lexi glass 9/18/2018 7-inch, A Library
2018 7” EP from Oakland post punk trio of Max Nordile on sax, Alejandra Alcala on bass, and Sam Lefebvre on drums. Four energetic tracks of logical chaos, wacky vox, rhythmic contortions. There’s nothing new about this no wave, but that’s quite alright – you can hear they’re having fun and it’s hard not to laugh along with them. From new local label Fine Concepts.
Louie Caliente 9/18/2018 12-inch, A Library
Old school american power electronics. A relentless, fast-paced assault of scorched samples, blown circuits, and human misery. Not a continuous wall of noise, but still fairly impenetrable.
Machine gun static screeching blasts, pummeling and painful. Conjuring up images of car wrecks, difficult dental work, and close encounters with heavy machinery.
Sickness is Chris Goudreau, who’s been active in the noise industrial scene since the mid 80s. Despite being fairly prolific, “Fuck Your Punk Rock” (RRRecords 2004) is only the second full-length to enter the KFJC library. There are apparently 7 tracks on this album, but it’s difficult to tell them apart, and the picture disk makes it impossible to cue anyways, so just drop the needle and let it ride.
FIRST AND LAST TRACKS ARE LOCKED GROOVES!
Louie Caliente 9/18/2018 12-inch, A Library
Heavy-duty bass-driven prog-rock grooves from these Norwegian Noxagt-Neighbors. Their name means “damaged jerk”, and this is their second album, released on guitarist Gaute Granli’s Skussmaal label.
Gut-blasting bass lines, pounding yet precise drumming, looping synths, and scraping vocals. Repetitive poly-rhythmic grooves being hammered into your skull.
Granli lends his avant-garde guitar skills to the mix, but the sound is meaner and more aggressive than what we’ve heard before, but also more diverse, featuring tweaked-out post-punk jabs, psychedelic wailing, and even some scorching hair-metal riffs.
Naysayer 9/16/2018 A Library, CD
Adult is Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller and “Detroit House Guests” is the CD that came out of their project inviting six very distinct artists into their Detroit home at separate times, collaborating with that artist and creating work from that collaboration. It’s a fascinating concept that offers so many varying outcomes. Fortunately, each collaboration is unique and of superb quality. Adult tend to fall into an electronic art punk art damage sound, pulling from the 1980’s/90’s but definitely making it their own. The influences are sometimes obvious on this new CD, which makes it more fun, but you can figure them out for yourself. The 12 tracks are definitely filled with the style and sounds of each collaborator but in the end the songs are Adult. The list of artists is so unique, from big names to lesser known to the mainstream alternative but equally valued by those in the know. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe brings his electronic soundscapes, twisting and beating with frightening authenticity. Shannon Funchess of Light Asylum adds her powerful deep vocals, drums and electronic play to mix with the sound of Adult. Michael Gira (Swans) and Douglas J. McCarthy (Nitzer Ebb) do what they do best with their onslaught and push. The new people for me were Dorit Chrysler and Lun*na Menoh, Dorit Chrysler is an internationally known theremin player, cofounder of The New York Theremin Society and founder of America’s first school for theremin. She also has this amazing voice, very emotional and cerebral at the same time. Lun*na Menoh is an artist, performance artist (Les Sewing Sisters), musician (Seksu Roba), and conceptual clothing designer. With Adult she uses her interest in sewing machines, using them to establish beats and rhythm. Put these all together and you get 12 tracks of electronic beats, monotone vocalization, art performance, emotional distance. Exceptional quality.
Rick Rasmussen 9/16/2018 A Library
KFJC 2018 Tote Bag
$33.33
Environmentally conscious KFJC listeners can show their support for KFJC while shopping at their favorite book, grocery, and/or record store by using the KFJC Tote Bag.
This spectacular was designed own own Art Crimes. A fabulous DJ and an amazing artist as well. His work includes Mayhem mailers, Live from the Devil’s Barnyard, various tote bags and swag items from present and past.
