Back in the shit.

Ear Bleed is back in town, lots of new and old stuff headed your way soon.

Here Comes Andy Crash

Here’s a couple out of print cd-rs from Andy Crash:

Fedral Reserve

easy street ep

Andy’s newest album “Waiting for Nothing” is still available from Ear Bleed for $5. Did we mention it’s amazing and contains a bunch of Hank Williams covers? And comes with an awesome color mini-poster drawn by Andy himself?

Kosmische Cryptids

New Cryptids CD-r out on Layaway Butch/Ear Bleed Records:

Cryptids- Kosmische Cryptids (Layaway Butch/Ear Bleed)
A collection of assorted Cryptids works from the vaults, 2007 to present. Shimmering drones, heavy tribal freakouts and a whole lot of blissed-out cosmic kraut music from the wrong place and time. Email earbleedrecords at gmail.com about how to get one of these. Only two copies of “Mabuse” left, so order these fast.

Some pictures from the Yellow Crystal Star/Child Bride/To-Night Golden Curls/Cryptids gig:

This Friday

Yellow Crystal Star

Child Bride

To-Night Golden Curls

Cryptids

@ Robinwood Concert House, Toledo.

New Ear Gunk

Two new cassettes from Ear Bleed:

Cryptids- Mabuse (EBR18)

If the last couple Cryptids releases were a little too droney or mellow for you, don’t worry, this one’s about as mellow as an icepick to the earlobe. Mountains of misanthropic churning violin ultraviolence, drugged synths melting in the sun and tortured screams coming out of the air vents populate the landscape of this tape. “Der Spieler”/”1000 Eyes”.

Andy Crash- Waiting for Nothing

Andy Crash is one of NW Ohio’s most original and unique musicians, and we’re very happy to be able to put out a tape by him. Inspired by tales of the hobos, yeggs and drifters that used to ride the rails, Andy brings together originals, covers, and timeless folk & country songs together in his unique style. Somehow Andy links the songs of Hank Williams, Flatt & Scruggs, the Velvet Underground and Snoop Dogg into a unique vision of American loner folk music. Comes with an awesome color poster by Andy Crash himself. Probably the coolest thing we’ve put out.

Both of these are $5 each, if you buy both of them you’ll also get a ton of other Ear Bleed stuff. Better do it soon, though, because I will be going on permanent vacation in mid-May. Send paypal money or an email to earbleedrecords@gmail.com.

A few tapes left

Still have a few copies of the following:

Cryptids- Veil

Ripped Krampus II- Mothbleed: Death’s Gonna Die CD-r

Father Yodorowsky & the Spirit of 666- El Dopo

$5 each, send an email to earbleedrecords@gmail.com to snag one before they’re gone.

New tapes coming very soon.

Burning Star Core/Wasteland Jazz Unit @ Woodchucks

Last night I went up to Woodchucks in Toledo to see Burning Star Core. I’ve seen C. Spencer Yeh play in various combos before, but never as BxC, so I was excited for this show. Never been to Woodchucks, either; it’s a tiny hole in the wall, which is usually a good thing for noise shows in bars. Darger opened with some extremely loud duo guitar drone stuff. Wasteland Jazz Unit was up next and slayed, their sax and bass clarinet making some intense feedback and bongslobber skronk noise that woke my tired ass up. After that was BxC, Robert Beatty playing space echo synth and Yeh manipulating samples. They started off with an off-kilter kosmische drone that oozed and gurgled around for a bit like the best moments of early Tangerine Dream stuck in a blender. Then the second jam started off with a drum machine doing a Tony Conrad & Faust beat, with Yeh playing drone violin and the sax player from WJU joining in halfway through for a trip to krautrock country. All in all a good night of music in Toledo set up by Toledo Bellows, check out their site for more great experimental shows coming up in Toledo.

New Reviews from the Ear Cube

Locrian- Drenched Lands

A new album from Locrian, and you get the usual copious amount of heavy drone & metal influenced guitar work, but “Drenched Lands” is strangely meditative considering the amount of twisted guitar shredding. “Barren Temple Obscured by Contaminated Fogs” is mostly dominated by incoherent metal screaming and followed by “Epicedium” which is more reminiscent of Cluster & Eno for the first 3 1/2 minutes before the lurching heavy guitars show up and stomp all over the kosmische organ and Frippertronic guitars. The final track, “Grayfield Shrines” is a massive mountain of astral guitar noodling and piercing drones. Ambient metal? Works for me.

