Is there anything worse than the it-actress vanity album? At best, overly precious efforts from the likes of Zooey Deschanel and Scarlet Johansson teeter on the brink of tolerability, but at their lowest points these sacchariny records can feel like Michael Cera dropping a train car full of (500) Days of Summer (TMT Review) DVDs on your head.
Thank Gaia, then, for Sasha Grey: pornographic actress, star of Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience (TMT Review), Current 93 collaborator, and eerie industrial musician to boot (She took her stage name from KMFDM’s Sascha Konietzko, after all). In 2008, Grey formed aTelecine, an industrial/noise band featuring Grey on guitar as well as sharing vocal and tape loop duties with bandmates Pablo St. Francis and Anthony Djuan. aTelecine’s debut And 6 Dark Hours Pass is due in early April via Dais Records (thanks for the tip, Ryan!), and not even before the month ends, another release, A Cassette Tape Culture, is slated for April 27 on Pendu Sound Recordings (Talibam!, Ghost Moth, Mialessot). Judging from the tracks available on the band’s MySpace, they will most likely be unavailable for purchase at your local Starbucks.
• aTelecine: http://www.myspace.com/atelecine
• Dais Records: http://www.daisrecords.com
• Pendu Sound Recordings: http://pendusound.com
