TAPE PISS

WORLD OF FLESH.

2011-08-03T18:14:00.000-07:00

Flesh World's demo tape last year was a good introduction to one of the only hardcore bands left in this country worth shit. While being a perfect distillation of teenage restraint and release, it still came across as sounding a little derivative of their influences (‘Flag, Void). Planned Obscelence is a tape by a band who are walking around in their own boots, kicking in skulls left n’ right in ‘em. Like any classic HC record, the intro of Obselence perfectly sets the tone for the violence that is going to ensue. The tracks that FW rip through perfectly combine HC moves with total noise annihilation. The first track of the B-side employs the latter to ear-splitting excellence. This element might be due in part to lineup changes since the demo resulting in Pathetic Human, Liam Haryono, taking over bass duties. As perfectly as the tape starts, closer 'Fuck Time' is an excellent 80's DC vibed conclusion. I caught their recent return show after a lengthy break and can confirm they are one of the best hardcore bands in Asstralia or anywhere else at the moment. Recorded and released by Insurgent, Zinger and good bloke, Western Smith on the Pederast Prophet subsidiary. Essential listening for 2011.

BIG YELLOW JOINT.

2011-08-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

This split on the consistently satisfying Goaty Tapes label is my first introduction to both of these proponents of modern guitar-driven muzak. Banana Head sees label dude, Zully Adler involved in simple, yet completely engaging guitar-driven reverberations that border on the psychedelic. ‘Poison Chain’ is unhinged ecstasy, ‘Ruidhead’ is a similarly captivating listen. There is no chorus or implicit structure in either of these, just shortlived existence. It is obvious this guy has spent some serious time with Lambkin, Goss n’ Harris in the past as well as the sounds excreted by NNF over the last few years. The recording process employed by Banana Head is imperative to the project's success, the low fidelity perfectly accentuates the reverb and never allows the vocals to become overbearing. This kind’ve formula could get stale if not executed with the variety and originality with which Adler executes the songs. Instead, Banana Head gets two flippers up from me.

The Phantom Payn side caught me off guard with it’s somewhat slicker production. From what I can tell this is one guy plucking away while he croons over the top, occasionally there are overdubs but they are never conspicuously dominant. PP owes a heavy indebtedness to VU/Reed damage here, but maintains more of a down-home vibe if that makes any sense to you (whatever, it makes sense to me). The disappointingly brief ‘Girl On The Beach’ is my pick of the lot, as it obscures the dominant geet for creepy Argento appropriate keys. To be honest I didn’t really get into the PP side heaps. Having said that, I don’t really listen to this kinda guff often, so maybe I’m outta touch. As with every other Goaty tape I’ve wrapped my peepers around, this split would be more appropriate hanging in a gallery than sitting amidst discarded mandarin peel next to my stereo.

VILLAGE OF H

2011-06-09T06:20:00.000-07:00

Village Of H is the most recent offering to be laid at the sacred altar of Spanish Magic. Steeped in secrecy, R.Duncan maintains close connection with hibernating Sydney group, Castings. According to what little information is listed on the one-third of a cover this thing comes cloaked in, the sources for R.Duncan’s sound are TAPE, FEEDBACK and SYNTH. While I don’t doubt the use of the first two, it is the use and variety of synths used throughout Village that is most noticeable. At times R.Duncan uses his electronic doo-dads for nefarious harshness, at others sparse minimalism. But its on the opening track and two concluding tracks where Duncan's sound is at its best. On these slices, Duncan breathes electronic life into the corpse of Raymond Scott and trots him around to make memorable experimental ditties that wouldn’t be out of place between classics in the R. Scott lexicon like “Twilight In Turkey” and “Night And Day”. If there is anything that synth-based music needs in 2011, it is people making excellent and original sounds like this. Although bearing the Spanish Magic name, Village Of H is dangerously close to being a private press obscurity with its lack of track listing, members or much discernible information at all. Lucky for slobbering synth nerds, this one is out there waiting to be heard.