Lugubrum- Albino De Congo

The last album couldn’t have shown up in my inbox at a better time, because the last week I’ve been diving head-on into the world of black metal. This latest from Belgos Lugubrum is a move away from their “brown metal” rural roots (read: less banjos & saxophones), but as usual Lugubrum manage to ruffle some metal purists’ feathers with excursions into acoustic music, sample-based darkwave and a focus on slower, progressive bass-driven riffs that are more like the mellower side of Circle. They’re still well-stocked with constipated vocals and thrash guitar though, so don’t be too worried.

Masayuki Takayanagi/Kaoru Abe- New Projection

After a couple hours of metal, some Japanese free skronk is just the thing to clean the wax out of my ears. Takayanagi and Abe are like the Brotzmann & Sharrock of Japan, and this record spews more jazz annihilation than Last Exit could even dream of. Abe’s sax is definitely well-steeped in Albert Ayler’s spiritual folk themes and out-there travelings, but Takayanagi’s guitar destruction is completely peerless and frightening in its intensity. This record’s from 1970, and can still kick the living shit outta any free-jazz-inspired noise getting made today. Hell, noise hipsters can’t even handle more than 10 minutes of Conrad Schnitzler’s “Con Repetizione”, how would they take an hour of this ultraviolence? Put this one on at the next noise show you’re at and watch ‘em cut and run.

Chapel of Noise/Airing Dirty Laundry

One of the coolest places to hear noise these days is Oberlin’s Fairchild Chapel. Great acoustics that only a stone chapel with a super high ceiling can provide, plus all their shows are low-key and free. Went to see Nmperign a while, which was the perfect act to see there. Super quiet avant trumpet/sax whisperings and grindings that seriously messed with the circuitry inside my brain. The only downside was that folks that were just there to maintain their noise hipster street cred can’t sit still quietly and not talk on their cell phones. During something as intensely quiet as a Nmperign concert, it’s a huge distraction. The other big find of the night was Fluxmonkey, who’s an older cat who’s been been building synths in his basement for years and now blows new jack noise kids out of the water.

Friday night I went to go see Hair Police and Religious Knives at the Chapel, which I was super excited about. Robert Turman opened and laid down some seriously heavy ritual Satanic dark drones. Hair Police played next and slayed as always. They started of with a really sparse jam of Connelly screaming punctuated by feedback before breaking into some of their “songs”. I really like how Hair Police write recognizable songs that still border on chaos and improvisation. They’re always a good time live, though this set was a little lower intensity than the last time I saw them. Next up was Brooklyn’s Religious Knives, which I was excited about since I really like their albums and dig the whole Double Leopards drone family. Well, I was in for a bit of a disappointment because it was hands down one of the worst, most amateurish performances I’ve seen in years. They couldn’t keep time to save their lives, the guitar playing was inept at best, and the sound was wretched. Even cutting them slack for having to play in a huge, booming venue without their drummer after a band as intense and together as Hair Police, watching Religious Knives was as painful as watching a really bad cover band of your favorite band ruining your favorite songs. I almost didn’t even write about the show because I’m not into bad-mouthing other musicians, but I thought I ought to give the Knives an old-fashioned internet tongue-lashing/tough love. Why bother playing a show if you’re going to do it less than half-assed? Maybe you can get away with a sloppy show in Brooklyn, but don’t come to Ohio with that crap and try to pass it off as “Velvet-Underground-inspired-psych-rock”. If you can’t even play your own songs, that means you need to go home and do what the old jazz cats used to call “woodshedding”, which to the rest of us means “practicing until you are a competent musician”. I know everybody has their off nights, but you could at least try…

Cryptic guitar drones

Finally put up a clip from the Cryptids show at the Pleasuredome in Ypsilanti last year opening for Dickhearse & Yellow Crystal Star. Sound’s pretty decent considering it was recorded on a digital camera. Too bad there’s no video for the set the next night when I got to play through Mark’s Sunn amp.

New Cryptids tapes coming soon…