” world) legacy of the late Sharrock isn’t exactly lording over a lot of newer, contemporary bands, if any at all. If the frequent sky-high explosions of distorted, expressive, and sometimes beautiful, string-strangling are completely oblivious to anything in Sharrock’s second act, then I’m left to imagine what Alto! is capable of if willing to explore and incorporate this undeniably amenable inspiration-in-waiting.

As for the rest of the haps here, LP3 is heavy but not at all metallic, rhythmically airtight, jazz-fusion-saving (here it comes cuz I don’t know what else to use) POST-ROCK on three of its four extended tracks. Skip opener “Piece 14 (LPPZ)” unless “the intro and connective music used by super-tame true crime podcasts and the unidentifiable incidental jams heard in the background during Viceland promo spots” is your answer to the maddening social inquiry “So … heard anything good lately?” This track is by far the most accessible chunk of the album and problematic (but NOT the hashtag type, FYI) based on a total lack of the afore-unpacked style of guitar histrionics, the “whacky” (empty) head-nodding dance-funk foundation, and especially the (WARNING: NOVELTY INSTRUMENT) referee whistle mixed way the Ford Escort up in your face and used on repeat as the song’s skull-scraping hook. Elsewhere, “Piece 12”, “Piece 16”, and “Piece 15” have great build, tension, teeth, real surprises, and gutsy dynamics that will deliver a correctively-crushing blow to both the inadequacies of 1^st and 2^nd wave (1995 – 2002?) post-rock and the 100% irredeemable free-jazz/jazz-rock mistakes that carried the SST logo from the late-80s until some nether region way up into the 90s. There’s some excitingly repurposed Krautrock in here - if you can believe that in 2016 – covering the motorik (“GROAN!!!” … do I have a fucking vocabulary problem or something?!?) Neu! and Can corners as well as the balls-out … I’m sorry … uh, “threshold-bonking” fried-out pummel of the Guru Guru and Ash Ra Temple albums appropriate for such a comparison. The last brain-nug this LP brought to the fore, before I knew that the guitarist played with the brother Bishop in the Freak of Araby Ensemble, was my own back-in-da-day go-to “World Beat? More like World Beats Your Ass music” reply when asked what the Sun City Girls sounded like. Hey, did you wear a Torch of the Mystics t-shirt out of the house while living in clueless mid-sized city during the early-to-mid-90s? Ok then…don’t act all incredulous about that experience. These days, three outta four beats the shit out of “ain’t bad.” (http://www.troubleinmindrecs.com)
(Andrew Earles)

RECOMMENDED

Wow, I wonder if the band meant to use such a perfect title. I haven’t come across any “game-changer” exaltations based on how this album has been received by the surrounding semi-scumscape it wittingly or unwittingly targets, or at the very least how it sits with the two preceding CCR Headcleaner full-lengths. Then again, it’s not like I’ve looked for it. In a gambling mood, I guess.

Tear Down the Wall tears down some shit, alright. Let’s start with the rampant misuse of “dark-punk” or “noise-punk” in the descriptive or promotional context of the musical subset/sub-genre/sub-culture CCR Headcleaner now looks down upon from an exclusive perch shared with a tiny handful of contemporaneous entities that have also gone the distance behind albums released this year. Are we seeing a return of the same ineffable extra something-or-other that bounced In the Red well above the competition circa mid-to-late-‘90s (and maybe even into this century a bit)? Is that a clue? Not really, given that Spray Paint is one of the contemporaries I had in mind, to obviously clarify the mutually-shared exceptionalism to be rooted in something more profound than stylistic commonalities. And that’s “This record sounds nothing like Spray Paint” for anyone who might need a map or companion guide at this point.

The next topic needs to be the production, as what’s usually saved for last is too crucial a factor in this record’s ability to blow well past the “good” marker and on up to threaten the gatekeepers of “great”. Rare is it that I’m looking for the production/engineering credit halfway through an album’s second track, with similar impulses in the past ending with Steve Albini’s name staring back at me more than that of any other known sonic alchemist. Therefore, it was refreshing, to say the least, to see that Ty Segall recorded this monster. Serious kudos to him for capturing the essence AND sound of real heaviness as opposed to the idea or practice of “heavy” within the confines of a movement/scene/sub-genre.