BASH A BIBLE

2011-06-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

This release from last year on US label Goaty Tapes may be one of the last from now-defunct Sydney duo Vincent Over The Sink. VOTS, made up of Matthew Hopkins (NOTV, Hochman & Hopkins) and Christopher Schueller, have spent their relatively enduring 9-year existence in virtual obscurity. The first section of Bible Bashers' A-side evokes a stripped-pop sound similar to that of The Shadow Ring, mostly comprised of acoustic guitar with flashes of trumpet, electronics and other welcome intrusions. The nod to Graham Lambkin and co. isn't without basis, VOTS' epitaph release, Dust Studies was released earlier this year on Lambkin's Kye imprint. The tape’s name becomes appropriate as the tolling keys of the second piece take on an almost religious groove. The second side, titled Celestial Cigar, is similarly made up of several short songs that assume varied guises while still maintaining a consistent sound throughout. I assume much of Vincent Over The Sink’s sounds are improvised, but they are no less captivating for this. Rather, they take on a resulting sheen of distressed psychedelia. One of the best tapes of last year, this year and next year.

ORANJ PUNJABI.

2011-06-07T23:15:00.001-07:00

Under Oranj Punjabi, Fjorn Butler has been making beautiful, musique concrete inspired reverberations for a few years now. Despite the longevity of the project only one release, 2008’s self-titled cassette, has come to fruition previously. Empty Land opens with “Lungs”, a wavering delayed haze in which infantile animal coo’s end up dominating the effected electronics. “Orphans, Lullaby, Lounge Music” is stripped down tweet n’ hum. The appropriately titled “Deep Forest Throat” is delayed calls drifting through a tangle of tape manipulation. The slow-moving end of DFT is one of the best moments on Empty Lands. “H/N#2” sounds like reel-to-reels being solidly abused with a nice strung-out chant underneath, another of the tape’s highlights. The final, untitled track goes from tape screech to soothing ambience before wrapping up. All of the tracks on Empty Lands go through various mutations before concluding, something of a rarity in contrast to the usual stagnancy of noise releases. The best thing about Oranj Punjabi is the fact that she is never overtly harsh and lets the good shit bleed through. The effort that has gone into the presentation of this tape should be noted too; the first batch came packaged in psychedelic painted boxes w/ a four-panel inlay of Butler’s collage work. This is the first release for the newly anointed Melbourne label, Tristes Tropiques, run by the same guy who was behind the now defunct Rhizome label.

BLEAK, BLACK N' BLOTTO.

2011-06-07T23:04:00.000-07:00

Krystoffkrvstoffiston is the confused title under which the unholy pairing of Christopher LG Hill and Simon Taylor make bleak n’ blackened sound. The opening ritual of Crumbling Nationss/Toad Babylon lurches into lyf with some harsh static before vocal belchings and incantations drift out over the top. The ensuing noise comes in delayed waves, creating a nice meld ov feedback and delayed vocals. Pleasant ambiance follows before everything becomes further engulfed in total darkness. The flip starts with strained gutterations and chiming bells before continuing in much the same vein as the first. Both sides are buried under six-feet of feedback and tape hiss and couldn’t sound better without it. There is a fog of mystery that surrounds Krystkrvstoff, often making it difficult to place the origin of each sound. If anything, this just proves they are successful at what they’re doing. Hill’s Bunyip Trax label on which this was issued is as elusive as the mythical beast itself. This and BT’s other 20 or so releases are worth searching for if you have the patience and means to do so.

SICK CUNTS

2011-04-24T23:29:00.000-07:00

The Tough Troubles full length cassette is called Illnesses. The second band in recent memory which can claim lineage back to Perth, a small cultural outpost in the remote Western Australian desert state, with a concept album based on poor immune function. This band is based in London, a city with many, many people on a dirty old river in Englandtown, and as such will have spent a great deal of time soaking in the same diseased brine as did the podiatry students and bookkeepers who first thew down their pencils and declared themselves "goth" many, many years ago. In fact, this cassette could be heard as a 101 class in dark UK post punk, from the creepier synth sampling to the minimal cold wave, overwhelmingly goth in feel and a very accomplished collection of songs and sounds. Accomplished? Jeez... what I meant is these cunts are sick and this tape is sick.

