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.

New Glue Reviews

Here’s some reviews of some newer discs that have been spinning around at EBHQ:

Andrew Coltrane- Midnight Winds (Chocolate Monk)

Damn… There’s a reason why Andrew Coltrane’s name is always mentioned within Midwest noise circles with a hushed reverence. “Midnight Winds” is a full hour of pulsating drones in the vein of Terry Riley or Angus MacLise. Even though there’s definitely a lot of different instruments being played throughout the album, it all runs together very cohesively. The first track is particularly amazing, some spaced-out Masters of Jajouka brain-melting drones. This is some serious psychedelic heavy meditation drone music. Art looks like it’s from some deranged R.E. Meatyard/Sun City Girls shamanic coagulation.

Ki- Ki No Sei (Chocolate Monk)

Feral debris with members of Fushitsusha and No Neck Blues Band getting squeaky odd (though it’s not like they weren’t already). Sax skronk so high-pitched that it’ll make your dogs thirst for blood, tortured screams, fractured piano clumps.

Faust- C’est Com Com Complique

I could cut some slack for Faust if they made a less than stellar album after all these years, but there’s no need because their newest is fucking brilliant. Cut-up collage drool, superhuman drum beats, chromium distorto guitars, and moments of pure transcendental beauty.

Wicked Witch- Chaos

One man cosmic slop-fest of Funkadelic worship. Combines the dusted vocals of Bootsy with the fried guitar of Eddie Hazel and the subliminal keyboards of Bernie Worrell, with just a bit of superfreaky Rick James for good measure. A well-deserved rescue from obscurity.

Conrad Schnitzler- Silver

Schnitzler never dissapoints me, and this reissue’s no exception. If you know the Con, you know what to expect- massive mounds of bloopy synth patterns giving you an aural workout, but this record’s got a bit more diversity than his usual kosmische jams, with a cut on side two edging into Cluster’s territory. Plus a super creepy photo of Conrad looking like a vampire on the front that is a stark contrast to the mellowness contained inside.

more blogstuff…

There’s a review and mp3 samples of the Cryptids/Du Hexen Hase split over at Smooth Assailing blog.

The Puffy Areolas WFMU session is available as mp3s over here, y’all.

New Reviews in the New Year

Things have been busy here at Ear Bleed HQ, getting the RKII and Father Yodorowsky releases done, doing new recordings and trying to string that pesky sitar. Seems like there’s never enough time to do everything, but now that I’m trapped inside my house by the snow I might get more work done. Still had time to listen to some new music, though, so here are two cassettes and a record that have been playing frequently here:

Plasmic Formations- Arriving at the End To Find Another Beginning (Community College)
I’ve been digging this tape of Dayton’s Plasmic Formations lately. Really subtle minimal high-pitch tones that expand and contract. Some abrasive gunk spasms sneak up on you after you’ve zonked out to the mellow parts. I have a feeling listening to this with headphones could do some serious consciousness-altering. A sonically gorgeous and cohesive tape, and one of my favorite releases from Community College.

Cardboard Sax/Wasteland Jazz Unit split LP (Community College)
Speaking of the boys down at Community College, they just released this hellraisin’ slab of vinyl that ought to be on the turntable of every Midwest noise freak this winter. A side’s got Olson & friends laying down aggro bongslobber sax gunk that’ll melt your brain. Flip it over and you’ve got the W.J. Unit delivering more of the same except gunkier and sludgier. Great melting demonic cover art by Mr. Jason Zeh, too. A must have.

Du Hexen Häse- Dark Slobby Cave
A great psychedelic noise record from Seattle’s DHH, Dark Slobby Cave contains some serious lysergic caveman ritual drone ceremonies that seem damn near unstoppable. Some esoteric guitar and heavy looming drones keep things busy for a while until the B side’s unnerving drug-addled mantras head off to an all-night campfire ayahuasca session.

