Toll – “Christ Knows” – [Cold Spring Records]

Excavated from the hellish core of the earth, this is a reissue of a 1986 LP on Broken Flag from label creator and Ramleh/Skullflower contributor Gary Mundy’s side project. With him here are Mathew Frith, Tim Soar and appearances from pre-Stereolab Tim Gane and Paul Lemos from Controlled Bleeding. Some dank and evil UK industrial noise mixed into dark-wave noir. A vampiric drawl crawling out of the sewers, grinding and piercing amidst caustic guitar volts like exposed wires. Though the vocals are definitely a product of their times, the tortured howls and haunting chants reminiscing of a forsaken life make you feel dirty, disheveled, dejected and delusional. It has a distinctly subterranean feel like a lost message from mole people of forgotten subway lines with cavernous drones at booming low frequencies. The sludgy bass lines maintain the machine rhythms within this sea of noise and snippets of creepy overdubs bring a whole new dimension. Paranoid images of haunted playground swings, wind through chandeliers in dripping dungeons, spiders crawling inside rusted pianos.??

Heatless Ark – “Blank Realm” – [Not Not Fun]

Born out of the oppressive heat and amidst and against the beer soaked party scene of Brisbane, Australia, this psych collective with 2 previous cassette releases have compiled hundreds of hours of improvisations, edited and trimmed them down and pieced them all together in a mess of overdubbing for this towering achievement of weird no-wave punk mixed with chandeliers of crystalline noise on a floating psychedelic excursion. They describe themselves as shoegaze thrash, and it seems appropriate though I’d say its much hazier, drugged and lethargic, evoking a dark, cloudy synesthesia. The movement seems strangely intuitive, probably since three of them are siblings, as they weave in and out of tightly controlled tangents that can’t shed their loose feel. Rhythm seems to be more of a subtle insertion with guitars and drums leaving at will, leaving just dense swirls of electronic noise and ethereal synthscapes driven by crunching bass interventions and haunted, nightmarish vocals. There is a solid kraut influence with the wide variety of sounds within a single construct, and the title track is the most conventional while still maintaining unsettling feel. A ceaseless march into heat stroke hallucinations. Enjoy

Guilty Pleasures – “Summer Strange” – [Dusty Medical Records]

Garage punk 4 piece from Bloomington-Normal, IL.. These guys are pretty bad ass. Formed outside of Chicago in or around 1997, they sadly got lost in the shuffle of the new garage movement (Reatards, Baseball Furies, Black Lips, etc). This 12 track CD has no duds (track 7 is my personal favorite). Its got raw a rock n??? roll garage sound that is good for your ears especially turned up loud. If you have any tail feathers, this record will make you shake ???em.

Heart Land – “Heart Land” – [Cream of Turner]

Who woulda thunk America’s “Heart Land” would fit so nicely
in KFJC’s weird earhole? Actually, this is New Hope, PA’s
“Heart Land” sharing genetic material and a flaming spark
of imagination with Sunlore. There are some heavy sounds
here for rupture rock, but also a hefty amount of lightness,
cascading electronics that stirred the ghosts of Popol Vuh,
at least for me. Instrumental improvisations that could be
the soundtrack to films Werner Herzog is not allowed to
make outside of his mind? Psychedelic not in the guitars
trying to be sitars way, but in the slipperiness of sound
and synth. Urban sherpa meditation? An interesting blend
of organic and inorganic music, like finding a perfect
metal orb deep in the forest. With drums and gunshots
ringing off in the distance at times. As a bonus, this
release can handle increased RPM’s no problem. Let her
rip…and dig the retro library/locomotive log packaging
while you do so.

-Thurston Hunger

Neo Cons – “Neo Cons” – [Deranged]

According to their bio, this band is “a radical gang of Muslim gay socialist terrorists living a life of sin in godless San Francisco, California.” I don’t know about all that.. They are hardcore punkers for sure. I read they have been compared to New Bomb Turks and Zero Boys.. While i can see a bit of why, Neo Cons are a lot more simple. Thats not to say they aren’t good. If you dig hardcore, no frills, snarly punk rock, These are your boys and girl respectively. It reminded me of being underage and drunk at Gilman St. Good times.