ALL SCREWED UP

2011-04-24T21:20:00.001-07:00

The Haters / Screwtape split tape.
Credit to Thomas Gun, Melbourne musicologist of vile sounds, contributor to Tape Piss, label manager of the Magik Crowbar, tunemaker of the Psychward, and dedicated Screwtape fanatic. Working very litle and studying very much has depleted both my finances and my desire to hear new music, but at the urge of Thomas I grabbed a copy of this cassette when it was left at the store by Mr. Screwtape for purposes of proliferation amongst the more masochistic manhating futurists that scrape their way through the piss troughs of modern noise music.
The challenge of attempting to discuss music like Screwtape is welcome here. I listen to his music, and the music of his psychotic peers like The Haters, much in the same way that I listen to YDI or Alber Ayler. For function. An exercise of agitating the environment I'm in, agitating the mind. The valuable utility at keeping the mind in an active state while I'm not reading, and reading for me is the most important activity. A blast of deathly black coffee: sharpen the instincts, provocation of unreason.
At it's worst, music like that found on this tape can blither impersonal paranoid bleatings of abject misery that serve to distract and disengage one's attention from the sound to the mental state of the artist, but Screwtape and The Haters both deliver refined and well studied attempts of malevolence towards weak and frail instincts of passivity and decomposition on each side, howling and grating and eviscerating of form.
This potent energy directed into making music that is unlistenable in the company of other people, fostering solitude, could certainly be pictured as soundtracking horrific excesses of intoxicated self abuse or bizarre rituals of misanthropic disgust. I am evidently not the ideal audience. I use it simply to harness energy to take a break from reading 'On The Genealogy Of Morality' and wash dishes that have grown colonies. The disturbance of placidity, a little blood in the veins after sitting still and staring at a page for an hour, a cleaner kitchen: all rewards from a round in the player of this horrible, disfigured music. Do you hear me? This is music to wash dishes to. Thankyou, Screwtape, The Haters and Tommy Gun, for the holocaust of a society of fungus in my kitchen sink and a hygeinic food preparation area.

REGOLITH VOLUME ONE

2011-04-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

UV played two excellent shows in Minneapolis last year. The first was with Formaldehyde Junkies and Condominium, both bands kicking around in the upper echelon of the "North American hardcore movement", and the second was at a sports bar with The Blind Shake. After the sports bar show we swapped records with Blind Shake (who I only knew from a ripping collaboration with the ancient venerable guitar man Michael Yonkers), who played an excellent set of pragmatic "North American hard psych rock".
Overall, the value of a compilation tape intended to celebrate the achievements of a city that you don't live in is yours to discern in the unlikely event that you ever find this cassette - my intent with this is simply to draw your attention to the following:
1. This tape features a scattering of bland indie rock tracks from people who live in their city. It is far from offensively bland, but also far from notable.
2. The best track is by the Blind Shake, and my description of them in the opening paragraph is apt.
3. The other song of note is by Gary War, a man who plays "North American synth psych cult drone penis" music. I have long championed the creativity of Mr. War, and in SSEX I articulated that his music evoked images of futuristic (by the standards of movies from the 1980's) disco scenes where many titted ladies fondle the erogenous chutes of green tentacled blobs. On this tape, he is letting it all hang out with Velvet Davenport and Ariel Pink in a track called 'Surfer Girl'. Not the Beach Boys song and the audacity of naming a song this is not matched by it's quality - but a decent attempt.

SECLET LITES

2011-04-23T01:07:00.000-07:00

Sean Bailey's LAKES continue to release immortal recordings of a very unique vision - this is his most recent tape and the precursor to the excellent new WINTERS BLADE LP. I'm going to spend much of the next week trying to write about that record so I'm gonna save the hyperbole.
Who before has attempted to combine Discharge, Death In June, Legendary Pink Dots and Current 93? Gloomy post-punk triumph of the will. Another excellent Inverted Crux release to soundtrack Melbourne winter and world financial hilarity.

CRIME SPREE

2011-04-23T00:43:00.001-07:00

This is an unreleased cassette tape from Sydney hardcore band Crime Spree.
Prior to playing in Taipan, Sydney hardcore's enfant terribles, Mike was in this band. One of the best shows Straightjacket Nation played in Sydney was in a gallery space down the street from the old Paint It Black in 2007. Crime Spree also played. Aside from a succession of classic hateful hardcore songs, their cover of 'Nothing' is memorable as the only time I'd seen a band play an NA cover well. There was something about the combination of being in Sydney, which more than any spot of land in the world makes me feel like life was sitting back and watching me bleed, and the room full of people who looked desperate and pissed. Very memorable set for more reasons than just an effective NA cover: Crime Spree had a very unhinged presentation, they were constantly falling in and out of lockstep, and Mike was then and continues to be a very imposing hardcore vocalist. Listening to this tape today, it stands up over time and I'm sure if it was released then they would have made way more of an impact.
Anyhow, after getting this tape, I hung out with Mike outside a BBQ that AVO played in Sydney, and eventually got in touch after I listened to it and interviewed him for Distort. However, they broke up and the interview sat on my computer for years. Now:

