World Domination Enterprises – Lets Play Domination
November 25, 2009 by David Smith
Filed under Albums (and EPs)
World Domination Enterprises - Lets Play Domination
What a welcome surprise to have this release: Lets Play Domination (sometimes spelled with the apostrophe) by World Domination Enterprises. This reissue of the band’s 1988 album reminds you of what effects a radical record from the past can have on today’s music. While not without its missteps, this is still a breakthrough record that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Musicians (Julian Cope writes at length about this album’s staying power) and critics have long celebrated and cited this band.
The raucous, Birthday Party noise of “Ghetto Queen” takes Public Image and slows it down and makes it even choppier. “The Bullit Man” has a sloppy, Big Black aura to it — sloppy because the drummer and bass player aren’t precise about their timings. No matter, because that’s the band’s intention. “Do Do Go Go” sounds like a dance number for the disaffected. It’s got the right beat but the heavy guitars and percussive clanging don’t encourage any shimmying.
The record opens with the acerbic and forbidding “Message For The People,” whose start-stop rhythm and over-the-top Mary Chain guitars introduce you to the world of WDE. “Blu Money,” “Look Out Jack,” and “Hotsy Girl” take an otherwise-boring blues-based approach and mutate it with deep bass and the distortion set to 12. WDE wasn’t the first band to crank out what was then “unlistenable,” atonal tunes, but they put such a stamp of their own on it that you know a WDE song just from the first few seconds of hearing it.
Probably best known for the cutting “Asbestos Lead Asbestos,” later covered by Meat Beat Manifesto, the band had a wonder of a song with this one. Sure, it sounds like Big Black musically, but its anger and outrage are stated almost indifferently (well, the delivery drips with venom but it’s not screamed, anyway). With lyrics like “Equal opportunity, except if our pedigree dogs don’t like the smell of your children” and “They’re stealing and fighting / We live on the west side” convey the class-difference resentments that inform the song’s message. As always, the Mark E. Smith singing perfectly suits the sound.
“I Can’t Live Without My Radio” sounds almost laughable now, and it’s not clear whether this was originally intended to provoke laughter or meant as an earnest take on the LL Cool J track. Probably so, given the band’s iconoclastic leanings. The bombastic beat and faux-ghetto rapping just has to be a joke, in the same way that their cover of “Funkytown” destroys the original with paint-peeling guitars and snarled vocals. WDE leaves the original’s essential melody intact but blows the rest of it away in favor of assaulting your ears.
If you enjoy post-punk noise and haven’t yet heard WDE, do yourself a favor and check them out. Take advantage of the opportunity to get your hands on songs that would otherwise be lost to history.
James Husband – A Parallax I
November 25, 2009 by Bryan Sanchez
Filed under Albums (and EPs)
James Husband – A Parallax I
What makes a band like Of Montreal so good is not just their wide array of styles, their effective punch of showy glamour or even their impeccable knack at writing terrific melodies but that they take all of their influences and bring them up with the best touches. Kevin Barnes has always made sure that we all know just how much he loves The Beatles; even at his most playfully idiosyncratic, there are catchy melodies inside of all of his music.
And it’s especially remarkable just how high his band has risen: before they’d made one of the best albums of 2007, they’d already been making outstanding album after outstanding album of music. A constant in the band’s superb music was multi-instrumentalist, James Huggins. Recruited by Barnes to serve as a tastemaker in Of Montreal, Huggins’ impact was immediately felt as his focus on the gifted potential instruments possessed was something Barnes would surely hone in on.
So it makes perfect sense, now that Of Montreal has such a legion of fans, for Huggins to release his solo album as James Husband, A Parallax I. Music that has been steadily recorded and collected from the last twelve years, the album grows in a chronological order of music that is also heavily influenced by those aforementioned pop kings, The Beatles. With help, once again, from his counterpart in Of Montreal, Dottie Alexander, Huggins deploys music that is innocently smooth but with a mind of its own and he ends up being better because of it.
