Coope, Anastasia – “Darning Woman” – [Jagjaguar]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, A Library

Acoustic hum-and-strum pop songs bedecked with gorgeous multitracked vocals. I have a sense memory of walking through twilight college campus grounds as a student and a bunch of singers had climbed up into the trees and were hidden and harmonizing. This album recalls that, although Anastasia is every woman, her voices seem to float from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. At times wordless and breathless, and with faint traces of other instruments like the piano and satin soft sax on “Return to Room.” That closing song talks about surrendering a painting, apparently Coope also creates art on canvas. She channels a Meredith Monk meets Elephant Six sensibility, songs are gentle and sway – other times her lyrics will repeat like a koan being morphed into a drum. Tap tap tapping till your subconscious bubbles up. Her lyrics feel like a personal philosophical study, “What doesn’t work, what does” – for me the entire album works tremendously. Note the 45 rpm speed, each song lingers in memory but not long on the turntable. Top-notch!
-Thurston Hunger

Banshee – “Livin’ In The Jungle” – [Cardinal Fuzz]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, A Library

2020 gate-fold with lime green vinyl from Boston-baked Banshee. A psych six-piece with riff worship, maybe some old Zam Rock records, sitar sweetener, darting flute and fuzz for days. Wall of sound guitar with solos sliced by a sharper distortion. Somewhere in the maxed-out mix is a dude on sax. Perhaps I should say this Banshee is estrogen-free as far as I can tell. No bigs, you could stack this vinyl up next to Goat and feel the shared energies. Shouty tag team vocals, while the lyrics cave-paint a loose theme of primordial overdrive, the words are less important than their emphasis. There are a couple intro vignettes which help the overall vibe, the song “Caged Birds” flutters out with sounds that could return to the short lead instro “Genesis.” See also the glorious “Credo” and “Summoning” which lead into other songs, but could work stretched out into freaky five minute pieces live. Guest violin rises above the anthemic “Dawn of Man” also on “The Atomic Flu.” Mild punk bounce to “The Law” but Banshee’s penchant is modern cooked up psych rock, “Savage Man” delivers 45,000 volts of it. Jointly spun by Cardinal Fuzz and good ol’ Feeding Tube labels.
-Thurston Hunger

Imai, Kazuo – “Far and Wee” – [Black Editions]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, A Library

Live acoustic guitar improvisations by Kazuo Imai from April 2004 recorded at champion experimental club Plan B in Tokyo. Heavy on the prepared guitar approach.

“2B” dry ice pick style, slappy
“3” quick wrist almost Hindustani slide action!!!
“4” scrape and groany drone
“5” angular melody pinch-plucked with grit + sonic blink

“6” anger bursts – rat trap snap – abrasive beauty!!!
“9 Ab” less prepared more std guitar, but stagger steps

Quiet attentive crowd throughout, sounded like a fountain accompanying the musical closer. This was originally a PSF (RIP Hideo Ikeezumi 2017) label CD, KFJC has much from that towering label. Peter Kolovos and the Black Editions Group are remastering/reissuing the catalog on vinyl. Thank you! Also check out their Thin Wrist imprint connected at the hip musical tip. Imai still improv active with a 2023 trio blitz on Meenna label.
-Thurston Hunger

Kubisch, Christina & Trondheim Voices – “Stromsanger 2022” – [Important Records]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, A Library

Christina Kubisch is no stranger to KFJC’s airwaves and to electromagnetic waves in general. This release is a 2022 “street” performance of sorts, akin to Kubisch’s “Five Electrical Walks” she taps into the vibrations of spaces. That is she wire-taps in via her homemade headphone/recording antennae devices. So we get a drone with other peculiar clicks and buzzes, transportation transmissions from Trondheim trams. But wait, that’s not all, aboard on the lp (if not the actual trams) a local choir join in both live and memorexed. Mesmerizing and transfixing while still moving, the project ends up feeling akin to placing a Kubrick monolith down in the center of a Norwegian square. Sides are billed as Departure and Arrival, but your needle can come and go as you please. Hah, the title translates as “current singer.” Literally a trip…
-Thurston Hunger

