No Eyed Bird

As you all know by now, the Germans lost 0-1 to the Spanish in the UEFA Euro 2008 soccer championships. German soccer fans, please do not fret! Click here for the consolation prize to all you second-placers: Corenell Vs Lisa Marie Experience - Keep On Jumpin.’ This is a remix/cover of a disco track of the same name by Patrick Adams. Enjoy the cheesy music and the cute soccer babes, and forget the German loss! More after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Healamonster crafts warm electronic with a bit of hip-hop in the release Nine Tons Of Blood with a bit of help from longtime collaborator Tarsier . Tracks 3 and 8 are more drum/beat-oriented, and are only fairly interesting with their spoken word layers. Better tracks would be tracks 4 and 5, with the former track (”Didn’t Even See”) including audio samples of a nostalgic childhood (who the child is we do not know), and the latter track (”Ghost Tale From New Brunswick”) telling us a masterfully-crafted story with an interesting, but ambiguous conclusion. The best tracks are tracks 2, 7, 9, and 10, which feature musical collaboration with Tarsier. With these, one can hear the influences from electronic music heavyweights Lali Puna and Solvent. Tracks 2 and 10 are the same (”Home”) with the last track being an instrumental version. Persuasive melodies and simple vocals from Healamonster and Tarsier make this the best track on the CD. Warm and melodic, the music on this CD is certainly worthy of a listen.

Already out of press vinyl release on Sweet Rot Records by heavy distortion folk band duo from Portland featuring “Meth” Matt Hunter (guitar) and “Teeth” Kyle Raquipiso (drums) should freak you out with the cover art alone. Likely the work of Raquipiso, former art school student and recipient of Sub Pop’s Loser Scholarship, the sickly orange bus paint color and balloons with killer 70’s cartoon smiles are just gently held by a buried dead hand. Meth Teeth could plausibly be buried alive, and if they are, what they create underground is a hyper hoped up retreat into blown out speaker paper 70’s folk without the creepy drone of the Vancouver WA street people they idolize. Meth teeth are horrible abominations of disgust and nightmares to all the pretty indie children frolicking Portland with their crest white strips not to mention that actual pictures of the teeth are fucking rancid. The analogy is thus: Normal teeth are folk music, clean and innocent, but after the band corrupts them with filthy distorted garage musical style over them, they become Meth Teeth. It ‘s actually the exact way the band came to be as Hunter originally began the band as an acoustic folk solo project. The group is supposedly a trio now, so for the sake of this review, lets call them a four-piece.
-johnny darko

Famoro Dioubate is the virtuoso balafon-ist (African xylophone) of this group Kakande, and with Dununya releases to the rest of the world a glimpse of this rich African traditional music mixed with modern western instrumentation. From the opening track “Kakande” to the ending track “Temedi Kota,” the lush orchestration envelopes the listener with charming melodies and plenty of energy. At the forefront is Dioubate’s virtuoso chops on the xylophone. Swirling around it is a mix of backing vocals, flutes, strings, bass, guitar, drumset. Even though I don’t understand the lyrics, the booklet insert explains the meanings behind each track, revealing a flair for storytelling, dealing with the subjects of community, positivity, and tradition (vague and trite words, perhaps, but go pick up a copy and check it out yourself). The music is simultaneously familiar and strange. The scales are similar to that of western music, carried by modern instrumentation along with jazz-structured progressions (choruses, solos, etc). The languages of Malinke, Susu, and Jakanke that are featured on the release bring a fresh change to the staleness of ensemble band music.

Natalie Janssen in her EP Split is focused on melodramatic acoustic pop. Blessed with a good voice (but unfortunately not so much with a good sense of composition), she sings about a variety topic such as Colorado, sleepiness, horny truckers, and schmaltzy love. Well-recorded and well-mixed, the only flaw is the fact that the EP isn’t very catchy, and it contains very few memorable passages. Unfortunately, this means that the release comes out to be rather mediocre. Two tracks that break out of this mediocrity are tracks 7 and 8, “Song Of Your Sleep” and “Brick In The Boot,” respectively. “Song Of Your Sleep” is an introspective little ditty composed in tiny tinkling triplets. This track is clearly a lullaby and Janssen certainly matches the musical content with the intent. “Brick In The Boot” is the star of the EP, with jangly banjos and crass ironic humor. “Now I’m stranded on Interstate-40. And I’m scared ‘cuz the truckers are horny.” is a fantastically funny line from the song, complemented by Janssen’s dramatic dynamics and hilarious match of accompaniment. This EP is a collection of mediocre tracks surrounding the brilliance of “Song Of Your Sleep” and “Brick In The Boot.” I highly recommend the latter track if you have a chance to listen to it.

