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…

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.

Magicke Noci

Andy Crash

I was just doing some recording this week for the one and only Andy Crash… Excited to put out his “Waiting for Nothing” cassette EP soon. It’s got some great loner/downer outsider folk songs based on old hobo tales and creepy bluegrass songs. “Pay to the Kings” is from his new drums-only EP  “Easy Street” EP on Identity Theft.

Andy Crash- “Pay to the Kings” from Easy Street EP

So, I went to go see the Puffy Areolas last night, and had to sneak in the side door because I didn’t have $5 and I was just going to give them copies of the new Ripped Krampus II cd-r and say hello, since I haven’t seen ‘em in a couple months. Krauty and some lady were rolling around screaming and wrapping each other in duct tape and a big pile of tangled microphone cables and stands on the front of the stage and the band was definitely WAY too loud for the majority of the audience. Anyway, Teets handed me a copy of their new (?) tape “Final High”. I don’t care what you have to do, you need to beg, borrow, steal, kill to get this tape. It’s the same songs that they’ve been kicking around lately (like on Brian Turner’s show), but this tape has louder, more brutal versions and is the best thing I’ve ever heard from them hands down. Plus Dusty even sings on a song at the end. Knowing how hard it is to get any of the Puffies’ recordings (I still don’t own the “Sweat Tape”), you’ll probably need to show up at one of their shows with a big bag of peyote and throw it onstage to get one, but it’s a small price to pay.

Shit Canning Ohio

Puffy Areolas Spring Gigs:

2/12- @ Oldfields (Columbus) w/ Psychedelic Horseshit

2/19- @ Howards (Bowling Green) w/ Terrible Twos

2/20- @ Now That’s Class (Cleveland) w/ Pinkeye & Angry Dad

2/27- @ Carabar (Columbus) w/ Necropolis, Cheater Slicks

3/13- @ Now That’s Class w/ AIDS Wolf, US Girls

6/2- @ Now That’s Class w/ Fag Cop

in case you did not know…

I’m an urban guerilla
I make bombs in my cellar
I’m a derelict dweller
I’m a potential killer
I’m a street fighting dancer
I’m a revolutionary romancer
I’m society’s cancer
I’m a two-tone panther
So let’s not talk of love and flowers
And things that don’t explode
We’ve used up all of our magic powers
Trying to do it in the road

I’m a political bandit
And you don’t understand it
You took my dream and canned it
It is not the way I planned it
I’m society’s destructor
I’m a petrol bomb constructor
I’m a cosmic light conductor
I’m the people’s debt collector
So watch out Mr. Business Man
Your empire’s about to blow
I think you’d better listen, man
In case you did not know

Upcoming Toledo Damage

Here’s some upcoming shows in Toledo, presented by Toledo Bellows:

Mar 27-GUNSLINGERS (France)+TERMINAL LOVERS (Cleveland)@ woodchucks

Apr 4-NOTHING PEOPLE (LA)+ JEALOUSY (LA) @ woodchucks

Apr 6-BURNING STAR CORE + WASTELAND JAZZ UNIT
@ woodchucks

May 29-Jack Wright_sax(Philadelphia)/Bob Marsh_cello,violin,voice, electronics(Bay area)@ Robinwood Concert House

JUL 16-PETER J. WOODS (Milwaukee) + INSTINCT CONTROL (Chicago) @ woodchucks