Tell us a little about the members of the band, what you do with your life, work, school, church, crime, etc.
Sharky - Bass and failing to turn up for shows. Spends heaps of time fishing or surfing, or dissappearing into the bush or outback or tropics or something for ages at a time for some reason or other. Shark works as a boat builer for some phycho Polish guy, who thinks that producing the porn star who has the world gang bang record as a great national achievement for Poland. Sharky also spent thousands of dollars on hair regrowth treatment, then shaved his head a few months later.
Mike - Vocals, pretty good at making an idiot of myself too. Try to study in my spare time, mostly history/politics/religion/literature of Eastern Europe/Central Asia/former USSR, dunno why I find it interesting, might also be something ingrained by my parents and grandparents. Work as a sheetmetal worker/welder, making aircraft components and also more recently heavy ground equipment for airports.
Chris - Guitar, watches too many cartoons, reads too many comics. Also draws way too many comics. Also, lots of video games, and dreaming up weird ideas. Skating. What goes on in his head is a kinda a mystery. I dunno where he's working right now, been bouncing round various factories and shit lately.
James - Drummer. He also plays drums or bass in about 50 other bands. Spends his time riding dirtbikes and stuff like that. Just quit his job as a post contractor, now does sound and lighting for big concerts and sports events and drives rockstars around and shit like that.
Don't think anyone in the band goes to church, don't even know if anyone’s ever been, I've been kinda been interested in going and looking at a few, religion is a massive part in alot of people's desires and interactions with others around them, some people seem really sincere about it all, wouldn't mind knowing how many of these people there are compared to the heaps that are doing it out of habit/herd mentality. Sharky has the worst criminal record out of the whole band, which is funny, cause he is probably the best behaved, or at least, does alot less dumb shit than me or Chris, he had a string of real genuine in the wrong place at the wrong time kinda things happen to him.

Crime Spree have been around for years, right? You seem to have done very little in that time (in terms of recordings / tours), but part of the appeal of the band is the fact you're sitting on such a killer set of songs, anyhow what's the history of the band, how did you all meet, and why the fuck have you not recorded a demo?

Yeah, coming up on 4 years since we first played, we taught James the songs about half an hour before hand. We've recorded two tapes, Neither has seen the light of day, one the playing was all pretty bad, half the band was fried on acid, had migraines, etc. The other we just did the other night and is decent, will be out soon. I went to school with Chris, he knew Sharky from his old high school, we started jamming with a few drummers, first this dickhead, Kent, then another guy, Brian who was a good guy and good drummer but heaps flaky. I'd been friends with James for a few years, from shows and other mutual friends, so we got him to drum. We haven't recorded properly due to commitments with other bands, work, slackness, bad habits, mismanaging money, and other excuses that don't really count for shit.

So tell us about the band name... from talking to you Michael briefly at shows and shit you seem like a bunch of loose cunts that get kicks outta petty vandalism.

Yeah, when we were starting we were all around 16 or 17, "band practise" was a weak pretext for going around to Sharky's house, getting drunk with a bunch of sketchy cunts and wrecking up a lot of stuff, getting in fights with adults and stuff, not just in his area but everywhere it started to happen, factories and building sites probably got it the worst, it got to the point of being ridiculous, they ended up having a special security car around the main streets near Sharky's place, we thought Crimespree was a fitting name. Dumb stuff.