New for 2018, the KFJC Tote Bag is specially designed to hold your vinyl LPs. These bags are made out of black 100% natural cotton canvas and feature the a dramatic KFJC design.
Features:
18″ wide x 15″ high x 5″ gusset 1 1/2″ wide x 26″ long cotton webbing handles Two (2) rows of stitching across the top of the bag (added strength and durability) Concealed and finished, non-protruding side seams Durable, one-piece satchel bottom construction Handles are tucked and folded under the top hem, then sewn and back-stitched with 40# thread Convenient velcro side pocketThe KFJC 2017 Tote Bag is available as our thanks for your generous donation of $33.33 or more.
lexi glass 9/10/2018 7-inch, A Library
Pretty cool find – 7″ EP released sometime in the 80s from America’s Greatest Noise Artist himself, Emil Beaulieau (the alterego of Rrron Lessard of legendary label RRRecords, but you knew that). Four short tracks with all the trappings of power-drill-to-the-forehead harsh noise, but the experience of listening to this disc isn’t quite like that. Maybe it’s because within the clipped blasts are mysterious drones (T1), whistling melodies (T2), distorted guitar and whimpered vocals (T4) – you know, that velvet touch. Emil hopes you like it, but if not, well…
lexi glass 9/10/2018 7-inch, A Library
2007 7″ single from New Zealand experimental artist Campbell Kneale (see also Our Love Will Destroy the World and metal-influenced Black Boned Angel). One five minute track that tells a strange little tale, beginning with a noise collage of vibrating metallic sounds, like wire cables being wrapped, stretched and strained. But then the abstraction gives way to something more defined: a driving guitar and drum rhythm, a thick drone fog, and a monstrous swarm of chirping frogs. Together, the sounds paint a scene of headlights approaching in the dead of night.
Naysayer 9/9/2018 A Library, CD
“Our New Quarters” is Julian Fane’s 2007 release on Planet Mu. Ten tracks of lush, orchestral faux gaze (not quite nu-gaze) float the listener down an auditory river. At once slightly Sigur Ros or Damon & Naomi and then avant garde vocalizations and elongated strings mixed with electronics, Fane shifts sounds and tone like the differences one encounters when on that river. His lyrics are eloquent poems of desperation and sadness, observances of what will come (not good) and what is around (not good). The guitar work balances his tenor voice, often beautifully indecipherable, making you fill in the text based on your level of sadness. Fane once was a broker working the NASDAQ. He gave that up and went into music. We need more people to make choices like this. Wallow on in your ennui oh wayward son.
Such sparse loveliness coming from a trumpet can only come from a Norwegian musician. Compared to the sounds of a flute, Henriksen’s trumpet music tiptoes over your emotions, leaving you feeling sad and nostalgic, and the beauty of his high-pictched vocalizations (especially on 9) offers you just enough comfort to wish for more.
Lord Gravestench 9/8/2018 A Library, CD
Artifical Brain, Technical Death Metal from The Big Bagel. Some members are also involved in the post-Hardcore scene out there.
Now I’m reading about Tech-Death online and I guess I don’t really know shit about it. I do like early Nile quite a bit (bite me!) but this doesn’t really sound like early Nile, at all. Portal meets Krallice might be a better reference point— and as we will see, I mean this as a compliment!
If I say I’m picky about Tech-Death I mostly just mean that I don’t like Gorguts all that much. My eternal Prog-metal nemesis Colin Marston, who plays in Gorguts (and Krallice), actually co-produced (with the band) this 2017 sophomore effort, as well as recording and engineering. It isn’t really a surprise because Marston is all over the NYC metal scene. I like to give the gentleman shit in my reviews here, but his touch on ‘Infrared Horizon’ probably did have a positive impact (as it did on Mastery’s ‘Valis’ BTW).