End of the Year Blowout…

2008’s almost over, and what a weird fucking year it was, especially for music. The music industry continued it’s downward spiral, continuing to force the most unbelievable garbage down the mass media’s gullet. In underground music, there was an equally unbelievable explosion of new music, trends which came and went faster than ever before, and a wonderful destruction of some genre boundaries. It seems like anything is possible these days in underground music, as anyone with internet access can go online and discover an infinite amount of music. As Ear Bleed Records has always been a major user of the internet to spread music and has been waiting for the death of the record industry for just as long, this was a fun year to be alive. A lot of stuff happened close to home, too: the resurrection of Ear Bleed Records, some great gigs, exciting rumblings in the Toledo scene, some of our friends making waves in the music world. Unfortunately we were too fucking broke most of the year to buy new music, but we still managed to make a list of our favorite music of the year.

Ian Earbleed’s Favorite Albums of 2008

Aural Fit- II (dusted & blown-out Jap-psych of the highest quality & lowest fidelity.)

Jason Zeh- Heraclitus (epic & masterful tape mangling for hypnotizing your brain.)

The Goslings- Occasion (heavy doom and squall as always from these creeps.)

La Otracina- The Risk Of Gravitation (limited edition heavy metal free jazz rock tough guy moves)

Way of the Cross- Mind of the Dolphin (all-star psych/free/jammers get creepy & shamanic on various tour recordings.)

Suishou No Fune- Prayer for Chibi (a masterpiece of gloomy downer guitar psych, always a pleasure with these cats.)

Religious Knives- It’s After Dark (and a ton of other near-perfect albums from the Knives that I won’t list here. do they even need to try?)

Grouper- Dragging a Dead Deer Down a Hill (quiet music for rainy days.)

LSD March- Jurando (Shinsuke Michishita goes for the stripped-down solo loner/downer acid folk vibes.)

Lau Nau- Nuukuu (quiet finn psych for when the baby’s asleep.)

Zola Jesus- Poor Sons (haunting & fragile gloom-pop from the aether.)

Indian Jewelry- Free Gold! (our summer jam. should have been on every wanna-be hipster’s boombox in a just world, which it ain’t.)

Fabulous Diamonds- Fabulous Diamonds (see above.)

Our Favorite Gigs of 2008

Blues Control/Puffy Areolas/Little Claw at Now That’s Class

Nmperign/Flux Monkey in Oberlin

Jack deJohnette/Chick Corea/Bobby McFerrin going insane on improv noise fumes in Ann Arbor

John Olsen & Ben Hall at 517 Fest

Plastic People of the Universe at the Black Swamp Arts Festival

gigs with Sword Heaven, KBD, Ripped Krampus II, Metal Rogue, John Weiss at Mickey Finn’s

and of course the return of the basement EBR shows:

La Otracina/Own Weather/Father Yodorowsky

Ripped Krampus II/Daniken/TV Casualties

Yellow Crystal Star/Dickhearse a Discourse on Dickhorse/Daniken/Cryptids/Bob Newsted

So much more stuff happening next year- look forward to more releases from the Ear Bleed family: Ripped Krampus I/II, Cryptids, the Puffy Areolas and Bastardgeist all have stuff due to be released on various labels next year, plus who knows what surprises will happen… See you next year.

-Ian Earbleed

RIPPED KRAMPUS II

Ripped Krampus II- Smokin’ Bats At Mickey Finn’s (Layaway Butch)

Toledo’s favorite psychedelic sludge creeps are back with an all-new triple guitar threat line-up, and the result is darker and more brain-damaging than ever. This live disc contains two soul-crushing Les Rallizes Denudes covers snuggling around a feisty version of “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, but it’s the closing live jam “DM Ferox” that really gets the blood pumping with a straight-out-of-the-bunker krautrock riff that oozes out of the primordial soup like the most drug-addled moments of German Oak.

Ear Bleed Reviews #1

Unfortunately all of the old reviews from earbleedrecords.com disappeared along with the website, so it’s taken me a while to want to start reviewing stuff again. But I was listening to a lot of new stuff and noise tapes the last couple weeks on my ancient Walkmen, so I figured I ought to throw the low-down your way with a plus-sized reviews column featuring the best in new underground music.