Talk a little about living in Sydney... at times it's had both the best and worst bands in Australia, but it's such a fucking dreary shithole, I hated living there and I was only there a month... what's your feelings on punk and Sydney and what makes it breed such killer bands (from BIRDMAN to X to 3FD to fucken CRIME SPREE). What records do you think epitomise the Sydney sound?
RIP Ian Rilen.
I've never lived outside of Sydney, so I've nothing to really gauge it against in terms of a place to live. I've spent a bit of time when I was in highschool in Wollongong and Newcastle, they're pretty fucking bleak, but I used to hang out with some scumbags so that might explain it more. People in Melbourne seem more polite or something, not in terms of any music scene, but just most people, but I'm still not too sure. Sydney is such a sprawling place that you have almost alot of different smaller cities, which means a wider set of experience, ideas, lifestyles, which I reckon is pretty cool. Probably also the reason for so many good bands. This is gonna maybe sound kinda fucked, but also the other day, a friend pointed out that there's not much of an arty kinda scene in Sydney as opposed to say, Melbourne, so people with fresher ideas still gravitate towards punk/hardcore, rather than in other places, where outside of a few standout bands, it's alot dumber and more of a formula or something?
Records that define Sydney for me (not nescessarily my favorites):
Beaches: Massappeal - Nobody Likes a Thinker
Suburbs - Hardons - Dickcheese, Nintendo Police - I Suggest We Don't Fuck Around, the Violent Hornsby Straightedge comp, 3FD side of the Elbow Deep split, cause they all sound like smartarse little shits, which I suppose is what hardcore punk is/was.
City - Rocks - Combat Zone, Radio Birdman - Radios Appear.

Michael, you talked a little about how you wanted to start a cult with me, because this zine is partially about cults (well, at least talking about what makes people so susceptible to herd mentalities), could you talk about the cult a little?

Someone once explained to me this theory that existence and space and I guess time is cyclical, not linear and that eventually, after every thing breaks down or is destroyed or whatever, all the atoms that made up our world, or even the universe, as much as is in our frame of reference will rearrange themselves to reform basically everything that exist now, again. So I thought that you could start some cult, about having some kind of infinite knowledge of time and space bestowed upon you by some divine voice or whatever, and that you can build some time proof capsule, and you would gladly take people's money/valuables/cool stuff, and save it for them when their life comes round a second time, so they won't have to work hard or anything. I guess it's more of a scam or a grift, but I liked the idea of it, cause it preys on people's sense of massive greed mostly, and fuck those people. I kinda abandoned it, cause it is long winded to explain, and doesn't peddle a bunch of mysticism and easy answers to deep questions that other cults do, which suck in people who are more spiritually disconnected or lost or something? Rather than the greedy.

Back to the band, tell us a little about the songs you have written, what are they about? Do you have any lyrics I could print, or do you wanna talk about the songs, like what made them happen, what headspace you need to get into write them, any stories attached to particular songs, etc.
A lot of the early songs are pretty rubbish, telling society to fuck off, anti-authority/boss kinda stuff, songs about working shit jobs and things like that, some of the songs about work, Sharky wrote the lyrics to. Slowly replacing those songs or rewriting the lyrics, I'm 21 now, I can't really some of the shit I wrote when I was 16 with that much conviction. There's a couple of more political songs, one's on foreign policy of Western countries, but not in the usual vein of being against our interference in other people's affairs, but rather the lack of support for people meant to be our friends or allies or whatever who are suffering, and only see help when we stand to gain by it.
The last few songs have been about rabid consumption by people my age, always thought this was a cliche kinda topic, but it has infuriated me lately, one was inspired by driving through Kings Cross one night, all these people devoid of any substance trying to fuck each other, fight each other and fuck themselves up as much as possible, fuck that place, burn it down. For this song I actually tried to get into a heaps conservative, moralistic kinda head space, which was weird, you know, pain the whole place like a Sodom and Gomorrah or whatever?

Finally, what's coming up with the band? Any plans worth discussing?
We've got a tape done, be out soon, we were set to record properly, then Sharky got 18 stiches in his hand and everything got derailed. Probably only one show left this year, there are plenty of plans, but I will probably look like a liar, cause they probably won't happen. Thanks for the interview.

MUERTE A LA MUERTE

2011-04-23T00:10:00.001-07:00

This demo came from Spain with a note saying things like "we are just four unbalanced persons" and "we past the thirties but we still believe in hardcore".
Unbalanced is a perfect word for this bizarre sounding mess. The vocals dominate but they're delivered in this really droll manner and overloaded with echo and underneath the band delivers a very tightly delivered but thin sounding approximation of early LA hardcore punk. It's so odd and unsettling for reasons much like those that drew me to listen to this music in the first place. Before I gave a shit about songs, I just liked how entirely remote and fucked up it sounded, and this sounds REAL FUCKED UP. Ask me if it's memorable in a couple weeks, sure! Right now it beats any new band riffing on stolen Infest or Oi or whatever is en vogue...
Now, the B side of the tape features a really disgusting dismemberment of a DYS song, chopped and skrewed. No shit. Spanish hardcore found cough syrup.
Try telling someone that DJ Skrew is alive and well in Spain chopping up old Boston hardcore records... Listen to this and then listen to Cadillacs on 22s. Slllllllllllllllow.