There isn’t much left to the imagination, Huggins layers his music with acoustic guitars and more often than not, his electronics swoop in to offer some well-suited mechanics. The music benefits from an arch that starts at the beginning and ends with better produced and composed music at the end. At the center of it is “While the Boys Went Down Under,” a Canadian-influenced tune that captures the essence of the album: motivated, adamant and earnest. Amassed in what appears to be the guise of a Carl Newman song, Huggins fluctuates from honest tenderness to a grittier side and there isn’t a problem to be found anywhere.
For many expecting something scattered and lit up like Skeletal Lamping or even The Gay Parade, they came looking in the wrong direction. This is more Cherry Peel-era than anything else and ironically so, that was an album Huggins didn’t even play on. “The Darkestness” begins with a collect call that never connected and Huggins slowly turns it into a hazy trepidation. Strumming his guitar and singing a sad ballad, with only an organ-like synth to back him, Huggins resemble Barnes at his earliest stages, when he was barely learning how to get on. Even the melody on “Grayscale” would be a perfect fit on any of Of Montreal’s albums.
Because even though the keyboard blips at the beginning of “Little Thrills” will surely fool you into thinking this would be an electronic explosion, Huggins comes in moderation with a great flair for melodies. That same song is followed by “A Grave in the Gravel,” where the album’s crunchiest guitar shows up, for ten seconds. And before you know it, you’re back into the smooth jive that Huggins will permeate through the entirety of this, his first proper album. Poised and collected, there isn’t anything noticeably fantastic about A Parallax I but there’s just enough to know and realize that Huggins has potential to build off of it.
Wiretree – Luck
November 25, 2009 by Bradley Hartsell
Filed under Albums (and EPs)
Wiretree - Luck
Album art can be deceiving. The black and twisted metal that graces Luck made me think I was about to listen to some Fuel or something. So, upon hearing thoughtful acoustic-pop, I was pleasantly surprised. This is Wiretree’s sophomore album, in which they’ve added a little more jab to their earlier, softer work. This is a quintet of simple arrangements, with an acoustic guitar, bass, drums, and the occasional bell or horn. The stripped-down approach allows Kevin Peroni’s vocals and melodies to shine through.
Wiretree can sound vintage 60s (“Back in Town”) or modern with acoustic ballads (“Falling”), but their transition to each style is seamless. Peroni manages to capture sunniness of the 60s scene and recreates some of that influence onto Luck. The music won’t leave your mouth agape, but you’ll always have something worth singing along with, and that’s got to count for something. Acoustic ballads may seem cheesy and cliche at this point, but there’s still a way to do them effectively. “Falling” has a fingerpicked acoustic intro that may seem faceless, but a thick bassline keep things afloat while Peroni gets started. Again, Peroni’s verse may seem like it was taken from Acoustic Ballad 101, until he rolls into a smooth hook at the end of each verse, and throws down a nice chorus. Small tweaks of individual character take what could have been a yawn-inducing sap fest, and makes it into one of the album’s highlights. Yeah, you can’t jam to it, but you can play it for your lady and help set the mood.
Wiretree treads into new territory on “Information,” although the arrangements stay the same. They lose the mellow 60s shine, and there’s certainly too much pump to be a ballad. Kudos to Wiretree for taking age-old instrumentation and finding a niche in songwriting, as “Information” is a charming tune with a deep hook to accompany it. That’s the story on Luck, in less capable hands, these songs would crumble under the weight of generic composition, but Wiretree adds a myriad of tweaks that brings the best out of an acoustic-pop outfit. Every song is solid by giving you a strong melody and an ear-friendly rhythm, and even a demo version of “Falling” at the end doesn’t seem repetitive. Luck is limited, however, in that no song is going to floor you, or that it has no extreme replayability. These songs are nice to hear, all of them, but I doubt you’ll be walking around with them in your head all day. This album definitely sticks more than it should, but it also can only stick so much.