Then there’s the songwriting. Tear Down the Wall is no one-dimensional parade of nihilistic dirtbag bulldozing from carpet to ceiling or just noisy-as-fuck excessiveness for the sake of it (other fellow travelers … I’m looking at you). There’s howling desperation, soulfulness, heart and genuine mood-moving force behind most if not all of this relatively disparate set of burners. From ultra-thick and formidable riffers to stuff that hints at the best Desert Sessions fare to fried-out psych that never bastardizes the term. I hate to end with this conclusion, but this record might be too good for its own good. Let’s hope to hell Tear Down the Wall finds an audience that understands what it has been given. (http://www.intheredrecords.com)
(Andrew Earles)

RECOMMENDED

Seth Sutton (Useless Eaters, a long-running garage concern born in Tennessee and bred in San Francisco) and Lise Sutter (The Staches, a band out of Geneva, Switzerland) get together for a bass/synth/rhythm box duo that so accurately captures the freezer burn of French coldwave/electro that you might as well canonize it now, like it came out in 1982 and you could put an eye out on their hairstyles. One can grouse about historical re-enactment all they want; much of the developed world is still waking up to this kind of music, and there is really (arguably?) only one way to do it right, which is what they go for here in a coordinated matrix of wobbly synth, block-based 16-bit percussive slam, unwavering low-end, and disaffected Kewpie Doll vocals (extra points for being sung in French). If you’d snuck this on, say, the BIPPP comp or Tigersushi’s So Young but So Cold, no one would have been the wiser. So yeah, this is a success on all measurable fronts. A full-length would need a great number of ideas to hold attention spans past a couple of tracks, so maybe the singles format is just fine for this sort of thing. (https://www.goner-records.com)
(Doug Mosurock)

RECOMMENDED 

At this stage in the “REISSUE EVERYTHING!” era, you’ve no doubt been totally screwed by something unearthed from the past genre known as The Totally Ignored of Yore. Distracted by a backstory paved with tragedy, punctuated by near-misses ad infinitum or just no-access-to-belt-or-shoestrings depressing, you’ve filled a section of shelf with overpriced and beautifully-packaged sets of “enigmatic” “outsider” troubadour tedium that Dan Fogelberg wouldn’t have pissed on. Maybe there’s even an accompanying documentary to guarantee absolutely no one notices how merely whelming the musical fare actually is. Well, Songs from Suicide Bridge is precisely the type of long-lost LP for which the reissue campaign strikes a bolt of corrective greatness at the last half-decade of what I was just bitching about, thus deserved of more than its own round two of widespread availability at $20 to $30 a pop instead of the additional-zero action an original was, and still is, commanding.

With the all-too-rare commodity of proper context intact, the backstory here is not at all unique. Who knows how many demos were recorded, at home or in a studio, by single or duo-format singer-songwriters toiling about L.A. in the late ’70s/early ‘80s (framed as an outlier period for this stuff when it really wasn’t), only to eventually hang it up after a stretch of aspiration fueled by the success of Fogelberg, Rupert Holmes, Bob Welch, or the specific hero at hand as per Sirs Kauffman and Caboor, Jackson Browne? Here I am, possibly committing the reductionist crimes that get me so riled up when mindlessly tossed off by others. Yes, there’s more to the story. And certainly the discussion takes a sharp turn towards “extremely-rare” or singular when the results equal a folk-pop downer gem of this caliber.

These songs might, if my ears are not pulling one on me again, rank near or alongside the moodier (if not strongest) moments of Welch, Gene Clark, Dennis Wilson, or the spare numbers on Bob Lind’s own lost LP from 1973, Since There Were Circles. With this in mind, perhaps Kauffman and Caboor were a tad untenable with the times stylistically, and who am I to say the duo’s semi-fatalist decision to include only their most melancholy compositions or those darkest/worst of mood isn’t worth noting? It is, and has been. So surely the only purpose of this review is outlined in the first paragraph: A confirmation of its already widely-accepted greatness instead of the attempted demystification necessitated by the previous or next exhumation of a private-press rarity. The original single LP of Songs From Suicide Bridge is given the remastered 45 RPM double LP treatment by Light In The Attic’s Modern Classics imprint, a nice eight-page booklet for the liner-narrative mentioned above, and the understated outerwear of a sturdy gatefold. (http://lightintheattic.net)
(Andrew Earles)

