genghis tron - dead mountain mouth (2006)

RIYL: Drumcorps, Venetian Snares, Agoraphobic Nosebleed

Usually I like to review albums that I have only heard recently, so this album is kind of an exception to that rule.  Dead Mountain Mouth is, to me, a flawless record, and I had some compulsion to listen to it tonight so I figured I'd write something about it.  This is one of those records where I know every song inside and out, and take pleasure from anticipating every twist and turn it takes.  It frankly amazes me that Genghis Tron never got bigger than they did, especially after this record- whereas their first ep Cloak of Love felt fairly tongue-in-cheek and kept the electronic portions mostly separate from the metal parts, Dead Mountain Mouth blends programmed beats and melodic keyboards with raging guitars and grinding drums in a completely seamless and natural way.  The songwriting is without fault too- every song has a place and contributes to the overall shape of the record, and the album is strong from start to finish (although it runs barely over half an hour, so it doesn't even stick around long enough to wear out its welcome).  While the whole album is great, for me the highlight comes early in the form of the titular track.  "Dead Mountain Mouth" is a densely sculpted swarm of surging guitars and keyboards relentlessly charging towards the edge of a cliff, briefly floating mid-air and then horrifically crashing to the ground (the first time I saw them play, I asked the guitar player why they didn't play this song- he said it was "kind of a studio experiment" that they couldn't recreate in a live setting).  Board Up The House, the album that followed this one, failed to match the intensity and focus found here.  I'm still hoping that we are going to get more like this from Genghis Tron, and even if we don't, this stands as the most perfect amalgamation of heavy metal and electronic music created thus far.

xinlisupreme - murder license (2002)

RIYL: Yellow Swans, Wolf Eyes
Holy HELL what is this???  If you, like me, thought that the heavy beats on "Bring the Neon War Home" were the best thing Yellow Swans ever did, if you secretly wish that My Bloody Valentine had gone in the drum n' bass direction in which Kevin Shields was rumored be experimenting... If you like Ben Frost and Wolf Eyes and everything super-fucking-blown out... you probably need this.  They got electronic industrial beats in my wall of distortion!  They got a wall of distortion in my electronic industrial beats!  Together, they taste like MY BRAINS MELTING OUT OF MY ORIFICES.  This is what Mega Man's brain sounds like inside a k-hole.  You can find almost all of their stuff to download for free at their (RAD-ASS) website.

BEST OF THE BEST 2000Z

Man did this decade SUCK or what???  What a waste of 10 years.  Not musically, though!!  Music was the awesome yin to life's shitty yang for the decade.  I had to cut down my list from something like my 200 favorite records to this: the absolute-ultimate-unimpeachable-undeniable-unfuckwithable top 30 albums of the last 10 years!!  These albums are the jam and if you don't like at least a few of these, nuts to you old fogey!!!!  Don't come to my party because we are rocking the fuck out.

30. So - So (2003)

read the rest!

29. Jana Hunter - Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom (2005)

28. Jay Reatard - Blood Visions (2006)

27. Black Dice - Broken Ear Record (2005)

26. Yellow Swans - Bring the Neon War Home (2004)

25. Snoop Dogg - Tha Blue Carpet Treatment (2006)

24. The Angelic Process - Weighing Souls With Sand (2007)

23. David Thomas Broughton - The Complete Guide to Insufficiency (2005)

22. Daughters - Hell Songs (2006)

21. Ratatat - Ratatat (2004)

20. Greg Ashley - Painted Garden (2007)

19. Black Moth Super Rainbow - Dandelion Gum (2007)

18. Panda Bear - Person Pitch (2007)

17. Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters (2007)

16. Flying Canyon - Flying Canyon (2006)

15. The Pack - Skateboards 2 Scrapers (2006)

14. Comets on Fire - Blue Cathedral (2004)

13. Madvillain - Madvillainy (2004)

12. Harvey Milk - Special Wishes (2006)

11. The Dirty Projectors - The Getty Address (2005)

10. Six Organs of Admittance - School of the Flower (2005)

09. Om - Conference of the Birds (2006)

08. Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas (2002)

07. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs (2004)

06. Deerhoof - Milk Man (2004)

05. Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)

04. The Blood Brothers - Burn Piano Island, Burn (2003)

03. Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth (2006)

02. Tim Hecker - Radio Amor (2003)

01. Hella - Hold Your Horse Is (2002)

haust - ride the relapse (2008)