Frost, Ben – “Scope Neglect” – [Mute]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, A Library

Like witnessing a marriage that probably won’t last, but is fun to watch (or listen to through the walls) for a while. Ben Frost asks metal chomp guitar to take the hand of ethereal beat ambience. Metal stutters to start, quick guitar explosions (one pedal, one setting it seems) launched into the void. There is also a dry bass drum thump tucked in (digitally I presume – see old Pan Sonic flattened waves??). Leading off the album with “Lamb Shift” it is mostly about the pregnant pauses between riffage. Guess it is a shotgun marriage. “Chimera” follows and techno twinkle fills those little gaps, decay and delay warp the guitar woof. Looking for that segue from Pandiscordian Necrogenesis to Boy Harsher? This album may help. “Load Up Your Guns…” has a hive modality, the closing “Unreal in the Eyes of the Dead” could be the illegitimate offspring of Morricone’s “The Thing” soundtrack. An open-ended omen ending, metal mostly fatigued but not forgotten?
-Thurston Hunger

Ferreyra, Beatriz – “UFO Forest +” – [Room40]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, A Library

Composer/creator Beatriz Ferreyra born in Argentina in 1937, moved from piano to the more experimental musical spectrum in the 1960’s. Connected with Pierre Schaeffer but seems to eschew fauna y flora over musique concrete, even if her take on the natural is synthesized. This 2023 release gathers four of her earlier electro acoustic meets nature works. The title track, a 1980 piece, captures that concept in its two words. Prickly tingly synth, and sonic wave winds sweep through. Anyone see “Scavenger’s Reign” recently, this has a sort of alien flora kind of audio capture. For fauna, a few minutes in listen for possible cat purring and whippoorwill song. Dark riparian conjurings? More forest, less UFO for me, but by the end disembodied voices beam on down. Next up a short 3min breather with real flute and digital whoosh, Kind of fun to blindfold and walk through the assembled sounds, sort of a fun-house for your ear and inner eye to envision. For a more extraterrestrial vibe, check out “Cercles des rondes 2005” based on her 1982 tape creation, ~11 min excerpt of that here, with great astro-cockpit fritzing out – harrowing as it winnows out. “Vivencias def” strongly reminds me of stuff from the empreintes DIGITALes label, that kind homogenized hum and very metallic warping of sounds. About halfway though it punches up from the ambience for a while, before returning to chilling vortexes of sound. I think maybe this is her latter laptop work than earlier tape studies. Note it ends with a funny little audio wiggle.

-Thurston Hunger

Duda, Mariusz – “Afr AI D” – [Kscope]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, A Library

Polished Polish sounds. Mariusz Duda late 2023 release hitting ChatGPT with a dose of IDM? Not typically a lot of traffic in the tunnel between techno and prog, but that’s are AfrAId goes. Poly-rhythmic synth lines weave over bottom dwelling bass notes or crisp programmed drum machines. Digitized vox are spritzed in, reportedly inspired by the film “Her” (also note afAIk, this lp has nothing to do with the movie Afr AI D – other than the general topic of artificial intelligence). Duda has been in the band Riverside but the damn pandemic drove him into an isolation tank/home studio. This is post-Lockdown trilogy, still almost hermetically sonically sealed, but def with more optimism as befits the world wanting to emerge from a billion cocoons. Or maybe that is just Mariusz’s extensive use of vocoder, an instrument that begets smiling for me. As mentioned above, this is mostly a one-man one-studio release although Mateusz Owczarek adds stylized guitar licks on tracks 1, 3, 4, 8. “Good Morning, Fearmongering” has a sort of Jonah Sharp shine, that ol’ envelope knob twist. “Bots’ Party” also has a pleasant late 90’s rave glaze over a bassline bumping down in the digital basement.
-Thurston Hunger

Apifera – “Keep The Outside Open” – [Stones Throw]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, Jazz