Artificial Brain’s sound is Tech-Death drawing somewhat on old Atrocity, with a bit of Black Metal melody and a dash of Isis-like Girlfriend Metal lipgloss. And the thing is, it all works amazingly well. Perhaps the fact that the band prefer sci fi horror themes (think ‘Alien’) for their lyrics (like Nocturnus, but, y’know, not totally boring) helps to make the forward-thinking/progressive/possibly overproduced sound so appropriate. Even the title track’s appearance by arch-tool Trevor Strnad, of contemptible posers Black Dahlia Murder, passes completely unnoticed. Paulo Paguntalan of Encenethrakh, another Marston project, appears on three tracks also. Main vocalist W.S. (see also: grindcore band Buckshot Facelift) keeps things gritty with a versatile mix of pigsqueals, growls and blackened shrieks.
All the music is composed by their guitarist. Dense, layered, psychotic, claustrophobic, but also kind of glittery and robotic. What sounds like utter chaos soon reveals itself to be well-structured and in some cases almost catchy Death Metal.
I think this is a rare case of a popular Death Metal band that doesn’t suck, but I haven’t seen them live yet so maybe I’ll end up eating crow. Good sound on the CD, anyway… In all seriousness, I’ve been a supporter of Artifical Brain since their first album and I’m happy for them. And the album art doesn’t remind me of the movie ‘Wall-E’ at all.
Lord Gravestench 9/7/2018 A Library, Cassette
Yet another deprogramming session from LA’s Harsh Noise dealers at Oxen, the label run by Unsustainable Social Condition and Leah P. This time our contestant is Abe Mason from N. Carolina., his mouth full of dust and tape. There are two tracks on side A and 3 on side B of this 2018 scorcher, and both ten-minute sides track together (wink). Side A is skittery and explosive, like coming down from methamphetamine (I’m told). Small movements in dim corners of abandoned factories. Suddenly the broken machinery springs to life; splats, tearing. Side B grinding rattling creaking, electronics and metal and a continuation of the general ‘cut-up’ theme also explored recently by Japan’s Scum on this same label.
It all seems to be pretty intricate sound design work even by the standard Oxen enforces. Very much in stereo, and kind of like a child “with ADHD” (cough) it can’t settle on any noise texture for more than about half a second. I dunno if it’s improvised or composed or waddaya waddaya, but I declare it truly impressive noise. Apparently Mason has also released quite a bit under the name Thirteen Fingers.
Pure electronic harsh noise devastation chopped into breathless adrenalin bursts. The only recognisable human sound anywhere is a brief sample of maybe a standup comic on the final track who pops in to say “It’s all just a waste of time… doesn’t matter.” Indeed.
Hemroid The Leader 9/5/2018 A Library, CD
Images in transition, transforming in time, like indiscreet undulations of the desert, or lines of poetry are the basis for “12 Poems,” short (2:21 max) for violin and piano. “I want to drink from the storm,” says composer Robert Gibson.
“Soundings” double-bass quartet a conversation in deeper voices. Gibson played bass for Mose Allison, Bob Berg, and Barney Kessel in the 80s. Sounding is the nautical term for depth measurement.
Night Music solo pieces ready for grave listening.
Phil Phactor 9/5/2018 12-inch, A Library
Vinyl re-issue of a 2009 cassette and our first release from the (now-defunct?) Dear Skull label. This is dark, drony music for the nighttime. More specifically, this feels like Loren Mazzacane Connors meets The Microphones, as plaintive melodies rise up from the murk of lonely guitar lines and scratchy field recordings. Gets deeper with every listen. A project of Matthew Himes, who also records as Mole Hole and runs the Lighten Up Sounds label, which appears to still be going.
lexi glass 8/28/2018 A Library, CD
Tom Djll is a local experimental musician whose work throughout his decades-long career is well-represented in our library, from his solo work to his ensemble projects Grosse Abfahrt, Tender Buttons, and many others. This release, part of Other Minds‘ 2018 Modern Hits series, collects recordings from the early period of Djll’s career in the 1980s, as he was just beginning to assemble his own Serge Modular synthesizers and use the instrument to accompany, or process, the sounds of his trumpet.