Charlotte Gainsbourg – “IRM”
November 25, 2009 by Jen Stratosphere Fanzine
Filed under MP3s, Concerts, DVDs, and More
Charlotte Gainsbourg - "IRM"
Charlotte Gainsbourg (hopefully) needs no introduction. “IRM” is the first single off Charlotte’s new album IRM, which she co-produced with Beck. In order to more fully appreciate “IRM”, however, it would be prudent to pinpoint certain events in her recent past that have lead up to its creation. Over a year after the release of her second album 5:55, Charlotte suffered a brain hemorrhage after a water-skiing accident and underwent successful surgery and recovery. She went on to star in director Lars Von Trier’s latest controversial film Antichrist and record IRM (French for MRI, i.e., magnetic resonance imaging).
“IRM” is the direct result of Charlotte’s time spent in hospital and the song reflects that aseptic and clinical environment with its detached, rhythmic beat of springy, but clomping drums that recall those found on “Earth Intruders” by Bjork, high-hat cymbal crash, a periodic metallic, spinning reverberation that brings to mind a slower-paced “We Carry On” by Portishead, and the occasional telephone ring.
Emptiness hangs over the song as Charlotte sing-talks briskly, but in a pragmatic, mid-range tone that’s neither cool nor clement, betraying barely any emotion. The tempo picks up two-thirds of the way through, with kinetic drums, cymbal shimmer, and touches of alternating, echoed male and female vocals in the background.
The impersonal effect of the instrumental and vocal delivery carries over to the blunt, medically-oriented lyrics, as Charlotte intones the lines “Take a picture / What’s inside?… / Following the X-ray eye…”, “Analyze EKG / Can you see a memory?”, and “Leave my head demagnetized / Tell me where the trauma lies.”
The sweet innocence of the songs on Charlotte’s debut album, recorded when she was a child, is not present here, nor is the flowing airiness of the songs on 5:55. Whether this single is representative of the whole album is a question mark at this point since it’s scheduled to be released on December 7, 2009.
Is it Charlotte’s intent to distance herself on “IRM” since its themes are based on her experiences in the medical milieu? If so, the song succeeds as a reflection of those experiences. Taken in the context of her previous output, however, an absence of emotional warmth and musical richness can be discerned, especially in comparison to the outpouring of intimate lyrics (co-penned with Jarvis Cocker) and instrumental support by Air on 5:55. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the songs on IRM unfold and if they display more variety and complexity.
http://www.charlottegainsbourg.com/
Live performance video and tour from Warpaint
November 25, 2009 by Jen Stratosphere Fanzine
Filed under News
Warpaint
So simple. Straightforward. Three beautiful girls making beautiful music.
Watch Here: http://www.athenssoundies.com/videos/68
MySpace Site: http://www.myspace.com/worldwartour
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New album and tour from mr. Gnome
November 25, 2009 by Jen Stratosphere Fanzine
Filed under News
Heave Yer Skeleton, the follow-up to mr. Gnome’s debut full-length, Deliver This Creature, promises to be no less a musical twist than the last offering. Returning with the same basic, minimalist ingredients; a soulful, feminine power and inventive, dynamic drumming, the two are suspended in a sea of drug-induced themes pouring from their simplistic set-up. The id, dreams, silver giants, hallucinations, flying horses, the devil, Armageddon, vampires, and ghosts are just a few of the hauntingly, hypnotic subjects floating between pleasure and pain in the soundscapes of Heave Yer Skeleton.
In April 2009 the duo received an invitation to record at Josh Homme’s (Queens of the Stone Age) Pink Duck Studios located in Los Angeles. Studio manager and engineer Justin Smith (QOTSA, Eagles of Death Metal, Arctic Monkeys, Spinnerette) recorded the sessions and the location served as the perfect creative environment for mr. Gnome’s sophomore effort. After returning to Cleveland, the album received last minute touches and additional tracking at Ante Up Audio with Adam Korbesmeyer.