ONE VOICE

2011-04-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

It was a real trip to find this tape today after cleaning out my shelf.
Pete Sampson (Bill Shankley) lent me this tape about a year ago (mate, I will finally get it back to you!) and I moved shortly after this and thought it was lost til today!
Joel from Thinking Positive (One Voice fanzine and The Pact guitar player) released this compilation in 1998.
Some fun facts:
1. It's an Australian hardcore compilation with 14 bands on it, 5 from Wollongong which gives you some indication of how insanely active people were in that town at the time. There were shows every weekend up and down the coast, and the best were always in Wollongong. Nobody represented outside of NSW and 3 bands from Victoria. Two of the bands had girls in them. Three of the bands had Luke Crew in them. Two of the bands had B.E. in them. Two of the bands had me in them. Every band has 3 songs except TBK, who get bonus tracks at the end.
2. There were probably only about 50 copies of this tape in existence, and I lost my copy which makes finding another copy very unlikely. If you see it, send me a copy.
3. The whole tape is dedicated to Forward Defence, a band that made a massive impact in NSW at the time. Their last show was at a pub in Sydney called the Iron Duke, and about 10 of us travelled from Wollongong for the show and had a circle pit outside because we were too young to be let in. They were so representative of everything great about Australian hardcore at that time - listening to their tunes that run from power violence to youth crew to some weird kinda ska polka shit and even proto-nu metal funk jams on the poorly mastered (1 track!) but nonetheless excellent Snapshot discography CD is an educational experience for any aspiring Australian hardcore historian.
4. Every band seems to have a cover here - Youth Of Today, Manliftingbanner, Slapshot, Project X, Agnostic Front, Infest, SOA, Chain of Strength, Minor Threat, Voorhees and Cro-Mags get molested.
5. The sound quality is generally abysmal. Nobody knew fuck all about mastering things back then and the cost of getting this mastered for a kid in high school pre-digital age would have been prohibitive. For people who drink tape piss, this will make sense, sound nerds beware.
6. There are two bands with saxophones, one ska, and the styles range from youth crew to "new school" as it was referred to at the time, but the dominant style is an aproximation of the glut of Lost & Found classic hardcore bootleg CDs that were readily available in Australia at the time. Pre-internet hardcore in Australia in the 1990's was a strange time - compilations like this would never happen today.
7. The hardcore band I played with when I was 14-15 is on this tape. Two Right Hands. We are one of the bands with saxophone.
8. Bleeding Face remain one of the most convincingly weird, scary and violent bands that this country has ever seen.
9. The liner notes mention a second live compilation. Not sure how far he got with it but I wonder what shit Joel has put away?!
10. Best live banter? "Hey, I wanna do the Cro-Mags, but you'll have to convince the fellas" - Damien of Grim Reality
Fuck, I'll write more about this shit in Distort. A heads up.

STAB NATION RISING

2011-04-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

Stab are a band that mine the late 80’s / 90’s hardcore sound, specifically bands like Ripcord in the UK, No Comment in the US. One notable difference between Stab and the majority of bands that are currently stripping the marrow from the boneyard of power violence and hard edge fast hardcore is the emphasis they put on their lyrics. While many modern bands opt for clever graphic design use to associate their apt use of power violence imagery and sound, there aren’t too many that are up front with left wing speak in hardcore 2011.
I am generally indifferent to the development of apolitical hardcore and the decline of leftist politics. However, I think that it is far too easy for modern bands to be cynical and offer some kind of vaguely detached political beliefs to sell their false anger as having something with weight behind it, whether this be left or right wing. At some point the hip-hop sentiment of keeping it real became so entwined with hardcore that if there is one sentiment that characterizes the sentiments of much modern hardcore music / writing it would be some kind of vague sympathy for the “real”. For most people, keeping it real means being intelligible to the herd instincts of modern hardcore, being vaguely aggressive, reasonably unreasonable, responsibly irresponsible, in short, having little substance behind your behavior or ideas but being boldly cynical enough to recognize this and glorifying it as honest and real. The result can make for excellent herdcore, certainly, but the gamble here is astronomically high! The vast result is laughable and droll. Those without talent or a work ethic will rely on the luck of the roll.
Stab are involved. They have put some work into their demo tape, more than most bands put into their first full length download. I wouldn’t give a shit either way if their music wasn’t as good as it is, of course, but this is hardcore made by people who have their heads around what makes this music work, and the result is excellent modern hardcore.