This band calls to my mind a specific emotion, or perhaps a state of mind, that I'm not sure there is a word for. The closest match might be "frenzy"- a sort of unhinged, panicked rage. On Ride the Relapse, the debut album from this Norwegian band, this frenzy is expressed as crunchy, nihilistic hardcore punk. It's a particularly heavy and metallic take on hardcore, sounding somewhat like a stripped-down version of Converge. It also straddles the line between punk and black metal- the riffs wouldn't sound out of place on one of the new Darkthrone albums, and it's really only the restrained drumming that prevents this from crossing over into actual black metal. Matching the aggressive mania of the music, singer Vebjørn Guttormsgaard Mølleberg shrieks and raves about white trash, drugs, Oslo and whatever else manages to catch his hate. It's an excellent debut and perfect listening for when you put on headphones to drown out all the human waste in the world.

Haust - White Trash Extravaganza
Haust - Ugly Fucking Oslo

little teeth - child bearing man (2008)

"Child Bearing Man", the debut from San Francisco group Little Teeth, was one of the better indie rock releases I heard last year- a few years ago, it would have been called "freak folk", before that term died its well-deserved death. The sound, overall, could be described as upbeat indie, which normally I hate. But I give San Francisco bands some extra leeway, and besides, this album is pretty weird for what it is- and weird is always good in my book. In addition to being intriguingly strange, Little Teeth employ a wide range of instruments and sounds to craft their pop music, making for a sonically diverse album. At times the vocal melodies remind me of Polyphonic Spree or Animal Collective, but lead singer Dannie Murrie's voice is unhinged and raspy, and she alternates between singing and shrieking, adding some ugliness to the sweetness of the melodies. I can imagine that this quality would make this band a love-it-or-hate-it type band; for me, the aggressively weird vocal style is what saves this band from being a more run-of-the-mill indie group. But I could imagine that others might find the same style obnoxious, or perhaps forced. I had heard at the beginning of the year, from a friend of the band, that they had broken up- but I see on their myspace page that they have a pretty substantial tour lined up. I also see that, apart from Dannie Murrie, the current line-up is different from the line-up that recorded "Child Bearing Man", so it will be interesting to see how that effects the band- especially since each member has such a strong individual presence on this album.

Little Teeth - Between My Ears
Little Teeth - Japanese Candy

the atomic bomb audition - light will remain (2008)

My co-writer here at Speed, Glue and Music tells me that there are people in San Francisco that actually read this blog!! Is this true? Feel free to leave some comments or share your blogs with us! Anyway since San Francisco is showing us some love, I thought I would review a SF an Oakland band that as far as I know hasn't really received much exposure yet (I could surf the internet to verify whether or not this is true, but I'm lazy). This is a band that Mr. Destroy the Scene and I randomly saw 3-4 years ago, by accident. We had left our luxurious apartment at the intersection of Mission and Precita and ducked into El Rio for a few drinks, and this band was playing. And we were blown away! Never before had I accidentally ended up watching a band I liked so much. And then... I didn't hear anything about them for years. Not, in fact, until I was board-operating an interview with Dub Trio at KUSF, and they mentioned that Atomic Bomb Audition were opening for them at the Hemlock. Did I know anything about this band, they inquired? Yeah! I said, suddenly remembering the band I unintentionally saw years back. What do they sound like, the dude from Dub Trio asked. "They sound like umm.... really heavy.... you know but also, like.... textured.... sort of shoegazey but also..... heavy" I said, and the dude from Dub Trio nodded solemnly, secretly amazed and envious at the breadth of my knowledge of music and the more technical terms pertaining to it. Anyway, I wasn't able to go to that show, and then next I heard of them is when I came across this album, Light Will Remain. Apparently this is their second album, and I'm curious to hear what their first album sounds like, because by this release they already have a very full and well-developed sound. Much like contemporary Deftones (yeah I said Deftones), Atomic Bomb Audition incorporate a lot of 90's indie, shoegaze and emo into their sound, but much, much louder and heavier. Except the Deftones ended up in their heavy-shoegaze incarnation coming from nu-metal, whereas this band seems much more natural in their melodic sensibilities. They also incorporate a lot of post-rock and prog into their sound, and the result is long, complex songs that alternate between lush melodies and heavy riffing (I just barfed a little as I wrote "lush melodies"). At various times, this band reminds me of Built to Spill, Dinosaur Jr (in particular the vocal melodies at the end of "Copernicus: Perigee"), Mogwai, Isis, Amesoeurs, The Angelic Process (who RULE and I will definitely write about soon) and Explosions in the Sky. Yet at no point do they sound derivative of any of those acts- they have a really interesting and unique sound, and I'm eager to see what they do next.