The album was mixed at Butch Vig’s Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin by Beau Sorenson (Death Cab For Cutie, Sparklehorse, The Secret Machines, Garbage, Tegan and Sara). Extending and experimenting on elements only touched on in their first full-length, mr. Gnome’s Heave Yer Skeleton was released November 10th, 2009.
mr. Gnome on tour:
11/23/09 – San Francisco, CA @ Elbow Room
11/24/09 – Los Angeles, CA @ Silverlake Lounge
11/25/09 – Long Beach, CA @ Alex’s Bar
11/27/09 – Tucson, AZ @ Plush
11/28/09 – Albuquerque, NM @ Atomic Cantina
11/29/09 – Oklahoma City, OK @ The Conservatory
12/01/09 – Dallas, TX @ The Double Wide
12/03/09 – San Marcos, TX @ The Triple Crown
12/04/09 – Houston, TX @ Rudyard’s British Pub
12/05/09 – New Orleans, LA @ Banks Street Bar
12/07/09 – Pensacola, FL @ The Handlebar
12/11/09 – Charlotte, NC @ Snug Harbor
12/18/09 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Tavern
The band’s loftily heavy-beautiful sound can be found on “Slow Slide” off the new album: (CLICK HERE)
Official Site: http://www.mrgnome.com/
Jesu – Opiate Sun
November 24, 2009 by Michael Britten
Filed under Albums (and EPs)
Jesu - Opiate Sun
By this point in time, Justin Broadrick possesses the type of storied career that should give newcomers something to aspire to, and peers much to muse over: the man’s been subconsciously nurturing the music scene away from tired tropes for over 20 years, officially “dabbling” in the invention of grindcore via Napalm Death as a teenager, helming the pioneering industrial metal project Godflesh through the beginning of this decade, and undoubtedly sparking the rise of shoegaze-inflected textures in metal since then with Jesu. The latter project, which Broadrick has employed as a vehicle for his pop tendencies, has been amassing a fairly consistent, albeit somewhat unmanageable catalog of releases over the past five years. Part and parcel of multifaceted and indefinable output, Broadrick has been met with the question of quality control with the recent Greymachine project and Infinity, the Jesu full-length-but-not-album issued a mere three months prior to Opiate Sun.
The same pattern seems to have occurred during 2007, which saw Justin Broadrick adding a staggering five entries to the Jesu discography within a span of eight months. While I can’t say all of those pieces warranted release (Pale Sketches, I’m looking at you), the creative arc witnessed in that year definitely trained certain aspects out of Jesu’s sound that are squarely responsible for Opiate Sun’s strengths and weaknesses. Conqueror and Lifeline set reasonable reference points for the EP’s melodicism, though Opiate Sun is relatively stripped-down and far more straightforward; the glitchy ambience and ringing auxiliary guitar tones that subtly coaxed listeners into songs like “You Wear Their Masks” and “Conqueror” is mainly absent. The lack of layers and Broadrick’s usual studio polish, however, brings to the forefront Jesu’s strongest tie to pop-formula: the soaring chorus. Album-opener “Losing Streak”, for example, contains Broadrick’s catchiest since “Silver”, while “Deflated” traverses the 7-minute runtime it inhabits lithely, thanks to the strength of its well-placed hooks.
Opiate Sun’s more muscular moments (the title track and album closer “Morning Light”) unfortunately feel stale in comparison. Perhaps played live, these songs could afford the audience some breathing room to nod their head rather than sing along, but presented here, they add an unnecessary weight to the proceedings. “Opiate Sun” certainly has a strong enough melody, but it plays itself almost too characteristically of the established “Jesu sound” and dissipates much of the steam generated by front-loading the EP with one of Broadrick’s out-and-out best tracks. Closing with “Morning Light” also feels like a misstep, dragging on as if it’s Opiate Sun’s longest cut, though nearly a minute shorter than every other song here. It never develops any beauty out of the miry pace it opens with, and sharing space with some of the more compressed pop in the Jesu catalog, it not only feels out of place, it’s disappointing.