RECOMMENDED

Under the banner of HC there has always been and will always be more than enough unconnected entities producing something progressive (as in forward-moving, rather than stylistically tantric), on-the-level intelligent, bigger-pic important or just interesting and worth the investment. And many bands have a toe dipped in all the above. Considering the band’s formation in 2006, Nasa Space Universe’s breakup in January of this year (2016) could have been part their overall concept and a line item all along. Logic dictates we have admiration for those that go out at the height of their powers, but there’s a potential fallacy lurking in this trope. The journey towards the top shelf can be clearly heard, without an intermission or reverse movement, over the full-length LP, four 12” EPs, two 7”s and tour comp CD released between 2008 and 2016. As is the case with most bands that have permanently hit the brakes while moving in the right direction, the reason this 10-song EP is “NSU at the height of their powers” is due to the deafening silence planned for the future (plus the “on a high note” declaration is only feasible when discussing those with crap somewhere in their past). 70 AD is only the best NSU release because they’ve elected to stop.

Lastly, it should say something that NSU didn’t necessarily truck in the style of HC that piques my interest, which can be vaguely and inaccurately summed up as that with utilizes noise, is extremely loud, heavy, thick, or part of the minority rocking a correct/smart usage of metallic elements. If that comes off as “my favorite hardcore is the dumb shit” then maybe you should invest in an aerial view of the umbrella designator re: the right now and its 35+ years in development. While no doubt chaotic and seemingly close to leaving the rails at points, NSU is thinner, snakier hardcore of the flat-out amazing variety. Probably due to playing a lot of the same living rooms, basements, kitchens and smaller stages over the years and maybe some twixt-band(s) friendship (this is speculation), plus some very surface-level commonalities if you look hard or not hard enough, NSU is often compared to or somehow associated with the opposite-coast cool of the Toxic State posse. To once again illustrate how great it is that a Still Single review is prohibited from growing a commentary tail, I have but one attempt left in the effort to elevate my personal assessment of Crazy Spirit and Dawn of Humans (separately) to within shooting range of where everyone else holds them … or next to my high-enough opinion of Hank and the Hammerheads (albeit almost entirely a different animal). The smarts are there, but musically/sonically/structurally I can’t help thinking CS and most of their cohort is HC for a set that will remain unspecified at this juncture. NSU (references to which actually mean 70 AD as this release is the unit’s consummate offering by default) is to these ears, for what that’s worth, a mix of the great Malignus Youth, the great unheard that is Face the Rail, and the higher-register dexterity of the Minutemen minus the post-punk influences. Of course, there’s the paramount factors: big hooks in the guitar leads and kid-like scratchy-throat vox, the fantastic intensity of their usual velocity, the very impressive attention to detail/nuance tucked within every song section, and the structural integrity disguised as persistent near-collapse. On behalf of writer and reader time management, I cannot delve into the conceptual aspect of NSU, the band’s sense of humor or the cleverness and intelligence on hand here. I will, however, recommend this highly. (http://feelitrecords.bandcamp.com)
(Andrew Earles)

Masami Akita has released less than 15 albums under his own name since 1983, with three of them appearing this year. But as Merzbow, Akita has unleashed an astonishing 300 proper full-lengths since 1981, plus almost a hundred EPs, singles, compilations and video/visual releases, at last count. Then there’s the ensemble cast of aliases and collaborative groups (aka “bands”) he’s been in over the years. The next stop on the backwards biographical and musical refresher tour is the visceral realization that much of this stuff rocks a particular Japanoise late ‘80s/early ‘90s visual and thematic aesthetic that will probably remain relegated to that decade even though the world around it trundles onward, and that’s all I’ll say about that. Prior to spinning my copy (one of 250 pressed) of this nicely-packaged picture disc, I harbored the expectation of hearing something wildly disconnected from Merzbow’s sonic empire. For a second I imagined it reasonable to soon hear some form of inoffensive electronica then remembered that Akita had once had a side-project of “conceptual death metal” with 100% of the concept being that the band did not know how to play death metal (the band/project was called Bustmonsters and that’s all I’ll say about that). Unsurprisingly, my serviceably-trained ear (regarding noise … if discussing some other styles/genres this would be changed to “exceptionally-trained and acutely-tuned”) could detect no good reason why this had to travel the solo pipeline rather than the Merzbow one as the beautifully-colored gore-grind-all-grown-up artwork spun its many spins this afternoon. (Each time I tried to research exactly what’s anatomically depicted by the art my physically-debilitating acute yawnitosis would flare up, to explain the lack of clarification). (It looks like the wattle of a turkey to me, holmes – Ed.) I do not recommend the readership seek out any online sampling or consumption of Wattle, but it is required to fully enjoy the fan-fiction hypothetical of Akita explaining the album by peeling off the all-to-common “I was writing all this stuff that really didn’t fit into the Merzbow M.O. or that of the 3,912 side-projects or aliases I’ve developed over the years so I was left to releasing it as a solo effort” trope. (https://elevatorbath.bandcamp.com) 
(Andrew Earles)