Black Almas- Black Almas (Epicene Sound)
Black Almas is a new Ohio noise supergroup of sorts, featuring the men behind Teeth Collection and Plastic Formations, who put out a lot of quality grimy sounds on their own and are both from Dayton. This tape isn’t really like any of their solo stuff though, it’s kind of a head scratcher. Every time that they start getting into a groove or start making some noises I can get into, they stop the tape and move to something else. Hey, I was listening to that! I dig the murky, lo-fi ambience of this tape though, and its cryptic and elusive nature end up adding to the overall aesthetic, whatever it might be. A rare noise tape in that it makes me want to listen to it more to try to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Gorman- Hill Shrines (Somatic Bliss Tapes)
Gorman’s a pretty prolific noisemaker from Mansfield, Ohio named J. Spencer, but this is the first time I’ve heard his stuff. He seems to have his act down pretty solid though, cos this is a damn fine tape that I was digging thoroughly the whole time. Very cool minimal drone/rumble stuff that’s great zoning-out music but never gets boring. Side A, “Dug From The Trash” starts out with some clanking and builds up to a big heavy pile of moans, clanks and rumbles and then goes through minute textural changes but still manages to be fairly heavy. The B side, “Polished Brass” starts out with some similar rhythmic clanking, but is more of a mellow kosmische jam with some great spaced-out ambient organ sounds. Excited to try to get something on Ear Bleed from this guy, since he seems to have a similar Heavy Meditation Music vibe to what we’ve been trying to do recently.

U.S. Girls- Introducing…
I have no clue what this whole “Crimson Wave” thing is all about, but I think it’s probably as much of a “real” movement as is “Shitgaze” or “Freak Folk” or “Grunge”, so I try not to take this whole thing too seriously even though all the artists who have been tagged with the label (Zola Jesus, Cro Magnon) are pretty damn cool. Anyway, U.S. Girls have a lot of murky drums, guitar and chanting and a cool lo-fi reverby sound like it was recorded to tape in a moldy basement. But there’s also some beautiful jumbled moments like “Don’t Understand That Man” that are kind of reminiscent of Grouper and also a lot of really strange moments that just sound like U.S. Girls. Luckily Joel from Bastardgeist lives in Chicago now and hyped me onto this record, the rest of you should go check out U.S. Girls on tour. With any luck, next year we’ll be drowning in 14 year olds trying to sound like this instead of Panda Bear.

Grouper- Dragging A Dead Deer Up a Hill
Speaking of Ms. Grouper, this new album is so beautiful and pure it’s like angels came down from heaven and crapped on my head. Hushed vocals over melancholy guitars and pianos aren’t usually my cup of tea, but Grouper never lets me down. If Indian Jewelry is this year’s summer jam album, this is the record to play once it gets cold and gloomy and rains all the time (which is what September-December is in Ohio). Also voted “best album to cry/make out to 2008″ by the judges.

Check back soon for some more NW Ohio freaksound news and some free downloads…

Heraclitus

cut n paste:

“JASON ZEH “HERACLITUS” CD!
Now that Jason’s wrapped up some academic stuff, the artwork has almost completely been put to bed and this CD will be off to the pressing plant this month. Heraclitus is Zeh’s debut CD, and it’s a mighty one. Using myriad recording techniques (to call them merely “innovative” or “inventive” would be an insult), Zeh revisits and manipulates both source (cassette tape) and medium (including the rollers, pressure pad, magnetic shield, the actual cassette shell, and playback devices) to create audio that, although not beyond description, are certainly not much like anything one associates with cassettes. I am extremely honored to present this disc.
Please note: there also will be a limited edition that comes with a cassette of unique audio as well as additional artwork. Information on this edition is forthcoming.

http://cipsite.net/”

I hope you’re excited about this as I am, without Jason’s influence Ear Bleed would most likely never of happened. I can’t wait to hear this. Copies should be available July 11, there might be a release show at Grumpy Dave’s, check back for more info.

Let’s Talk About Dickhearse.

What can I say about Dickhearse a Discourse on Dickhorse? Their performances are like bizarre rituals, filled with minute, seemingly insignificant actions which take on some sort of cosmic meaning. Lost in a tube of Tom’s toothpaste spit onto a broken mirror, the music takes on another quality and transcends its earthly state.

Stripped of all meaning, nonsense takes on a sense of reality.

Stripped off reality, we can explore what it means to be human, the boundaries of sanity become meaningless.