In this ever-expanding musical world, there’s a wealth of 7-inches, cassettes, CD-Rs, and objet d’art being released that, due to their limited quantities and adventurous sonics, go unnoticed by the public at large. TMT Cerberus seeks to document the aesthetic of these home recorders and backyard labels. Email us here.
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Blue Sabbath Black Cheer / Penetration Camp
Bleak Village Mob Rules [CS]
[Drugfront Productions; 2010]
By Gumshoe
“Fuck the fools” … “Unauthorized duplication is encouraged” … “All sounds created/found/stolen/manipulated” … Yep, sounds about right. Penetration Camp’s din matches the old-Slayer-LP-art on the inserts just fine. BLOOD. Hooded; cloaked. Skeletal. AVAST YE SWABS. Walk the plank, ya coward of a lesser god. “I can’t seem to stop playing this slot machine or banging this trash can with a hammer. Can you help me?” No, but I can provide a low-end thrum for you to bounce yr “clanks” and “crash”es off. Also I can moan and caw into a megaphone, free of charge. Don’t mention it! You can pay me in human teeth, or jewels, or jeweled human teeth. My skull just caved in; amid the clanging chains, someone socked me with a wrench or maybe a wad of sheet metal so, not to be rude, I’ll move on… Blue Sabbath Black Cheer simply refuse to let up. Hair Police with a particularly powerful -dryer, Locrian on lockdown, Yellow Swans with a still-beating heart, Aidan Baker with a conscience; it’s all true, but it’s much more than that once you get to the cream of the BxCx crop. This is the realm of the unreal, the gaping maw of destiny’s lips wagging in your face and demanding a recount, reparations, repercussions, and/or reverberations. Bleak Village Mob Rules is Gargamel’s wart, an evil wizard’s wrath, the cemetery gates. Screaming, shrieking de-mortalization. Holy wrath, Holy vengeance, Holy GOD, what is the hold up? Let’s get the FUCK outta here. Edition of 313 with hand-glued, screen-printed LP jackets, two inserts, and a lot of loser love.
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Ryan Garbes
“Real Sugar” b/w “The Lights” [7-inch]
[Arbor; 2010]
http://arborinfinity.com
By Jspicer
I just saw the newest marble sculpture from Bernini portraying the fallen heroes of Raccoo-oo-oon, and despite an equal amazement at the reanimated Baroque artist, I was equally amazed that former drummer of the Iowa City misfits (also one-half of Wet Hair with Raccoo-oo-oonist Shawn Reed) has found the time to produce two magnificent psych-pop gems for vinyl. As one would expect, Garbes chisels out hard, succinct beats that serve as the heartbeat for his tremolo’d experiments. Yet neither “Real Sugar” nor “The Lights” are muddled in heavy tinkering; rather they show a classical focus on the idea of recognizable melody with careful bursts of modest creativity. The 7-inch never wears out its welcome, with “The Lights” proving to be as dynamic and timeless as Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” Garbes may not be an Italian sculptor, but his latest tracks will last as long as the masters of old.
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Gnarly Sheen / Alien Soundtracks
Split [CS]
[Husk Records; 2010]
http://huskrecords.blogspot.com
By Gumshoe
Edition of 66? Evil. Two bands caving in skulls via a split release with Albert Einstein-standing-in-front-of-a-nuclear-explosion art? Priceless. I got #68, and it makes me happy to be able to give this cassette such a firm thumbs-up. Or, at least half-a thumbs-up. It all starts with Alien Soundtracks and their murky take on instrumental excess. If you’ve ever stumbled upon Shearing Pinx’ left-field recordings or side project Mongst’s monstrous noise flashes, you’ve heard stuff like this before. If not, get ready for spacious caverns, desert hideaways, nuclear war, the fallout, romping, stomping noise bursts, circa “Demon in the Freezer.” If I could direct a Starburst commercial, this is what you’d hear whenever you eat a red or a pink one. Pure peyote sprawl, this. Gnarly Sheen, helmed by Morgan Rankin, take the slow, Celtic Frost route, and I’m not so sure it works so well for them. Those wooed by Testament’s slow songs might dig “Sweet Depression,” but… I don’t. “Sulphur Well” adds some much-needed swooping birds, yet all I hear, still, is clean, arpeggiated guitar heading things up. Things don’t really get crankin’ until “Rust Ring” brings the bass, but by then you’ll be ready to pop another tape. Sorry!