MEAN GIRLS

2011-03-31T22:40:00.000-07:00

LOWER PLENTY – MEAN

Glory to the highest host. I’m generally cautious about the hazards that come with writing about friend’s muzak. Cautious because in many cases it is more rewarding to listen beyond the presence of the author in the work. When you’re trying to write, you’re having to think about the ideas that went into it. Could you imagine being buds with Devo and trying to listen to their records without laughing about the time that Mark made you smell his finger in biology? Getting weepy when you remember how happy your mum looked when you showed her the blood on your shirt from when you all beat the school bully’s spud in with a tree branch? Could Devo sound as alien to you as it does to me?
This Devo situation is not at all analogous with experiences I’ve had with Lower Plenty members, I better clarify, but I thought I’d better introduce the piece entirely on the level, because I’m going to be saying something close to hyperbolic frothing and gnashing and slookin’ despite my proximity to ground zero.
The Lower Plenty tape, released in the Winter of 2010, is my favourite cassette from that year. Acoustic guitars are strummed confidently over waves of percussive effects and a drummer that usually beats apeman loud is restrainedly shaping them riffs with, uh, poise. Kicking through soft psychedelia and 60’s folk and downer country and then coming up with armfuls laden, a very rich and generous and open songcraft.
For reference points, I’d say imagine something that captured the dexterity of Bob Dylan, the familiarity of Paul Kelly, the rawness of Townes Van Zandt, and more recently, songwriters like Greg Ashley or Jarrod Quarrel. Some of those there are obviously pretty lazy, but unavoidably affected by biography and location.
They are cool, give them money, hire a symphony orchestra, make a tough record like Forever Changes.

LAST YEAR

2011-03-04T19:15:00.000-08:00

My favourite cassettes I obtained last year goes as follows:

Heath Moerland - Distorted Mirror Vol. 1 (Fag Tapes)
I have no idea what this cunt is doing but it is freakin' amazing. Sounds like samples of guitar, various pre-recorded tapes, internal mixer and fuck knows what else. This is really hard to explain but it is by far my favourite cassette from last year. You have to listen to it if you are interested in the unknown land in between electronic psychedelica and experimental noise. Find it on the net somewhere. Soulseek, blogs.

Noisam - Beer Bomb (Glenn Maltby)
The 'booze bomb'. 90's Sydney crust-punk that makes you want to punch brick walls. A nice sensation of unjust fury and frustration comes when pressing play. Duel vocals, simple one-two fast drum beat, some of the best riffs I've heard in this genre. This is along the lines of the Melbourne bands a few years prior, namely, Drunkard, Stand Against, etc. Local record nerd, Mark Harvey of Warsore may still have a few copies floating around.

6majik9 - You Cunt Be Serious (Alberts Basement)
A brief incite into a psychedelic journey from the guru's who summoned the unforgettable label Music Your Mind Will Love You, some loose improv bits and pieces and often periods where the players really gel well together, almost like they've jammed together at least twice a week for the last twenty years (after doing some reading, it wouldn't surprise me if that were the reality) This is a genuine artifact of what Australian bush-hippies can create after 'living music' for so long.

Cock Safari / Prehistoric Fuckin' Moron(s) (Confirmation Tapes)
An interesting one. Cock Safari has cut many excerpts up of all sorts of weird recordings. Very odd and entertaining. The Moron has a reoccurring chime sound that is looped and sounds intriguing. I feel that both sides are representative of the people creating this shit. Definitely a fave. Look out for the 6majik9 / Prehistoric Fuckin' Moron(s) split cassette I will be releasing in the next few months. A lengthier (and probably more interesting) review of this can be found below.

Profaner - Baptised in Vomit (Profaner Cult)
Fucked, butchered lo-fi black/death metal hailing from Albion, Queensland apparently. I received this cassette in hand from notorious NWOBHM worshipper and all 'round blasphemer / anti-Christ magician ov madness, Chris Fong, he definitely does no wrong. Constant bashing of the drums like he's inhumanely smashing two bits of heavy wood together down a drain, not to different from Spain's Proclamation. The vocals are pretty much one consistent vomit (successful). Sounds like it was recorded in a basement.

