humana 4/26/2024 A Library, CD
This band from Eugene offers up some mighty great surf tunes here punctuated and enhanced by sax, steel guitar, and moog. The only track with vocals is “Square Rhumba.” “Zotika” sounds a bit like surf lounge. Every song on here leaves you feeling better than you did before, particularly “Super FKN Happy” and “Oh Marcia Reef.”
humana 4/26/2024 12-inch, A Library
What do sirens, bagpipes, violins, lap steel, and violas have in common? The meld together to create the long drones on this clear piece of vinyl. At first all I could feel was the industrial noise, but then things got better for me once I got further into the drone. Lose yourself.
Dr Doug 4/26/2024 12-inch, A Library
This is a rare KFJC moment. A release that I think both Whinger and I will agree on. Especially the last track is all Whinger.
Back when punk wasn’t just a wall of fucking noise, there was something there I could identify with. Sure it was loud, but had some sort of substance, The punk lately is too often just noise. The Monsters, from Bern Switzerland, started out in ’86, and have become well known in Europe. The band consists of Beat-Man (6 string Guitars + Vocals), Janosh (4 String Guitar + Vocals), Swan Lee (Drums + Percussion + Vocal), Pumi (Knob my Bob + Vocal). They have maintained my idea of early punk. Some of it is, dare I say, gasp, musical. Yet, to me, their music is made even punkier by the fact that most of it is in German.
These guys are fun. I’m really surprised we don’t have anything else of theirs in the library. No FCC’s that I could detect.
This money conscious collector rates it a #6 – Good, if money is tight right now, make sure you buy it next time.
whngr 4/25/2024 A Library, Cassette
HAMMER MURK SICKLE
Low fidelity death with black leanings and bestial expulsions, an emphasis on repetition and hooks that pummel your sentience into the fog of intentionally poor production that reinforces the project’s dismissal of glossy commercial aspirations and underlines an ethos focused on power above packaging. Visceral trashcan blasts, death bellows and sepulchral breath. Sparing guitar solos that are less technical than the song arrangements and recall the early age of devil worship thrashing that sometimes eschew technique in favor of impact; not wanking, shanking… more sickle than scalpel. Though the majority of the cassette is hoof to the roof levels of velocity and violence, one might be able to find some respite, albeit brief, from the relentless attack on “Geotia Overcomming” (B1/track5) which seems to align with the sole member’s habit for exploring genre-bent passages that appear in much of their work including efforts outside of Prison Hell. We are choosing to forgo discussion on theme or intent to both allow the listener to arrive at their own conclusion and our ignorance and inability dissect the evidence with any true insight. We will admit that it makes us mildly uncomfortable and as we have precious little experience with sexual gratification during incarceration we will mention that the track titles seem to be more aligned with arcane magick than with libidinous internment but the crude insert and lyric sheet reveal variation from track to track that appear to come from seven different personalities… perhaps different modus operandi?
Prison Hell is one feverishly active, T. Mc Clelland (credited as M. on this release) of Edmonton, Alberta. Member of Noxious Nex, Black Abyss, Tsalal, Bullet In Clenched Teeth and five other solo projects including Brulvahnatu. Mc Clelland also contributed to the project, Antediluvian.
War Vellum – 2023
Dr Doug 4/24/2024 12-inch, A Library
Boomerang – thirteen short, in your face garage rock tracks from the four ladies that comprise The Darts. This is their fourth release, third on the Alternative Tentacles label.
Nicole Laurenne’s vocals go from kitten to dominatrix, all the while maintaining that dark smokey sultry sound. And some day her Farfisa will sue her for abuse, as she interplay’s with Meliza Jackson on guitar. Christina Nunez has no mercy on her base. While Beef, also known as Mary Rose Gonzales when her mother is mad at her, beats the shit out of her drum kit.