The Atomic Bomb Audition - Copernicus: Perigee

amps for christ - the people at large (2004)

I first encountered this album while I was researching for my radio program on 5RC. It was one of two releases AFC put out on the label, the other being Every Eleven Seconds, an album I had picked up years ago while travelling in New York. At the time, I hadn't cared much for that album- I found it too weird and too uneven. When my research forced me to go back and reconsider that album, I found it still to be very strange and hit-and-miss, and found The People at Large to be a similar experience. But this time the hits stuck out a little bit more, and that combined with Amps for Christs strange story, makes for a pretty interesting album. Before making AFC his primary project, Chris Barnes was in Man Is the Bastard (who I have to admit I haven't listened to before- are they good?)(also, did you know that Man Is the Bastard's last release was a split with Mumia Abu-Jamal on Alternative Tentacles??). Moving away from punk, Barnes continued his experiments with building amplifiers and other guitar tech, and explored a synthesis of folk and noise music in Amps for Christ. Its totally schizophrenic- some tracks are noisy, dissonant and unsettling, while other tracks are mellow interpretations traditional folk songs. The album doesnt really have any kind of obvious direction or flow, and kind be pretty alienating to listen to at points. But I think in the instances when all of the various influences and experimental sounds actually coalesce into something substantial, the results are pretty amazing.

Amps for Christ - AFC Tower Song
Amps for Christ - The Morlough Shore

gary war - new raytheonport (2008)

speaking of straight rip-offs, if this guy is different from Ariel Pink in any way, I'm not hearing it. I mean, he's less weird. but everything else is there, the lo-fi throwback pop etc. but that's ok with me. NYC can have their own Ariel Pink if they want. and I enjoy the album just fine. I wonder what critics think of this? I haven't checked around the web yet.

Gary War - Good Clues
Gary War - Please Don't Die

parts & labor - escapers 2: grind pop (2008)

vocal harmonies and blast beats. to me, those two things are like a glass of warm milk and some soft blankets. my worries float away, and I settle into a comfortable blankness. so this appropriately-titled album blew me away when I first heard it. its pretty unlike other Parts & Labor releases, or at least I think it is because I can't be bothered to double check. all of the songs on this are around a minute long, flurries of blast beats and feedback and yes, pop melodies. the allmusic guide review for this gets it all wrong. this is a brilliant idea.

Parts & Labor - This Is What You Wanted
Parts & Labor - Fire Away

acid mothers temple - new geocentric world of acid mothers temple (2001)

in general, I prefer to post about albums that I think are exceptional, but in this case I'm posting because I want some feedback. its not that this album is bad, but it is kinda aimless and I'm not sure I really understand the Acid Mothers cult following. is it just because they are Japanese and play psych music, and those are two easy ingredients for a cult following? or are there other Acid Mothers Temple recordings where they really do something exceptional or exciting? this one seems to just be drifting, improvised psychedelia, although there are a few standout tracks- Occie Lady, a blown-out hard rocker, and What Do I Want to Know (Like Heavenly Kisses), Pt. 2, which is a long, warm ambient recording that sounds a little like Tim Hecker, or a symphony warming up. I was going to go see them last night, but as has been the case the last couple of times I've had a chance to see them, I decided to pass. maybe the live show is the key to their appeal? are there Acid Mothers Temple albums that I'm missing out on?

Acid Mothers Temple - What Do I Want to Know (Like Heavenly Kisses), Pt. 2

super barrio bros - s/t (2007)

the Team Teamwork album made me think of the other major videogame/rap crossover album I know of, the Super Barrio Bros record. this album features two Project Blowed rappers, 8-Bit Bandit and Dumfoundead rapping about videogames over videogame samples. it works pretty well- its really really nerdy, not just because its about videogames, but because the rappers are the indie-backpacker type that put together overly verbose rhymes. I'm not really enough of a rap nerd to get way into that style of rapping, and one of the rappers has a really nasally voice that kind of grates on me. but its still a pretty interesting album, one i'd say worth hearing at least for its novelty value. I probably would have been all over this if I had heard it five years ago.