Side project for a bunch of current Auckland musicians (also performing in such outfits as Civil Union and Girls Pissing on Girls Pissing), Diana Tribute works a tape/collage angle, espousing what their press release calls “Tropical-Industrial Kraut-Goth cut-ups from the bowels of New Zealand.” Hey, why fix what ain’t broke? Diana Tribute has a way with words, because that’s precisely what’s at stake here: dark, rhythmic, pressurized thuds from the ornately concerned and esoteric community of latter-day Kiwi DIY music. Vocals switch from a spoken word sort of lilt to a Sisters of Mercy-esque bellow, at other times following points on a not-dissimilar curve between Fields of the Nephilim, The Wolfgang Press, and Joe Frank. Edition of 25 hand-cut copies; looks like they weren’t sure on taking the expense out of the country, and had I not met Michael McClelland on a street corner, I don’t think I’d ever have this in my possession, but I imagine the group and label would prefer you hit up their Bandcamp instead for a digital download. (https://dianatribute.bandcamp.com) 
(Doug Mosurock)

Kalash Tirich Mir is the fourth, and as of this writing, most recent German Army to enjoy a format upgrade from the duo’s specific cassette underground comfort zone. Factor this self-contained community of instant validation and this makes Kalash the 24^th full-length statement by the Merx-connected (or directly related) German Army, with an additional 12 album-sized documents appearing since the LP’s release at some point last year (2015). As per this LP and probably a number of other releases if not the entire discography, the San Bernadino-based anonymity-chasers (interviews are acceptable so long as control criteria is met) have issued a love letter to Boyd Rice’s exotica fixation, the creative restlessness of Nocturnal Emissions, the friendlier output of Throbbing Gristle, the stark-and-dark pastoral outings by Current 93 and Death in June, plus some post-post-post Only Theater of Pain-Christian Death. The scope stretches to include other pillars of the late ‘70s and entire ‘80s anti-social electronics, drone, ambient and darkwave-pop plus referential action I’m sure to miss, though nothing here is anything but highly acceptable alongside the above-mentioned powerhouses. Points go to German Army for their sense of humor, proper critical awareness of their surroundings, and for what appears to be a deep fandom and understanding of the music that made this music possible. It’s unknown as to whether the overall cover art/layout, which could be the label and not the band’s doing, is supposed to look like an attempt to reimagine the Sacred Bones visual model as a half-assed unauthorized bootleg ready for the flea-market stalls. (https://yerevantapes.bandcamp.com) 
(Andrew Earles)

RECOMMENDED

Hearts & Minds comprises three frequent fliers on Chicago’s non-ossified jazz scene. Jason Stein plays bass clarinet, Frank Rosaly plays drums, and Paul Giallorenzo plays electric keyboards, but most crucially they play together. While this is their first LP, they’ve been gigging for years, long enough for them to have experientially ascertained with utter certainty who has whose back when and what they can get away with without having the music collapse. The result is music that can lurch like Thelonious Monk dancing in those light-up sneakers the kids wear, or swing with an ease that belies the fact that someone is playing against the beat or around the tune. They know about support, and they know about implication; your favorite part of a tune may be the part that’s been sketched in outline between two players’ parts while the third holds it all down. Giallorenzo manages to be the guy most responsible for asserting gravity, but also the one most likely to point towards space; blame the latter on his good taste in Sun Ra-like Moog tones, and the former on his rhythmic tenacity. Rosaly takes full advantage by sprinting ahead of the groove, like a hyped-up retriever determined to catch that ball, duck under the fence, run around a few trees, and then come back to greet you before you make it halfway across the yard. Stein operates with similar liberty, feinting and spiraling around the tune, letting it hover like Wylie E. Coyote over some yawning canyon, but then snatching himself back from space like he has wings. The tunes themselves are solid, but it’s the variations upon them that really command attention. Black vinyl, comes with a download. (http://monofonuspress.com) 
(Bill Meyer)