In these seven works, trumpet tones bend and stretch into space age sine waves, periodic pulses, blasts of noise, and other surprising sounds. But they’re arranged in different ways: in “popcorn music” (T3), “Pair Time,” (T5) and the understated “Francine” (T6), as a evolving improvised sound collage (those last two, featuring percussionist Ross Rabin, especially call to mind Tender Buttons), in “schitzo-analysis” (T2) or the centerpiece “FAT” (T4, an excerpt of an hour long piece), as intense, luminous drones, and in “Tombo” (T1) and “Seattle 1988” (T7), while Djll claims he was inspired by punk and noise, I hear them as a warped, funhouse mirror reflections of free jazz. More information about the recordings and some nerding out over Serge modules in the disc’s liner notes.
Max Level 8/28/2018 10-inch, A Library
MPT have their way with the expanded 10″ format this time. The five-member trio is back with recordings they laid down in 2014 and 2015 –OK, so things don’t move terribly swiftly in The Land of MPT– and it is one of their best releases in a while. If “Left Behind” was MPT’s “Exile on Main Street”, and I think we can all agree that it was, then this new one is their “Let it Bleed.” One surprising song style after another, yet it all hangs together somehow. Highlights for me: “Gordon Muir, Time Traveler” must be heard to be believed. Remember “Kraken” from a few years ago, with its grinding guitars and weird falsetto vox? Well, this is its geeky cousin. “Deadhand Button” is an uptempo, knee-slappin’ little ditty about nuclear holocaust. The drugged-out funk of “Black Wig” moves nicely into “Under the River”, a country-ish strum-along reminiscent of the Glimmer Twins after several too many bottles of wine. “Hello Cleveland” ends the record and this song is so pretty it would have been at home on “eMPTy”, the band’s prettiest record to date. Even the weird (w)rapping toward the end can’t derail this one. We never do find out who Christian Wolfcock is, by the way. I give this record four and a half fingers, maybe five.
Naysayer 8/22/2018 A Library, CD
This rerelease of Midori Takada and Masahiko Satoh’s 1990 “Lunar Cruise” is a beautiful, unique album, rich in diversity of sound. Recorded after the two of them performed in countries in Africa, Europe and Asia, this album is full of the musical traditions from these parts of the world. All instrumentals, each track stands on it’s own. The diverse instrumentation flows from synth beats to minimalist marimba, middle eastern jazz to gongs and electronic drones. Satoh plays a variety of synthesizers and Midori plays percussion. Their interaction is thrilling to listen to because of the ease with which they play together and the comfort displayed in the diversity of sounds.
Thurston Hunger 8/22/2018 7-inch, A Library
Hollow Sunshine “Cold Truth b/w I Wandered ” 45
2014 single from this Seattle duo that listen to their elders. Slow and
thick (not Earth slow but slow) more shoegaze that sludge. Anvil anthems,
Reuben Sawyer is drummasaurus and guitarist and all non-mouth things.
Bass vertabrae support that kind of Projekt fuzzed guitar. Morgan Enos
sings steady above the thrum. His phrasing on “I Wandered” leans over
the edge of the riffs nicely. Even better when Nina Chase chimes in
some harmony vocals about halfway through. Could see that cut being a
chest-rattler live. Lean to the pop and you could connect these guys
to Charles Brown Superstar, step to the heavy and you might find Thou.
And apparently we can thank Thou for delivering us this slab of
Hollow Sunshine. -Thurston Hunger
Thurston Hunger 8/22/2018 A Library, CD
[coll] : Godspunk Volume Three
Backfilling our Godspunk collect ’em all void. Released in
2005, this comp starts in 1984. All’s well that starts well
with Orwell, and a dash of Subhumans too. The leadoff artist
Howl in the Typewriter is Mark Standing, the one who PUMF’s
up the volume of these comps. He’s a clever dude, his wry-fi
raps are the sweet chunks o’ spunk, from the F-to-the-C-to-the
muddereffing-shining-C. The 3 Ages of Elvis provide two takes
on rock, first whistle-jangle pop then Brit bangers and boogie.