2024 Stones Throw release. Sun shines in major keys, beamed via this quartet with roots in Israel. Warm and weird, sometimes KFJCeekers freak at warmth. Big round synth lines and occasional gentle vox, might scare the people who want to be more scared….which is a whole nutha thang. If this album is a jazz cocktail, it comes with 80’s prog ice cubes and shots of pop syrup. At times drummer Amir Bresler is allowed to percolate, like on “Bazooka Zoo” or even the opener “Iris is Neil” (which clips close to Tomorrow Never Knows). Generally the dueling synth work of Nitai Hershkovits and Yuval Havkin shimmers above all, very clean lines which get squeakier when electric piano rolls in. Yonatan Albalak on guitar and the aforementioned vox (in English when it happens), for “Evergreen Meadows” he delivers a pop ballad with electric trinkets. After that the closing track is a pensive, drum free number where trumpeteer Avishai Cohen joins in regally. I dug those two departures and definitely the opening cut which chants the album’s title as a mantra and adds some backwards guitar.”Sandbox Galore” bubbles in a funky pep. “Ortogonelya” refracts things in a nice way, more angles to the layers stacked in but mostly the album walks a happy path. Bees to the knees.

-Thurston Hunger

Cravats, The – “Colossal Tunes Out, The” – [Overground Records]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, A Library

Cravats are horribly overlooked, in fashion and in artpunk.This fine LP originally out in 19-anxiety-3 (reissued in 2020) Q Don’t like sax in your punk? A: Guitar baggage, up yours! Svor Naan’s sax can feel like it escaped from the circus, or is a siren careening around corners. Packs in panic, cranks up craziness, but with it are still plenty of angular guitars in The Cravats assault. Great unique sound that can connect DIY anarcho-punk to Raymond Scott’s Powerhouse. And speaking of powerhouse’s, Shend’s vocals tower and howl above the musical fray. Hell everything howls, somehow even the drums. Great mad scientist guitar, dazzling R.R. Dalloway. Oddball lyrics and production, hyperdrone buzz on “Dreg,” possible mellotron on “Rub Me Out,” Raymond Scott tap-dancing through “Daddy’s Shoes.” Or is it Dada’s shoes? Quirkiness that works. Shend was a minor star in TV’s “Red Dwarf” and keeps up his love of rock ‘n’ roll via his “Spinning Man” radio show. The Cravats resurrected circa 2017 by Svor and Shend, but this is back from the height of their Peel appeal! Dig it till you hyperventilate…

-Thurston Hunger (alas no DCL flexi for KFJC)

Bastien, Pierre – “Mecanocentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien, The” – [Discrepant]

Thurston Hunger   9/3/2024   12-inch, A Library

More motor-vational music by builder/composer Pierre Bastien.2017 release by way of the excellent Discrepant label.Two side long spins, you can hop off or on at certain points,they do remind me of being on a trolley. That kind of rhythm of the rails runs through both grooves. The “Quiet” side has a lot of trumpet often pumped through a mute, also a possible renegade player piano rolls by, and then some moaning that could be live or more of Bastien’s robotified creations. The “Frantic” side has percussion a plenty, sometimes on a crafted loop and what sounds like a mic’d up geiger counter. Syncopulations stack up and then is it a gypsy 78 mixed with some wobbling metal duck call? Add haunting harmonies blown or whistled and we wind up somewhere between Han Bennink and Spike Jones for a stretch. There is then a sort of mellow coda, with what sounds like mechanical frogs and underwater trumpet a la Mr. Limpet. Though both sides beg for a locked groove to never end, alas each side dies, but I imagine some toy orchestras put together by Bastien will be merrily spinning away when our Sun goes supernova.

-Thurston Hunger

Moor Mother – “Great Bailout, The” – [Anti]

Thurston Hunger   7/24/2024   A Library, CD

Swirl of sound, going down…like a vortex in the ocean off the shores of England. Moor Mother is at the helm but she is not the captain of this damned ship, instead she hovers a few feet in front of the prow. Conducting synth storms, channeling guest siren voices – sometimes sweet and soulful, other times wailing with anguished anger. History lessons don’t lessen the hurt/ire/cost and above all willful noise on this release. Moor Mother’s poetry comes in and out on the songs, a narrator cum inquisitor, traversing time travails. Moor Mother mixes so well, able to float Lonnie Holley’s wavering voice over harp, or cut up thrash bursts with Maja (!!!) Ratkje. Ample palette of samples: splatter jazz to seasick piano to industrial hiphop to spiritual noise to blackened blues to rot ‘n roll to tragic clarinet with a teapot whistle boiling over an inferno. An album that invites replays and research – from Sage Stargate via Hunter’s Point to biting Barker’s Bible via the National Portrait Gallery to a quantum Spectrum national anthem performed by Camae Ayewa before a Sixer’s game seven. Spem in Alium indeed.
-Thurston Hunger