RECOMMENDED

The Landlords were a principled, very funny bunch of guys who happened to start a hardcore band in Charlottesville, VA ca. 1983, and Fitzgerald’s Paris was to be their second and final album, released posthumously with even more unreleased tracks, as well as a full live set recorded at CBGB in 1986 to what sounds like a handful of disinterested folks. Being involved in a college town punk/hardcore scene, pre-Internet, is key to understanding the true outsider nature of the music herein, but there shouldn’t be any question over the quality of the proceedings, even at this late a date for hardcore’s 2^nd-through nth waves. The Landlords proved themselves to be well-versed in pop and metal, and were able to put those influences to their advantage, supercharging 31 tracks worth of in-joke punk, putting down mens’ rights activists before it was a quantifiable pursuit, just as easily as regretting caffeine overload, while covering The Monkees, Three Dog Night, Wink Martindale, Moving Sidewalks, and The Jetsons. That’s the kind of saturated media landscape worldview that, again, showed its best form pre-Internet, when you actually had to build a philosophy for yourself and show it to people rather than just lay it out online and have people find it/cop it/etc. Beyond that, though, these guys were committed to making their positions stick, playing a fierce, well-informed Southern hardcore, particularly on the second side of this, that would hold its ground against most DC acts of the day, as well as Honor Role or maybe even early COC. Guitarist Charlie Kramer and vocalist John Beers were better known as Mr. Anus and Mr. Horribly-Charred-Infant, who took college radio by storm in the late ‘80s as comedy-noise duo Happy Flowers. (https://feelitrecords.bandcamp.com) 
(Doug Mosurock)

Clothes on the chair, guitar on the floor – the sleeve of this LP suggests that the real sounds of love would not involve six strings at all. The music on this LP suggests another story line. The unhurried and often meandering progress of its nine tracks suggests a man alone with his guitar. Is it the guitar that he loves? Could be, since he spends a lot of time lingering over certain phrases, drawing them out or repeating them or rearranging them. Or could it be that love has let him down, and that’s why he is playing the guitar? That’s equally plausible, given the pensive-to-downbeat vibe. Whether it is frustrated, requited, or anticipated, love does bring out a gentler side of Lopes. He has forgone the scuzzy effects that earned the title of his last mano-a-guitar LP, Noise Solo, in favor of an unprocessed tone midway between classic pre-Hendrix jazz guitar and pre-fuzzbox ‘90s Loren Connors. One major caveat – while a sample of one is by no means scientific, this pressing is one of the noisier new LPs I’ve heard this year, and the crackle does nothing to enhance the music. If the whole pressing is like this, then parent label Clean Feed needs to bring up its vinyl production game. (https://cleanfeed-records.com) 
(Bill Meyer)

RECOMMENDED

Portuguese composer/EAI savant David Maranha has been in the game since the early ‘90s, having collaborated with artists as diverse as Z'EV, guitarist/cellist Helena Espvall (Espers), and Dirty Beaches’ Alex Zhang Hungtai. In this lineup, alongside guitarist Felipe Filazardo and drummer Diana Combo, he explores every centimeter of the rough surface between his violin and its bow, along with a prepared organ, as guitars buzz and slash away underneath, and martial drumming pounds out the time. The scrape of Maranha’s violin bow remains the heaviest and most deliberate element of this sound, like a rusty anchor dragging across a scrapyard of a record that fits more comfortably amidst a small group of bands (Swans, Nohome, Caspar Brotzmann Massaker) than in a genre. You won’t soon forget it. (http://roaratorio.com) 
(Doug Mosurock)