If you enjoyed their last release, Snake Oil, you’ll really get off on Boomerang. With this release, it appears the gals have gotten over any hesitation they may have previously had, and have taken control of the recording process. The result is a rougher/tougher release. It’s like they turned the edgy knob up to eleven. FCC on track #1 – Hang Around
This very money conscious collector says – Rate it a #9 – If you find it, it’s even ok to spend your lunch money if you have too.
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
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
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
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
humana 4/20/2024 CD, Soundtrack
Egyptian El Shazly composes, arranges, and lends her lovely voice to this soundtrack that gets ever more melodic as the tracks go on. Contrebass and harp are the standout instruments, along with El Shazly’s voice, and by the end it is clear that Fyzal Boulifa knew what he was doing when he asked Nadah to score his film.
humana 4/19/2024 12-inch, A Library
This psych band from Teramo, Italy offers two nice, long jams that build (“Queen Crimson” and “A Love Supreme”) interspersed with some shorter, peppier tunes (my favorite being “Walking on Your Lips”). The opener (“I’m on a Plane) has some great lyrics: “I complain I’m on a plane”, and DADADA is a nice addition to the album that verges on noisiness.
humana 4/19/2024 A Library, CD
This wonderful 2023 release of electric/avant-garde gems composed by Ava Mendoza (electric guitar) and Devin Hoff (electric bass) and performed by themselves along with James Brandon Lewis (tenor sax) and Ches Smith (drums) is fresh and skates between the jazz and rock genres. Mendoza was the driving force behind getting this experiment together, and these musicians collaborate and communicate the compositions in ways that are exciting and energetic. Read the sleeve notes as you listen so you can get the most out of how sonic communication is not just limited to bats, shrews, whales, and dolphins.
Rock Dove 4/17/2024 A Library, CD
Rat Mass is drummer Mitchell Sosebee and guitarist Ryan Taylor, based in Atlanta. This CD, released 2024, is 10 tracks, mostly 4-5 minutes. The final/title track refers to a 1960 educational film (of the same name, available on Archive.org) out of Utah in which a moralizing doctor lectures men about the dangers of smoking with goofy cartoons then administers a drop of nicotine to a lab mouse resulting in its twitching death. This fits with the aesthetic of the music. Heavy, metal, experimental, droney sounds with vocal layers and production work to help it go down. There is female guest vox on tracks 1, 4, 5, 7 courtesy Sami Michelson and Carla Carga. #3, Fallout, is overlaid with sounds from a documentary about radiation. This is gloomy, anxious, morbid stuff, titrated finely to kill the rats amongst us and bring the rest of us one cig, one french fry, one immeasurable tick closer to the end. No FCCs.
humana 4/15/2024 12-inch, A Library
This release from Dan Beckman with help from others (including Amy Moon and Caleb Mulkerin) is a pleasing creation of songs written in Big Sur and Santa Cruz and recorded during a pandemic quarantine. Beckman’s voice (as well as other voices) is mellow and backed by various field sounds like surf, birdsong, and other instruments like flute. My favorite tracks are “Agnes of Rainbows” and “Little Wind and Sea.” “Song for Moon” is the most active (rock-like) song on here, and it’s enjoyable, too.
Cousin Mary 4/15/2024 12-inch, A Library
This fine new-to-me instrumental band from Petaluma plays around with surf sounds. Vocals are subtle and hardly noticeable. Interesting use of synths takes this music out of the usual reverb drenched tradition and gives it a full rich quality. Delighted to meet this NorCal band.
humana 4/14/2024 A Library, CD
Grim composed the music on this CD that is set to the text of “Electric Space Gardeners,” written by Jovi Schnell (who also drew the images on the CD cover). Majel Connery’s lovely voice takes us through the storyline on most of the tracks, which summon sparse images with cello, vibraphone, and other instruments. This is a fascinating listen.
whngr 4/11/2024 A Library, Cassette
EPILEPTIC AURA EMULATOR
Brooding electronic ambience, intermittent percussive elements, self-harm meditations, intervals of monolithic drones, decaying digital signals, spurned canid therapy, seven horrifying angels with seven electronic trumpets heralding in this final chapter as Moloch feeds. We are drawn to these sounds like moths to flames. Looming and strange, we are a mote among colossi.