RRUCCULLA – “Zeru Freq.” – [Lapsus]

Thurston Hunger   7/24/2024   12-inch, A Library

Basking in Basque sounds, electronic and natural. RRUCCULLA is Izaskun Gonzalez. Her 2023 release is airy, light and bright, many of the track titles allude to air, wind and breeze, even capillary action, bringing oxygen in via synth bubbles and arpeggios. When 11, Gonzalez started drumming – and this album has percussion bursts (like the title track, and Zeru-a in Basque apparently means sky fwiw). “Pure Air Contortion” and “1 Tsp Breeze” kick in live drums, but even tracks without have pulses or sweeping whooshes for slicing time via rhythms. Real and glitch rain drip in on Side B opener. Violeta Azevedo then brings flute to “Draw Us Before We Fade” (and faux flute sounds are made by Gonzalez, with wood and circuits throughout). On “Draw Us” Gonzalez’s drumming is tight and precise but breaks from the dance floor for the chill lounge. She definitely works her sampler plenty too, let’s all go “Eco-Noise Hunting”

As for how to pronounce the project name, I’m going with rolling the leading Rr’s and then rhyming with Dracula?? Hope she’ll visit KFJC and roll out her drums, synths, art and the correct pronunciation!
-Thurston Hunger

Being Dead – “When Horses Would Run” – [Bayonet]

Thurston Hunger   7/24/2024   12-inch, A Library

2023 twisted Texas art garage pop. But it’s a little more complicated and a whole lot more wunnerful than that!

Imaginary origin story – Cody Dosier & Juli Keller meet years ago in kindergarten, Cody starts barking and Juli joins in when the substitute teacher notices they are barking in perfect lonesome harmony. That teacher might have been Daniel Johnston. Anyways Cody and Juli become best friends they make arts and crafts and nachos together for years, and eventually make a band that plays dumb the way a possum plays dead. Smart! They cannot decide who plays drums and who plays guitar so they switch often, and grab a bassist who is always the step-daughter of the next Spinal Tap drummer.

Anyways, the Pope changed their names for this album to Gumball and Falcon Bitch. The album has bits of twang, a sarcastic guitar solo, those dang harmonies and overlapping vox – sometimes improvised (they truly play music from what I can tell). Oh there’s some twists of Cathoholicism, you don’t have to start at Treeland but I did. Make sure to stop at “Misery Lane” and quietly tear up with me just a little.
They spell out M-U-R-I-E-L with the utmost R-E-S-P-E-C-T I even love the strange Joe Jackson Stepping Out piano break that wanders into ditty.

Am I overdoing it? I don’t think so, my jaded soul cannot stop smiling every time I listen to this (and the album has a great off-the-cuff in-the-heart full court flow – and toe-tapping as all get out).

Anyways the best review might be the hand-drawn horse artwork on the flip side of the lyric sheet. That art, the band and this record make AI look a broken Etch-a-Sketch. Chalk one up for clever humans.

Top notch! Being Dead makes me Feel Alive!
-Thurston Hunger

Midnight Mines – “Since My Baby Left Me” – [Minimum Table Stacks]

Thurston Hunger   7/24/2024   12-inch, A Library

2024 vinyl reish of a 2017 cassette crunchy tape. Gnash and bash rock sounds. It wasn’t until track 5 that I could place the band as from the UK, before then could only surmise they were born in a wind tunnel. Punk commitment through comedy to trash-fi? If you are not one for jewels in the rough, you can start on side B for a Burger-esque garage ditty catchy as hell and hopefully devoid of that labels He-Coli taint. The martial exercise of “The Planet Drifts Into Random Insect Doom” marches for 8+ min with drums a plenty and perhaps a tambourine, and a shouty very familiar vocal pattern that rings my dinner bell. Album ends with a jam-o-rama sure to set off car alarms, it kitchen syncs up with synth and melodica at the end. For folks who want their rawk cut fresh off the bone this will float your lo-fi flesh boats. Reading up after listening, so Private Sorrow here connects to Lemmy Caution (not of Alphaville the movie) but Black Time the band.
London’s caterwauling, raw rock – Pretty ugly Things!
-Thurston Hunger