Guilty Pleasures – “Summer Strange”

Garage punk 4 piece from Bloomington-Normal, IL.. These guys are pretty bad ass. Formed outside of Chicago in or around 1997, they sadly got lost in the shuffle of the new garage movement (Reatards, Baseball Furies, Black Lips, etc). This 12 track CD has no duds (track 7 is my personal favorite). Its got raw a rock n’ roll garage sound that is good for your ears especially turned up loud. If you have any tail feathers, this record will make you shake ‘em.

Hox – “It-ness” – [Apollo Records]

aka Andreas Karperyd and Edvard Graham Lewis. This is really awesomely strange. If you can imagine harsh metallic rhythmic beats (Henrik Rylander, Alva Noto, Esplendor Geometrico etc) with a subdued creepy vocal track (lets say an American Blixa meets colin Newman). Its a strange mix but works. Some tracks are a bit more difficult listening, electronic industrial bordering noize while a couple of others have a downright jazzy swagger that just makes you go “huh?”.
Some releases are hard to describe and this is one of them.

Hood, Robert – “Omega” – [M-Plant]

Robert Hood is a founding member “Underground Resistance and considered to be one of the founders of minimal techno. Hood is very critical of artistic and economic movements destructive to inner-city communities and has combined his musical enterprises with outreach and social activist ends and gave up city life to live in rural Alabama. He is very spiritual and regularly reads scriptures from the Bible. This release was inspired by the film “Omega Man” and its futuristic, spiritual and end-of-world themes have reverberated throughout Hood???s life. With all that said this is very inspired techno, minimal, interesting but you probably wouldn’t have known the inspiration if I hadn’t told you, its subtle. The spoken intro “Alpha” is great but I do love “The Workers Of Iniquity”. Enjoy!

Monoton – “Monotonprodukt 07″ – [Oral]

Monoton is the infamous experimental musician and sound artist Konrad Becker along with Daniel Leeflang.
With interesting dark ambient experimental soundscapes, this is creepy, futuristic, rhythmic and intriguing. Becker has been making electronic music since ’79 but this release came out in 1982. Its very ahead of its time, in fact in 1998 The Wire magazine included “Monotonprodukt07″ among the 100 most important records of the 20th century. Its not just music, its history.

Sutcliffe Jugend – “With Extreme Prejudice” – [Cold Spring Records]

Noise consisting of static, mutilated samples, synth torture, screamed profanity, howls and screeches. Distorted spoken words over the track and varied textures and tonal qualities keep the album interesting. With track names like “Fuckrage” and “I Have Kissed This Sick Sick World Goodbye” this is unmistakably an angry noise album, and a good one at that.

Tracks 2 and 7 have no intelligible words and are strong. Some tracks, like tracks 4 and 10, start in a good place but don’t really go anywhere from there. Track 8 is genuinely creepy. Track 9 I like as well, sounds like drunk men crying. Track 11 starts as good ambient doom electronica and builds to a pleasing wall of noise.

Tenderizor – “Touch The Sword” – [Sick Sick Sick]

Tenderizor is what you get when several gifted musicians from the Albuquerque noise scene form an Iron Maiden tribute band. It mostly feels like classic Heavy Metal, but somehow Tenderizor has managed to make this sound very fresh.

Lots of good times hanging around in intros and outros, dual lead guitars delivering baroque hammer-on madness or shimmering in unrelenting feedback riffage. The lead singer also delivers with cookie monster growls and classic big hair metal shreakage.

Mattress – “El Dorado” – [Malt Duck]

Warbled lounge singing, hoots and hollers over drum machine and synth loops. Electric guitar makes an appearance as well. There’s definitely a late-night feel to this music, Las Vegas skid row blues in an empty neon-lit casino. The title track is a favorite and has a fun psychedelic wobble to it. The B side doesn’t feel as strong, it’s more downtempo, strung out and introspective.

DJ Format – “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em” – [Pias]

2005 release from this UK producer DJ Format (or Matt Ford) along with regular collaborator Abdominal and Canadian MC D-Sisive (and cameo appearance from Chali 2na and Akil). Old school body rockin’ block party beats laced with plenty of 70s funk loops and stabs of classic soulful sounds. The samples here are definitely keys oriented with lots of piano and, organ and keyboard lines driving the grooves. Lyrically, Abdominal provides some real down to earth conversational storytelling, especially on 3,4, and 6. He displays his verbal dexterity on 2, 7 and especially track 9 where Format gets a chance to show off his scr-scr-scratching. The two instrumental tracks showcase Format’s production skills and track 10 slows down for some mellow moodiness. This shit will get you groovin’ all the way through and belongs in the funk-soul library just as much as it does hip-hop. FCC – 2,7,9!