Heather Waters‘ CD Propeller is a 10-track exposition featuring Waters’ powerful voice over pop rock arrangements. Decidedly simple, rustic, and charming in its own way, the music contained within draws from the different genres of gospel, blues, country, and good old American rock ‘n’ roll. The recording was mixed to be very clear and very loud, which results in some nice effects such as in track 1, where one can hear the rusting of paper. In other instances, however, some not-so-nice effects show up such as harsh sibilance in the voice, and also the harsh clipping in the music at the loud part in track 5, which unfortunately renders Waters’ voice barely listenable (engineers, you have all got to learn to quit mixing and mastering so damn loud!). The artwork is also very good, and I recommend checking out the digi book of the CD from the website. The pieces look like those by Mark Ryden, except for the fact that they speak with a more wholesome accent. The artwork alone is beautiful and complements the music quite nicely. In all, this is not a bad collection of songs.

The misguided trio who is actually a 5-piece has done it again, but this time on 12 inches of fury. Monkey Power Trio gets together once a year and spends a few days writing and recording original songs. Their 2007 release “House of the Mechanical Sun” is actually made up of 2 recording sessions from 2005 and 2006, which took place in Minneapolis and Oregon. They decided to ditch cover art and have commandeered old Beatles, Hitchcock and kids record jackets for the limited to 150 release I was fortunate to come across. As usual the bands songs are all a bit off and many from the Oregon session are accompanied by a fancy song flute. Their rap song ‘Another Year’ puts them in the indie Weird Al realm. ‘Meaty Girls’ may get a chuckle out of your gut but I still think NOFX did the fat girl praise better. I like Monkey Power Trio’s more innocent songs, like ‘Hop On The Monkey Bus”. Its like those Six Flags commercials where someone so stupid and creepy looking is dancing and flailing their arms so maniacally that you can’t help but wanna join them. Tracks like ‘Little Billy Oshin’ just plain scare me. Do they have something against Billy Ocean? I wouldn’t want that fuceker living in my foreskin! His “Jewel of the Nile” soundtrack hits were enough for me. It’s too bad this isn’t a cd, since it flows well from start to finish. Perhaps all guilty pleasures include vinyl in some way shape or form. Oh yea, “I live in the suburbs, I drive everywhere, my back always hurts and I’m losing all my hair” sounds like Happy Monkey Trio is content in Orwellian 1984.

Sweetbleeders‘ album Bzzzz. is an excellent collection of 10 songs that meander about, painting a beautiful kaleidescope of chord progressions and catchy vocal melodies, as sung by a melancholy-sounding Robin Vining. This collection of talented musicians and composers draws from influences of all sorts of genres and the members combine forces to create a musical masterpiece. Track 2 “Safety” pegs in at more than 10 minutes, evoking pleasant connections to early Radiohead with its amazing melodies and its transitions between hard and soft. Track 4 “Never Be The Same” is a nice acoustic rock song with such bittersweet feelings, painting an old human experience in a new musical way. Track 5 “If In Trouble” brings the worthy flavors of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” to the release with its amazing collection of instruments along with spastic transitions into movements, lined up one after another. Track 8 “Lu Nan Jen” is by far my favorite song on the release, with the music flowing in between the dreary verses and the glossily epic choruses that bring such a catharsis near the end of the album. Track 10 “Run Away” closes the album on the melancholy note that it presented early on, urging listeners to “keep on running away.” Sweetbleeders sure ran away with this album, pouring heart and soul into the composition, the instrumentation, and the varying dynamics; they bring out such bittersweet feelings by gradually shading in and out the subtle melodies.

