Visualtraveling - 'Holy Cow'

Each Other - Taking Trips

 (Self Released/Prison Art, 2011/2012)

It seems appropriate somehow that the day I posted this about the band Long Long Long is the day I discovered Long Long Long broke up.  That's my life, it feels like.  Fortunately, that same day is the day that I discovered Each Other which in a lot of ways is just Long Long Long 2.  I hope Each Other is okay with me describing them that way.  They obviously are sharing some band members (I'm not one to worry about who, specifically) and a lot of what I said about Long Long Long can be said about Each Other (mostly that they're awesome).  And, if I may, I think the name "Each Other" is a step up name-wise.  Taking Trips is their delicious EP length introduction, initially self-released in October of last year or something like that and now reissued on cassette by Prison Art.  Here in Providenceland things are just starting to warm up and Taking Trips is my jam for sun sparkling goodness.  Every track is good, but if you're listening to "Looking Lapsed," the album opener, and you aren't smitten by the disjointed guitar breakdown that comes in at 1:01, you are legally dead.  Or your ears are in error.  Bury yourself in a river or under six feet of dirt.  There is nothing in this life for you.  Anyway...here's hoping that Each Other weathers the storm of being a band for a lot longer than (ironically) Long Long Long.  They deserve yours and everyone else's ears and hearts and dancing legs: come to Providence please, I love you!

"SOLIPSIST" by Andrew Thomas Huang

Amazing, and weird.

Long Long Long - Everything

And by everything I mean everything: their entire discography (which, admittedly, isn't overwhelmingly huge).  It's all available on their Bandcamp page.  You don't have to read any further, really, you don't.  But if you are, if you're still reading here and wondering, what's the deal here? well, I'm on one of my overly-excited, potentially-hyperbolic excitement sprees.  I can admit it, I've over-hyped things in the past.  Am I ashamed of it?  Maybe a little bit.  I'm pretty sure this is different though.  And if you're a little hesitant, fine--you should be.  I don't care though.  In the end, if you're head-over-heels like I am or if you simply have to admit, yea, they are pretty good, it makes no difference to me.  If you're still reading, why aren't you listening?  I'm streaming everything below.  Seriously, listen all the way through a song at least.  Sounds kind of like Women, huh.  There is no way to avoid that comparison, as much as I want to (RIP, Chris Reimer, I'm still frowning over the news...)  (--They're even Canadian.)  The important thing is that the music stands on its own.  Long Long Long isn't a derivative or a replacement, they're a genuinely talented band writing some really, really great songs.  And that's something I feel like I've been missing a lot lately: really good songs.  I'll probably regret posting this later.  But there is another part of me, the part that's been listening only to Long Long Long for the last few days straight, that doubts it.  I haven't even said why I like it.  "What it sounds like."  Seems like a mute point.  You have ears (I'm assuming); push play (it's the larger triangle shape).

2011: Still Glittering, Pt. 2

Anders Hana - Dead Clubbing

(Drid Machine Records, 2011)

Anders Hana is the "Ha" in MoHa! and Dead Clubbing, his single-sided debut LP is, well, it's gorgeous--perfect even.  Six intense and gritty machinations, each with perilously gridlocked percussion set in looped propulsions, destined to fall off their prescribed track. 



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Dead Neanderthals - We Are Dead Neanderthals

(Self Released, 2011)

If you're a fan of Anders Hana or MoHa! you'll find a lot to like about Dead Neanderthals.  Operating most often in controlled (or barely controlled) bouts of noise jazz and free rock, the duo (on drums and saxophone) have put out three violently delicious 3" CDs, two of which came out last year (including We Are Dead Neanderthals), and all of which are downloadable on their Bandcamp page (which also features their newest 10", a mind-bashing endurance test for the sadomasochists among us).  Did I mention that Dead Neanderthals alerted me to Anders Hana's Dead Clubbing?  Thanks Dead Neanderthals!



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Zac Nelson - Sound a Sleep Sound

(Bathetic, 2011)

I hate this album cover so much, you better believe this album is amazing.  Otherwise I wouldn't be posting this stupid thing on FG.  Providing something of a reprieve from the pummel-heavy obliterations of Anders Hana and Dead Neanderthals, Nelson's work here is lush and mesmerizing, but in some ways no less chaotic.  Sound a Sleep Sound is brilliantly flowing, scattered electronics in the same solar system as acts like Caboladies and Shark's Teeth.  The A side, "Cloud Mine," is pretty much perfect.  Nelson is pretty prolific and all over the place stylistically as well, on other releases, but always really good.  It's just, this cover sucks so bad...