Jungle to jeer Jesus by from Pissed Off. Norman piles multiple
cartoons into one instrumental. Litterbug with two straight
driving rockers dipped in teenage angst sauce. The Taurus
Board pilots simple techno with a George Carlin sample in
the passenger seat. Razor Dog’s got some bark. LDB = hip-hop,
indicted as old and white but my guess is MF Doom would find
it arresting. Reverends touched me, in a good way. UNIT is
kinda kooky, punky/proggy with flute roops, hell they sing
a song in Aztec(?!?). Kate Fear (a ruling name) makes plans
with Nigel Joseph for a synth/speak swirl ala Map 71. The
Time Flies! bounce beats with Brooklyn in the house via a
complaint line call on their first, then try on Les Baxter’s
old clothes while watching porn. The last Howl has 1:38
of silence before his rant. outStanding weirdos swimming
in the Black Pool gene pool. -Thurston Hunger
FCC #1, #4, #6, #8, #12, #21
Phil Phactor 8/22/2018 A Library, CD
A set of three pieces for solo violin, with and without electronics, all composed to accompany the dances of Leyya Tawil. On the first track, Tawil’s footfalls share sonic space with Mike Khoury’s barely there harmonic flutters. There’s a lot of space in this piece, and you’re left to imagine the visual element. The second track opens with a slow, repeated chime, but quickly grows into a sprawling morass of wailing drones as Khoury utilizes electronics to double and triple up on himself. Eventually, everything fades away, and the piece ends on the same note it started. The last track is similar to the first one, with Khoury upper harmonic explorations mingling with the suggestive sounds of bodily motion, both dissipating into the reverberant space. This limited edition CD-R was released on Khoury’s own Detroit Improvisation label, founded in order to document his personal journey as an improviser.
Thurston Hunger 8/22/2018 12-inch, A Library
Ronn, Christian / Mori, Ikue 33 rpm
“Chordis Et Machina”
Creepy calm? Ikue Mori is no stranger to KFJC’s library,
her DNA is in ours, but for years she’s been flying
hyperspeed into the singluarity of sound. The woman/machine
laptop/mindmeld. Her electronic signature often feels
extremely crisp, a hint of digital insects, quick flutter
of fragile wings, tiny little loops, and just a small patch
of fuzz on the antennae. Interesting to think of her
originally as a drummer, it’s like she has discarded the
beat and chased after the timbre of percussion. Well mostly,
there’s trace elements of funk on “Beyond the Forest” which
has a rhythm and bounce woven into it. Ikue’s joined here by
Christian Ronn of Denmark (his KFJC debut perhaps?). His piano
work is featured, fractured and fed into “Primodial Chaos”
(a 13 1/2 minute epic). He also offers Buchla thunder (well
more like gusts) but often is charge coupled with Ikue in
the well of the synthetic. Strange that the album is called
“Chordis Et Machina” as it’s heavy on the latter. “Spatium
Mutate” opens the LP like a can of soda, a laptop pop and
fizz to start, then gets into that calm vibe but with clicks
and tricks and squishy clean electronics. KFJC reviews used
to talk about soundscapes, and I think this duo builds nice
ones and then populates them with little digital critters.
“Loch Ness” hides more high-freq freaks than big bassy
monsters, really round pure tones, the way a robot might
whistle. Warning, it ends might quick and clipped. If you dig
this check out stuff from the Empreintes Digitales label
or marvel at the diversity Decker delivers on the mighty
Resipiscent local imprint (which released this in conjunction
with Tonometer and Nische-Ronn’s label). -Thurston Hunger
KFJC 89.7FM