Super Barrio Bros - Bosses
Super Barrio Bros - Outro Instrumental

davila 666 - s/t (2008)

first off, its pretty bad-ass that this band is from Puerto Rico. I don't think I've heard any other band from Puerto Rico. second, this is a totally killer record. it hits so many right buttons that its kinda shocking to me- this band is basically everything that underground rock is trying to be right now. its poppy lo-fi garage rock, sounding kinda like Black Lips singing songs in spanish, or like maybe Brian Jonestown Massacre, but authentic sounding and dark. but then, its also got hints of shoegaze, the Jesus & Mary Chain kind, reverbed drums & tambourines, that bands like Vivian Girls or Crystal Stilts kinda have going. plus they're from Puerto Rico, which is hella cutty. and they're on In The Red records, which is a pretty goddamn great record label right now. so your enjoyment of this record may depend on how you feel about the current trends. fortunately, i'm all for this garage revival scene (which I would guess is probably not gonna last much longer), so I think this record is great. the record itself is half split between upbeat rockers, and extra-reverbed ballads- frankly I like the band at both speeds. I dunno if this record got all that much attention when it came out, but I do know that a lot of people at KUSF loved it.

Davila 666 - Basura
Davila 666 - Tu

andrew w.k. - the japan covers (2008)

Andrew W.K. - Kiseki (GreeeeN Cover)

Andrew W.K. - Giroppon (Nezumi Senpai Cover)

Andrew W.K.
Manhattan, New York, USA
The Japan Covers (Universal Music Group)
http://www.andrewwk.com
RIYL: Meatloaf, J-Pop

I wouldn't thought of it, but in retrospect, this is pretty much the best idea ever. what's the only thing more upbeat and positive than Andrew W.K.? J-Pop! well, when it works, it works great. I've had Kiseki stuck in my head for weeks now. I can't escape it. it's too ridiculous, too happy, and amazingly over the top. it leads off the cd, but after that things get a little rougher. it's not that the other songs are bad, but the overwhemling positivity can get tiring. its the same feeling I get when i'm listening to death metal- eventually it gets too claustrophobic and I have to switch to something else for a while. but in small doses, this album is great, and showcases Andrew W.K.'s instrumental and production skill. I wonder if there are any famous guests on this- the people he brought in for the last Lee "Scratch" Perry album he produced were pretty funny.

Andrew W.K. - Kiseki (GreeeeN Cover)
Andrew W.K. - Giroppon (Nezumi Senpai Cover)

lifelover - pulver (2006)

Lifelover - Karlek- Becksvart Melankoli

Lifelover - Nackskott

Lifelover
Stockholm, Sweden
Pulver (GoatawaRex)
http://www.lifelover.se
RIYL: Joyless, Amesoeurs

this is the first album by one of my favorite bands, Lifelover. they are pretty hard to catergorize- they come pretty strongly from a black metal direction, but their music also includes elements of goth, shoegaze, maybe like mid-90's indie shit, movie samples, found sound... it all comes together into what I guess some people (or at least someone on wikipedia) call "depressive rock". still, that's a good description- i've spent plenty of late-late-late nights jamming this stuff before the sun rises. its interesting to me that metal has assimilated all different sorts of music, yet black metal remains pretty formulaic (ignoring bands like Xexyz or Sigh or Dodheimsgard...wait, maybe this isn't a good point). well at any rate, black metal and pop don't cross over too often- Lifelover, Amesoeurs, Alcest, Joyless and Woods of Infinity are I think all of the black metal/pop bands (it should be noted that, I believe, three of those bands are or have connections to the guitar player Neige). in this case, while the music is pretty poppy and catchy, the songs can also be dirge-y and formless. the end result is something very compelling, easy to listen to, and yet it never really takes shape. the fact that the songs are interrupted and chopped up (with dialogue, children's songs, and more) makes the music seem particularly unhinged. one final note, this album is different from the band's subsequent albums Erotik and Konkurs in that they are still using a drum machine, as well as the fact that this album is relatively more "black metal"- giving it a more violent mood than the following albums, as if the band hadn't yet been entirely crushed by depression.

Lifelover - Nackscott
Lifelover - Karlek-Becksvart Melankoli