Goodness

Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson, Peter Evans - Electric Fruit

(Thirsty Ear, 2011)

Contemporary jazz--the good stuff--the stuff that peels itself apart limb from limb, lurching and creaking, banking towards every wall at once before reverse-cohering, enmeshing into some glottal lip-purse; the kind of stuff hell-bent on engining forward, pushing, ever pushing, finding the boundaries (are there pushable boundaries anymore?) that we don't even know exist and making beautiful war with them--contemporary, or should I say free--no, lets say forward-thinking, avant garde: this album in there somewhere, these players--Mary Halvorson with her lightly dissonant strumming and plucking, Weasel Walter with his machine-gun percussion, cluttering, Peter Evans trumpeting bursts flitting up and down the scale--are of that kind, and Electric Fruit, then, is one of the more enjoyable free jazz--or whatever--albums that I've heard lately.  The interplay here is as playful as it is disorienting, dismantling and destructive.  A really wonderful record from three of my favorite players.

Viodre - Interpol Alchemi

(Hospital Productions, 2011)

Like death, or like Graham Lambkin had he swallowed a microphone for Amateur Doubles (maybe he did) and instead of simply driving his Honda patiently (or whatever it is he did) decided instead to drive the thing through a building, then drove it through a crowd of zombies, then drove it into an ocean of lava, or like pulling apart, cord and wire by cord and wire, the instruments and amplifiers of doom metal band mid-set, or like recording and listening to the hellish mullings of sediment and magma stretching together and twisting apart, the elements of that monumental taffy machine at work below our feet, or like John Wiese’s essential masterwork, Soft Punk, if it were Soft Doom, or like, though hopefully not—and as I’ve already stated—death: that’s what it’s like for me when I’m listening to Interpol Alchemi.

"Incon, Ceph."


"Far surface delir"

U.S. Girls - U.S. Girls on KRAAK

(KRAAK, 2011)

I've never been able to get into U.S. Girls, though I've wanted to.  Megan Remy's project felt like the female counterpart to San Francisco's The Hospitals (RIP) in some ways, which was always a really exciting prospect.  Previous releases though, while interestingly caustic, have been somehow (and it's hard to describe why exactly) just not quite enjoyable enough for repeated listens.  U.S. Girls on KRAAK, however, finds Remy's U.S. Girls project really finding its feet, offering squawk and squalor in addition to hooks and a really bizarre, kind of wonderfully terrible cover of R&B classic, "The Boy Is Mine."  And it makes me so happy because I've expected that Remy had this record in her, after listening to her previous work, and it really is really good.  Certainly worth your time.

Pierrot Lunaire - Turn Back the Hands of Time / Lantern Floating Vessel

(Hooker Vision / Fadeaway Tapes, 2011)

Of all the 2011 that I’ve heard now in 2012, Pierrot Lunaire’s two cassettes, Turn Back the Hands of Time and Latern Floating Vessel, have wowed me most. He released another 2011 tape too, Exercise in Futility, but I haven’t listened to that one yet. But I will. I will listen to any- and everything I can find from him (including the new Hooker Vision 7”). Strictly on the basis of these two tape being, well, so weird and weirdly amazing. A mix of blurred vocals, tape manipulation and distorted saxophone, Pierrot Lunaire sounds (particularly on TBtHoT) like The Caretaker’s An Empty Bliss if it were wonkier and infused with the out-jazz dissonance/melancholy of Sean McCann. Which means (if you are familiar with those references—and you should be) it’s really really really really really good, which in turn means that it more than good.

from Turn Back the Hands of Time:


from Exercise in Futility:

2011: Still Glittering...(Pt. 1)

Balkans - Balkans

(Double Phantom, 2011)

For those with This Is It-era Strokes still on rotation, here's a solid alternate (thanks Olive-Music).


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Flossin - White Anaconda and the Rainbow Boa

(Overlap, 2011)

What?! Zach Hill, Matmos, Christopher Willits (and two other guys) made a record of cluttery, blustery awesomeness? Many thanks, Anti-Gravity Bunny.


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Brian Grainger - Forcefield

(Milieu Music, 2011)

Milky-sweet, atmospheric, attention-worthy drone action from Mr. Grainger, a clearly underrated (and insanely prolific) experimental mastermind (thanks J. Davenport).

Jowita Wyszomirska