Crude – “Refute a Myth Society (Center of The Ass Run Volume 2)” – [Ecstatic Yod Records]

Thurston Hunger   7/17/2024   12-inch, A Library

Raw, ramshackle, 1997 sounds from Dunedin denizen Matt Middleton. Part of the sterling whirling short-lived “Center of the Ass Run” series curated by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore. Whacked four track, all over the kitchen sink sounds. “Me” leads off as the “pop” single, a sweet sucker punch racing past lyrically laced isolation. Next into the sweaty sax-to-synth overdive of “Far Out Italian Futurism” (stand out cut – killer klangs and chopped up/out vox) Freaky flexing guitar feedback and hypno bass with squirrel sax going nuts on “Homecomin rondo.” “Best Man” also has lyrics but order is getting shucked off the bone as Crude gushes along, Side A leaves with a headphone hayride harrowing off a VHS funkercise tape or something into “This House is Smoking” featuring Duane Zarakov nee Pat Faigan on a drum overdose. Disorder foments further flipping the disc. Side B is neck-breaking jaw-dropping sloppy-choppy needle-in-the-orange (since the red is on fire) messy molton jam-outs boring through the center of the world from New Zealand to Los Altos. Ends with a vocal laugh line too!
Crude indeed. An antidote to refinement in any era.
-Thurston Hunger

Bellows – “Undercurrent” – [Black Truffle]

Thurston Hunger   7/17/2024   12-inch, A Library

Drifty shapeshifty ambient pieces. Bellows is an Italian duo, while a bellows is a breathing apparatus and a solid metaphor for the sounds here. Bass drops to create a vacuum, and then synth or single-note guitar vapors are pulled into the void. This 2020 Black Truffle release is our first Bellows, but KFJC does have solo work from both Giuseppe Ielasi and Nicola Ratti. Together they are slower than old Slowdive (with the songs/vox stripped out) and make other down-tempo stuff sound like jungle. One can sure taste either the room tone or analog hiss on these. Badge of lo-fi ‘lectronic courage. Still chill songscapes, is that Mary’s Little lamb on #4? Some distant frog humming on #5? The closing track reminds me of the movie Vespers! On #7, poor little R2D2 unit caught in the robo-recycling swamp, sending out a morse code SOS stutter, Mostly percussion free, although digital log booms appear on #6. Mixable material here, or just let
your set and Bellows breathe a bit.
-Thurston Hunger

Leon, Craig – “Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 2” – [Rvng Intl.]

Thurston Hunger   4/24/2024   12-inch, A Library

Vol 2 2019 release, we have vol 1 with that same promising title. In fact, KFJC even has the original Nommos 12″ that was half of that vol 1 re-issue. Craig Leon spins synthesizers from Saturn, mostly they float in space, on “Standing Crosswise” they orbit around tiny drum machine tribes. Vol 1 had a lot of clanky/flangey metaloid percussion, it has been abandoned here. “The Respondent in Dispute” is a sort standing wave techno. “Four Floods” washes up next, waves of sustain that lap and pulse over each other. On many connected pieces your ears can almost envision the sine wave nodes. Leon’s interplanetary vibe is certainly chill, ambient adjacent if not outright ambient. Some vox humana (or maybe Cassell Webb) on “The Earliest Trace”, very brief flirtations with dissonance on “The Twenty Second Step…” Pushed my Popol Vuh buttons a bit. At times it feels like there may be a mathematical calculation to his composition. There’s a curvy purity to the sound here. Music for hover lovers. That said Leon’s back history was more raucous and punk – an early producer for the Ramones, Blondie and Suicide. He also had a 1984 album with Arthur Brown (trippy clips online of that connect me to the Vega/Rev action). More recently he has classical gaps to fill, so a broad sonic spectrum for the US expat in the UK. Definitely a catch your breath effort here.