Danquah, George – “Hot and Jumpy” – [Secret Stash]

More reissued vinyl of music from Ghana, this one a grab bag of different styles with featured guitarist George Danquah getting “hot and jumpy,” as they say. ??Side One features all instrumentals in a variety of styles: low-octane reggae, wah-wah infused highlife, and the mysterious “African Hustle” which dates this to about 1976-1977. Danquah reminds me of the sweet and sour guitar work of reggae session cat Ernest Ranglin, who is tasteful as can be, in the pocket and all that, but he rarely breaks a sweat (the more frenetic wah-wah work here is credited to Jeff Medina). Side Two features four vocal tracks in upbeat highlife tempos, one of which is a variant of a Side One track. (crimes )

Vis-a-vis – “Obi Agye Me Dofo” – [Continental Records]

Reissue vinyl of 1977 Ghana release. Vis-a-Vis (Dance Band) occupies a space between highlife and Afrobeat, and the two sides reflect that schism, with two long Afrobeat-oriented tracks??on Side One??(nowhere near as tough as Fela’s work, this is more dancing music than social comment), and shorter highlife variants on Side Two. It being the ’70s, there’s a lot of vintage synth squeals throughout, and a competent rhythm section plus horns anchor things. There are vocals on all tracks, although on Side One, you need to get through instrumental intros of several minutes before you hear them. This is pretty lightweight stuff, especially Side Two, but they were youngsters and probably just absorbing the sounds they dug at the time. The liner notes are charmingly inept and copy editors will have to fight the urge to mark them up. ( crimes )

Neo Cons

According to their bio, this band is “a radical gang of Muslim gay socialist terrorists living a life of sin in godless San Francisco, California.” I don’t know about all that.. They are hardcore punkers for sure. I read they have been compared to New Bomb Turks and Zero Boys.. While i can see a bit of why, Neo Cons are a lot more simple. Thats not to say they aren’t good. If you dig hardcore, no frills, snarly punk rock, These are your boys and girl respectively. It reminded me of being underage and drunk at Gilman St. Good times.

Hiroshima Rocks Around / Bipolar Bear [coll] – [kill shaman]

Kill Shaman Records teamed up No=Fi Recordings out of Rome for this split release featuring two bands of the angular post-punk variety (with members that run each label). Hiroshima Rocks Around,??who describe themselves as shoegaze thrash, hit you with some raucous and abrasive garage grit like chewing broken glass. Screeching guitar, brutal drums and all sorts of maniacal distorted derangement, not to mention some tasty sax skronk on 3,4. Bipolar Bear??slows it down a bit for some slightly cleaner yet still jilted, post-rock sounding stuff with a dash of psych. Blankets of reverb encase the vox and guitar but still maintain a solid percussive feel with kinetic bass lines dominating.

PGM: All short tracks (2-3 mins) with short segues FCC on HRA trk 2

Sally Smitt and Her Musicians – “Hangahar” – [Drag City]

Listening to this and trying to imagine the film to which it is supposedly the soundtrack is not easy. What did come to mind were comparisons with music that has arisen from KFJC musicians during various Night Pits over the past year or two. Released originally in 1980, this album contains two sidelongs featuring Sally Timms (Mekons) and Lindsay Lee crooning unintelligible, almost ritualistic vocals with a weird background of musical experimentation. Side B has a bit more percussion than Side A.

Medication – “Judgment Day” – [Sacred Bones Records]

If you take your medication straight up without much sugar, this one’s for you. No need for anesthetic when the music is as hazy as this is. There’s an unfinished, yet laidback, feel to these songs, and none of them is a standout, yet each of them is serviceable given the right set. “Whore” feels like a love song, despite its title. “Rise/Sink” is worth a spin. Take two tracks and call me in the morning.

Esmerine – “La Lechuza” – [Constellation]

Some music feels like an assault on the senses. This exquisite album does not. It is like a soothing massage that adds layer upon layer of beauty until your heart breaks wide open. Each song is a lovely package, self-contained and marked by gentle entry of each instrument into the mix: marimba, violin, cello, harp, sometimes voice and piano, steel drums, bass. Moods swing from the surging joy of “Trampolin” to the nostalgic heartache of “Snow Day for Lhasa.” This is a perfect listen for a rainy day marked by double rainbows, and a lovely tribute to Lhasa de Sela.