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CAVE
Pure Moods [12-inch]
[Drag City; 2010]
http://dragcity.com
By Jspicer
CAVE continues to refine their talents after two handfuls of underground fare. Despite flashbacks to the mid-90s soundtrack from which CAVE borrows the name for their latest vinyl-only EP, Pure Moods, there is little comparison to be drawn to Enya or the Benedict Monks (though opener “Hot Bricks” has more than its fair share of chant qualities). Some of the kraut influence so often mentioned in CAVE write-ups has been pushed aside for edgier guitar riffs and jazzier trips in psychedelic subspace. The EP’s masterpiece is the 13-minute “Brigitte’s Trip,” which mellows out some of the heartbeat rhythms of CAVE’s influences for a mellow contact high. No matter the origin of Pure Moods’ title, it concretely lives up to its billing. Now someone pass me the bong filled with cooked cabbage…
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Pill Wonder
Jungle/Surf [12-inch]
[Underwater Peoples; 2010]
http://underwaterpeoples.com
By Mangoon
With the current influx of neo-beach rock rapidly reaching its saturation point, I realize the inherent difficulty in justifying adding yet another record into your collection with the word “surf” in the title. That said, it’s important to not cast off Jungle/ Surf as just another cheaply recorded pseudo-nostalgic Beach Boys homage. In fact, Pill Wonder’s debut shares a similarly demented view on pop music that has made other out-of-left-field masterpieces such as Tall Dwarf’s Hello Cruel World and Panda Bear’s Person Pitch the stuff of legend. Will Murdoch, the driving force behind Pill Wonder, recorded the album in the comfort of his childhood home using an outdated version of Adobe Audition 2.0 and an old Dell computer to commit the opus to posterity. The result is sort of like a lo-fi production version of Joe Meek’s I Hear a New World or David Vorhaus “storm stereo” techniques. The sounds of sweeping filters, displaced elephant trumpeting, dinner plates being frantically cleared, rushing water, ecstatic xylophones, and toy drums all converge triumphantly on the latest LP for Underwater Peoples. Wrap it all up in a contemporary hypnagogic veneer and you have the finest debut of the year thus far.
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Lonnie Eugene Methe
“Hey Jack” + 6 other songs [7-inch]
[Unread Records; 2010]
http://www.myspace.com/undeaddistro
By Gumshoe
I appreciate that he feels the need to sing, and I hear it in his voice, the urgency, the passion, the wherewithal to make a gol’-darn difference. He’s a boombox-at-a-bonfire-type guy. I don’t think referring him to Ben Gibbard’s old acoustic work is an insult. Likening him to Little Wings, neither. I still don’t see this short-ass 7-inch making a huge Dent May in my collection (actually I’m not a huge Dent May guy, either, truth be told). Guy-and-a-guitar gone, not awry, but just a little errant, failing to hit the listener in stride. Side B is the better half, more patience, more world-weariness, fitter, happier. “Calendar Work” and “Wounds of Winter” both open up the throat like a lozenge of love. If I’m going to wallow, I’ll do it here. But I don’t want to, just yet. Give it time, maybe? Comes with “pointless” lyric sheet.
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Buk Buk Bigups
Buk Buk Bigups [12-inch]
[Weird Forest; 2010]
http://www.weirdforest.com/
By Jspicer
This two-song debut from Sacramento’s Buk Buk Bigups is a menagerie of sludge and dance that is both jarring and supremely catchy. The A-side, “Hot Mess,” is Studio 54 sleaze, complete with a healthy cocaine sheen and feathered chest hair. There’s a 70s machismo that oozes from the track’s sexual rhythms despite being akin to the crop of favored intelligent dance movements. The flipside is far more attuned to the carnal filth of Trent Reznor’s best days, combining the kraut influences of seedy industrial with the buried melody and heavy bass that was the genre’s calling card in the 90s. If nothing more, Buk Buk Bigups defy convention with two distinctly differing re-imaginings of rhythm, leaving those who hear to wonder just what lies in store for the group as it continues to find forgotten sounds in dust-covered bins to reanimate.
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Prudence Teacup
Where All the Little Songs Go When They Die - All Hands Electric [12-inch + book]
[All Hands Electric; 2010]
http://www.allhandselectric.com
By Gumshoe
I flash to a million bands/artists when Where All the Little Songs Go When They Die hits the needle. The Pierces; Cat Power; Nico; Niobe; Fovea Hex; Hearts Of Palm; Kria Brekkan; Beach House; Alela Diane … nothing comes close, people. Prudence Teacup won’t be everyone’s favorite beverage, but just a few of you will be hopelessly hooked. How can 150 strictly vinyl copies be enough? You just can’t put a number on touches like ghost-parlour piano, soft, aching vibrato, dead soul shakers, Ten In The Swear Jar, “you asshole” accordions, mentions of “jingle-jangle mornings,” spare, ominous soundscapes, and general melancholy. I love the way the songs last only as long as they have to, many of them just under a minute or so. No Milk-Eyed Mender-ing here. No elephants in the room. Just an art-sprawl full of Laurie Anderson and Eno, complete with a 20-page book full of Mount Eerie-esque visual ruminations on self and society. Never predictable, never static unless the crackle in the background demands it. Aural waterfalls, that sort of thing. She’s been ‘round but she ain’t ashamed, to paraphrase. LP-only? Vinally…
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Earn
In a Year [CS]
[Jugular Forest; 2010]
http://jugularforest.com
By Jspicer
Matthew Sullivan is not only the purveyor of the “it” label at the moment (Ekhein), he is also tearing up the scene with his solo jams as Earn. In a Year is the latest disconnected meditation from Sullivan (released by his 1958-2009 partner Alex Twomey’s Jugular Forest imprint) that finds the guitar maven toying with 12 themes throughout the cassette’s runtime. Not unlike equally skilled tinkerer Chris Riggs, Sullivan deconstructs guitar (and well as an organ) as conventional instrument in favor of piecing the scraps back together in rudimentary Picasso formations. Often the results are sweet and silky — productions that lilt high above the speaker horizon — but there are the rare occasions when the Utopian tendencies are interrupted by spurts of steeled anger, giving In a Year a rich, edgy texture.