Auditor is one Brandon Elkins (Iron Forest, Emerge From The Womb Of The Earth, An Evening Redness) of Chicago, IL and has stated that Auditor was conceived as a method of exploring his depression.
Black Horizons / Sol Y Nieve – 2016
ANODYNIC BIPOLAR DESTROYER
Electronic manifestation of manic depression in two parts. The first track a hypnotic ambient bath with distant abstractions and later, a buried electronic pulse. In this pathologic analogy I bestow upon “Defeated / Intercommunicative” the role of the depressive cycle offering a stark contrast to the second track “Avoidant”, an unreasonably disjointed collapse of one’s neural network in real time; frenetic, menacing, varied and focused enough to be legitimately upsetting… unless you’re sick.
Rust Worship is one Paul Haney of Los Angeles and operator of the Obsolete Units label.
Nu Sire is one Jason “Force Placement” James, also from L.A. Underground electronic producer, dj, and resident of The Black Lodge event collective.
Self release – 2021
whngr 4/11/2024 A Library, Cassette
CULTE DE L’OMBRE
A grim frontal assault in nine parts from northern three-piece bearing fierce countenances, a genuine underground inscrutability that maintains the proven black metal template (crust punk/d-beat lineage, rocking; not swinging) without feeling derivative. Exhibiting subtle but extremely catchy variation in sound despite moderate lack of production, their crude, emblematic, and medieval French aesthetic further drives home the clou diabolique. Trve, cvlt and wicked, this cassette is in its essence, a perfect North American black metal release from gnarled root to withered fruit.
They have recently found a new thematic direction, casting aside their former Judeo-Christian lyrical content and have further embraced the region of their birth including Québécois poet Émile Nelligan’s “Cœurs Blasés” (track 8/B4), a visceral perspective on the miserable fates of the frontiersman who succumbed to their own fears, we receive and understand the devotion to their home as slightly threatening.
Active in the Montréal area of Quebec, Pénombre have been sighted clad in hooded cloaks and are linked nefariously to local analog dominant label…
Forbidden Sonority – 2021
Preston Peace 4/10/2024 12-inch, A Library
Free improv without the skronk: The trio of Raven Chacon, John Dieterich (of Deerhoof), and Marshall Trammell improvised these two side-long pieces in 2019 in New Mexico. Electronics, guitar and drums warble, squeal, rumble, stutter and bounce across the 21 minutes of each side of the record. Deftly navigating between frenzy and restraint for the duration, each side has its own character.
Side A is full-bore out of the gate, with all players contributing. It tends noisier, the guitar more dense, the stop-start drumming using the whole kit, and the electronics ranging from high pitched screeches to more modulated tones. It ends in a slow descent, electronics and guitars crackling, rumbling and sawing towards its end.
Side B starts more sparsely, almost a minute of bent guitar before the other players join in. It’s warbling, menacing, paranoid. Electronics come to the forefront, with the guitar more atmospheric than on the A-side. An astonishing moment occurs just before the 8 minute mark: the abstract electronics settle into a melody, the guitar sounding more like a krautrock bassline, and Chacon and Dieterich ride this synchronicity atop Trammell’s percussive whirlwind before it breaks apart less than a minute later.
After working up to a frenzied peak, the b-side decays and fizzles out to near-silence for the last two minutes, the guitar almost entirely absent, the electronics caught in a decaying loop, dominated by a quietly hectic cymbal (and bass drum) workout.
The title and sleeve art provide a suggestion of a political statement, more mystery than manifesto. Who are the “them” of the title? When, and where, were they killed? The A-side runout elaborates slightly: “White people killed them all”. To this reviewer, the US’s treatment of Indigenous peoples came to mind. Draw your own conclusions.
KFJC 89.7FM