I was honestly caught by surprise upon investing time in Opiate Sun. Still far from perfect, I wasn’t expecting a Jesu release minus the lushness of top-tier offerings to fare quite so well; the precision of Justin Broadrick’s melodic bent on the EP elevates its standout tracks to new levels of accessibility. As a microcosm for the arguments against his ability to consolidate efforts, however, even Opiate Sun’s four-song summary could afford to be trimmed down, or at the very least edited for content. Hopefully, the next project Broadrick commits to will be far enough away to allow him to reign in focus and purify his own angelic process, and provide ample time for listeners to unwind and become fully absorbed into Opiate Sun’s brighter moments.
Linda Draper – Bridge and Tunnel
November 24, 2009 by Jen Stratosphere Fanzine
Filed under Albums (and EPs)
Linda Draper - Bridge and Tunnel
Singer-songwriter Linda Draper returns with her 3rd album for Planting Seeds Records, an understated, lyrics-centric, alt-folk confessional with clear, upfront vocals. While Linda is not a powerhouse vocalist, she still acutely conveys her reflective, melancholic lyrics, ably accompanied by low-key, fluidly-picked acoustic guitar lines, solemn, sustained organ notes, and backing vocal accents. Linda’s plaintive, pliant delivery in tone and phrasing recalls a milder Amy Duncan, a less nasal Aimee Mann, and Kate Tucker with less twang. She’s a wordsmith like Thea Gilmore, but more mellow in intent and inflection and her songs are mainly of the traditional “verse, chorus, verse” structure.
“Sharks and Royalty” starts it off with rolling guitar swells with a deeper line twined by lighter finger-picking of the strings as Linda sings “For such a long time now / I’ve been learnin’ how to get by…” as the phrase “on my own” is repeated amid an uplift of organ notes on the chorus. Lighter synth notes, a reverberating, sandy beat, and low-register upright bass figure into “I Will” with organ notes coming in and a tender, fragile emotion running through Linda’s vocals that recalls the half-broken, hurt tone of Patsy Cline as she sings achingly “They say you don’t know all you got ‘til it’s gone. / Maybe you never had it all along.”
“Time Will Tell”, sports a faster tempo with lighter, xylophone-like notes and guitars in the background for most of the song and Linda taking on a mid-range, sing-talking cadence on the lyrics-heavy, contemplative verses like “…’cause everyone needs somebody else who’s / got something more than them to lose.” A softer tone is utilized on “Pushing Up the Day”, with picked guitar, upright bass, and the complex lyrics “…because daylight lives / in the hearts of those who give / without expecting a gift / to be given in return.” The music is unobtrusive and supports the vocals that are at the forefront.
Once again, the lyrics are at the fore on “Close Enough” (“Only the fool in the noose / with nothing left to lose / says “Baby, don’t keep me hangin.”), which instrumentally varies with a build up of sounds like guitar, organ, and backing female vocals. Linda’s songs are chock-a-block with pithy lyrics, and it’s a bit unintentionally ironical when on “Broken Eggshells” she sings “I know it’s hard to see things clearly / when all the words get in the way.”
Linda changes tack on “Mother’s Little Helper”, a cover of the Rolling Stones song from 1966, crafting it into an even more retro-sounding tune with doubled vocals, pixie-ish “doo doo doos”, and an uppity tempo with jangled guitars and swiftly rattled tambourine. The tone is completely different from the rest of the album, a square peg in a round role, but an interesting one, where it sounds like she is paying homage to the chipper, harmonizing sister acts of the 1940s like the McGuire Sisters, but with anti-domesticity sentiments that fit squarely with the themes of the AMC TV show Mad Men. Linda’s bright, harmonizing vocals are sung a cappella about a mother who needs something to calm her down and “… though she’s not really ill / there’s a little yellow pill / …and it helps her on her way / gets her through her busy day.”
“Last One Standing” goes the country route with strummed guitar, watery synth notes, organ notes, and Linda’s mid-range to lower register backed by lighter, more wistful vocals as she sings “Some will lead, most will follow / then there are the lucky few / who find better things to do.”