-Thurston Hunger

Whistling Arrow – “Whistling Arrow” – [God Unknown]

Thurston Hunger   4/24/2024   12-inch, A Library

Tony Conrad at a Renaissance festival? Nah….but powerful 2019 release. 99.9% instrumental, 6 piece band showcasing the dashing Charles Hayward and the darting violin of Laura Cannell (see These Feral Lands…please!) Cannell brings along Andre Bosman for double-barrel fiddle power. It works! Add in three members of Ex-Easter Island Head who caught the ears of Earl Grey and the airwaves of KFJC from the 2017 Liverpool Broadcast. The opening track calls to mind the band’s name (arrows with holes to Whistle or Scream or otherwise add to the attack in battles of yore). The music less aggressive more enchanting. Active drone stylings, led by Cannell/Bosman. “Forking Paths” rides a locomotive percussion shuffle courtesy of Hayward – at times this “Arrow” pierces my penchant for The Necks. Sliced shorter pieces but an overall unified hypnotic sound, the band as single organism with low-end piano (Jonathan Hering) as a supportive pedestal. Some voice crowns the triumphant closing “Magician” Is it Cannell, Hayward falsetto, Tiresias?? Excellent end to a coherent and soothing/stirring album. Red marbled vinyl to boot.

-Thurston Hunger

Davis, Evelyn / Frith, Fred / Greenlief, Phillip – “Lantskap Logic: Hidden Danger Lets Me In” – [Clean Feed]

Thurston Hunger   4/24/2024   A Library, CD

Really dig the haunting organ by Evelyn Davis, ranging from spreading mortuary calm to raising eyebrows with the Mills Chapel roof. And that’s just on the opening opus! The mighty Fred Frith and Phillip Greenlief are no strangers to KFJC’s library, their respective strings and reeds here flutter through your headphones. Frith is such a master of gentle volume pedal/wash. Striking subtlety. Great listening by both here and augmenting the pipe organ firmament deployed by Davis. We also have the first 2018 Lantskap Logic audio portrait from Clean Feed. “And Spits Me Out Unseen” is steam powered before Greenlief creates a sound like running in sand. Frith opens “Beyond The Surface Smiling” with shades of the tense sections akin to Patrick McGoohan’s “The Prisoner.” “Hold the Heart” after a soft start hits an elevating rising, joyfully pensive. “Sail Makers” the scarier aire returns, ringing guitar and reeling reeds but it gives way to a 5-min beautiful coda where the trio climbs Escher steps and shepherd tones. The two pieces afterwards track, and capture a similar poignance, Frith shuttling strings and shines on the closer. If this is indeed a requiem for Mills College and its years of contemporary creations – the music seems to offer small seeds of hope for future rebirth.

-Thurston Hunger

Lum, Chloe and Desranleau, Yannick – “The Garden of a Former House Turned Museum” – [No Hay Discos]

Thurston Hunger   4/23/2024   A Library, CD

Burlesque and brainy, picture a feather boa bookmark nestled in a copy of Clarice Lispector’s “Agua Viva.”
Lispector here is an imagined audience, to six sung letters. Each is sung by Sarah Albu, soprano-spanning a concert hall and jazz juke joint? Too swinging for the former, too stately for the latter? Just listen a little bit and you’ll get the flavor. The words from those letters are pinned like insect wings, pretty but they almost don’t hold together stretched over the clip-clop percussion and the high-stepping trombones and trumpets. It’s a creation/installation from Chloe Yum and Yannick Desranleau, who once upon a noisy time were 2/3 of AIDS Wolf…and if you predicted this album from that KFJC darling’s output, then you are Clarice Voyant! I think it’s a love letter of sorts to Lispector, someone forced out of Ukraine by malevolent forces (previous ones that is) and now she’s a statue seaside in Rio de Janeiro. Letter #4 swings, Letter #3
includes a dash of Brazilian spice via the cuica.
-Thurston Hunger