At first glance from the CD art, I thought the music contained inside would be terrible. This is clearly an instance of “don’t judge an album by its cover,” because the tracks were loaded with some of the best tracks I have heard in a while. Filled to the brim with an eclectic mix of shoegaze and soul, peace and power, rhythm and restlessness, Marshall Star’s Cosmos is a winner. From the first track “Goodbye Truly,” I was presented with a taste of vocalist Mandy Bright’s powerful breath competing with the complex, noisy layers of post-punk sound, and I knew that there were going to be some gems on the recording. Track 4 “The Pleasure Seekers” eerily reminds me with its desolate lyrics and its heavy synth-pop beat of Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of These).” Track 12, unlisted on the recording (but elsewhere as “Take Me”) is a frantically-paced mixed of dissonance and heavy drums along with Mandy’s sweet voice. The best track on the album, of course, is track 2 “Hopes And Aspirations,” which sounds a bit like Cocteau Twins, but without Elizabeth Frazer’s dull vocal performance. Instead, with the bright and layered wall of noisy melodies, we are given a chance to witness the tour de force of Mandy’s vocals coupled with a powerful marching beat. The aggressive lyrics “got my hopes and aspirations driving me insane” reflects perfectly the maddening movement of such a beautiful track. All I can hope for is for listeners to look past the artwork, and to fully immerse into this album, especially into the more manic tracks.

Luthea Salom’s album Sunbeam Surrounded By Winter is a rather agreeable excursion into light acoustic rock. Singing and playing guitar throughout the whole album, Luthea presents a generous serving of listenable music. Using simple melodies and simple lyrics, she paints a nuanced picture of what pop can be. The music in this collection is very well-mixed and mastered, and sounds nice and clear. My one gripe with this album is that the only track that truly stands out is the cover of Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” (which is, in itself, quite well-done). The only other track that defines itself apart from the others is “Dragonfly.” Unfortunately, these two songs occupy tracks 2 and 3, respectively, of the CD. The end result is that the more mediocre songs drag all the way until the end. This release contains a nice collection of well-done pop acoustic, and it’s worth a listen for anyone who is a fan of this genre, but I believe out of personal taste that the single Rebel Rebel is probably a better deal.

Duo from Brooklyn, Jeremy Earl & Christian DeRoeck bring barren lo-fi indie-folk recordings alive with catchy melodies, playful lyrics as both boys sing their hick hearts out. Great line in track 5 Silence is Golden “Love takes time and time takes money. Love takes lots and lots of money.” This is a re-release of a previous 2005 cassette sold from their Fuck-It Tapes label (which also released Raccoo-oo-oon, Magik Markers, Wooden Wand). Most tracks are acoustic, and when drums are added, they are minimal. Falsetto warning! Slow tempo ballads and live recordings make each track unique like the distorted screaming vocals on God Hates The Faithless (# 7) & electric guitar whines on instrumental In The Woods (# 11).

–johnny darko

Split Seattle dual-duo 7-Inch with the heavy gritty industrial strength drone of Sparkle Girl (Kurt D, & Jim E.) on the A side. Their track Hexis fuzzes out to near silence like explosions in space breaking the needle with such heavily distorted bass shaking and vibrating in your chest. A ghastly snowstorm of metal chains and barbed wire to then just end abruptly. Side B is Slicing Grandpa playing a stoner doom-ish hypnotic rawk track. Lo-fi recording and experimental sounds keep it real and out of the any metal genre, but you won’t get a sense of their true sound from this track. I still like it.

This is a 300 limited pressing re-release of a 1993 album featuring the duo from Seattle: Slicing (guitar, vocals) & Grandpa (drums). Noise trash fuzzy forgot what we did last night anger inspired happy holocaust mesh of surprisingly ear-friendly experimental music. The high pitch feedback isn’t as abrasive as say Yellow Swans, and you can still hear rock influence on this 7”. Side one starts out as a more drone-y experimental minimalist piece with a solemn march beat, but ends up with a rock sound, while side two begins as a rough live rock recording that slowly becomes more experimental ending with freak-out screams and glorious feed for your spine.
-johnny darko