Them Crooked Vultures – Them Crooked Vultures
November 24, 2009 by Bryan Sanchez
Filed under Albums (and EPs)
Them Crooked Vultures – Them Crooked Vultures
The idea of Them Crooked Vultures sounded too good to be true. How could one take frontman Joshua Homme and reconnect him with the awesome drumming of Dave Grohl? But even with them two, they decided to also throw in Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones to play bass, for good measure. And yes, we’re talking about Jones, who was the bassist for one of the best bands of all time. Not to mention that the last time Homme invited Grohl to play drums for his primary band Queens of the Stone Age, they made one of the best albums of the decade with Songs for the Deaf.
So we’d already been set up for something great and these great expectations were something this trio of musicians could live up to, right? The answer is a resoundingly loud yes with their self-titled debut album. Packed to the sides with frenetics, energy, bursting sounds and tenacity that never lets up, Them Crooked Vultures rocks and it rocks hard. With every passing note, every passing force, every passing musical line, this is an album that never disappoints and instead, thrills with everything it has.
When hearing something as effortlessly composed as “Dead End Friends,” it’s hard to believe this is a new band. Homme’s gifted voice sounds cool and collected, Jones’ bass shakes and rattles and Grohl’s skillful drumming is everything you’d expect: booming, boisterous and downright bombacious. For these three minutes of euphoria, the trio set everything in place for Homme’s guitar solo to come sailing in at the end. Brash and always in your face, who said rock was dead?
The trio had a relatively small set at this year’s Austin City Limits Festival. Small is used in the tiniest of ways because they were still largely unknown at this point. The crowds knew well enough who their members were and the rumors that an album was going to grace us were swirling with anticipation but you never knew what to expect. The label and press did a great job of keeping this under wraps, as there wasn’t a leak until a week or so before its release and it all worked out just fine. By the time they hit the stage, it was obvious these were musicians of the best kind. Great fundamentals, developed ears and even better ability, their chemistry is undeniable and now, it’s translated onto an album that all can love.
For these sixty-plus minutes of music, Them Crooked Vultures prove just how important musicianship is when being a part of any band. The six minute tour de force of “Elephants” tests everyone – including the band – into a powerfully menacing bashing of heads. Unruly and vexing, the music comes to a screeching halt after it’s already been dialed up thirty notches on the Richter scale. In equally memorable fashion, the opener “No One Loves Me & Neither Do I,” kicks things off with guitars that are amped up and muscular drums. The gradual push during the bridge brings everything to a boil as everything explodes. Homme’s “boom!” lets things go, and Jones and Grohl propel underneath him. It’s a fitting tribute, a sort of “forget about your troubles and pound away” retreat – I’ll toast to that.
Don’t forget that for as long as I can remember, everything that Homme has touched, from his Desert Sessions, to his main band, to his band on the side in Eagles of Death Metal, has all been gold. Fully rewarding, there was never any reason to doubt that this wouldn’t be an empathically strong release. There’s moments where each musician takes the reigns and portrays his own unique touch but as an entity, they’re a force to be reckoned with. Even quieter moments like “Spinning in Daffodils” showcase a substantially heavy band and with dynamics, hooks and riffs that last for days, Them Crooked Vultures is a wonderful introduction to this all-star band.
New album from KatieJane Garside’s Ruby Throat
November 24, 2009 by Jen Stratosphere Fanzine
Filed under News
dear all
and so we are here…ruby throat’s 2nd album ‘out of a black cloud came a bird’ is ‘complete’.
some words i found in kjg’s journal might suggest the place this record came from – ‘a long summer of serrated, grinding seconds moving over my body, tectonic plates, a slow painful being erased, a breakdown recorded, a devastation of spirit, a desperately ‘taped on’ resolution, who and what survives? the pale art of the salesman 2009, my body a carcrash canvas, your name scratched into it, the blunt needle point of a compass slowing the traffic, who is the ‘i’ that erases ‘you’?, this is a long and arduous recording, a B movie with resentfully gorgeous camera angles, the fallendown house of ruby throat‘
we propose a run of 500 limited edition art packages, followed by a limited standard (ish) gatefold version, more information about online release dates and prices to follow shortly at http://www.myspace.com/katiejanegarsiderubythroat
as ever with love and wishes
Ruby Throat