Frak - Electro On The Beach (Börft Records)
Got a dubbed version on recycled cassette from Mycle Treestinz aka Mycle Recycle aka Cock Safari aka Winning Schnitzel aka Carpart McKenzie. An amazing set of recordings saved from 1991 and 1992 only to be released in 2010, try and snatch this up if you're after minimalist and catchy electronic obscurity.

CASK GRINDER

2010-12-29T17:44:00.000-08:00

Originally handed out in a small amount of copies at their shows, this was subsequently bootlegged and saved from obscurity by TG at Magik Crowbar. Cask Grinder hail from NZ and play excellent noise-fucked crust/grind in much the same vein as WARSORE and DISRUPT. Raw and sloppy, just like it should be. It even finishes with what sounds like a Spicoli quote. Listen to this every morning and it will be the best five minutes of your day.

LOW LIFE

2010-12-29T17:10:00.000-08:00

Sydney band featuring some members of WHORES (heard some stuff, didn't dig it). I'm not entirely sure what Low Life are aiming for here. They represent themselves as a deadbeat punk band, but they come off sounding weak and lacking any authenticity. With titles like "Ice Attack" and "Filth + Hate" they work towards creating an image of Sydney as a post-apocalyptic, drug-addled shithole (I guess that's pretty accurate). In between shouting lines like "Harbour City gutter trash" at the end of songs, they further their point by covering everything in noise/feedback (in much the same way WHORES do). Rather than being an additional element of intimidation (as it should be), this is done to obscure the fact that the songs just aren't very interesting. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume these guys are hipsters, passive observers of the situations they describe rather than the protagonists. I was hoping for something violent and fucked up and all I got was crummy attempts at Red/Black Eye Records worship.

FAKE SOUND ROOTING

2010-08-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

COMPILATION. FAKE SOUND ROUTINE. TECHNO COMPILATION. VOLUME ONE.
Michael from the Alberts Basement label is a busy fucker. Weekly he comes to Missing Link and brings in a stack of the limited press cassette tapes he's been pressing on his own label, or the fruits of trades across the world. The tapes always look real interesting but rarely offer a discernable word to let you know a band name, label name, tape name or song name. My wallet isn't loose enough to take a gamble on something right now, and my mind isn't free enough to embrace referring to a preferred track as "the one on the blurry yellow clown photo tape", so I've been a little reticent picking one up.
Thankfully, he recommended this as a compilation of modern techno music all made on 4 track. I rolled.
What you get here is a double cassette, four bands a side, all names I've never heard of. I don't really care who is who here: as opposed to the compilation reviewed below, the compiler did not attempt to squeeze disparate styles together. There's a single vision here, and thus most every band sounds quite similar and you get a consistent listening experience.
The sound? Primarily, somewhere between industrial scum and sexless disco. I don't really have a reference point for this music. I don't want one. Thankfully, little of it evokes visions of flourescent material lit by strobes. Just tape stress, tape fuzz, tape piss.
Without a doubt, one of the best tapes I've heard this year. A+

COCK SAFARI / PREHISTORIC FUCKIN' MORON(S)

2010-08-11T04:44:00.000-07:00

Hoo-ee, here it is. This one took a good while to come out, but it’s worth the wait.
Cock Safari’s side is a 14-track melange of trash broken up with pieces of radio gaga and radio goo goo. One of the first discernible ‘tracks’, ‘Fill Her Up With Gas’, begins with a Caribbean motif before giving way to some ecstatic piano bashing. ‘Signal The Doo’ sees CS return to his 1/8th heritage to make some almost indigenous noise. What he uses to achieve this dreamtime of sound is anyone’s guess, considering his live set-up of a broken keyboard with a dildo vibrating along the top achieves the same sonic head-fuckery. ‘Cock In Bush’ is a dense clatter of junk and samples with some tribal undertones running throughout. World music recorded in the bedroom, great. ‘Footballer’s Heaven’ is a nice, albeit brief, spacey loop. The best one of the lot is the closer, ‘Hair Loss, Joint Pains, Very Tired’. The power Cock makes a cacophonous roar outta his manipulated junk on this one. These tracks are easier on the ears than last year’s We Don’t All Sniff Petrol, Fuck Off CD-R, but are no less bat shit crazy.
PFM’s side sprawler “The Light Bounces Off My Friend And Into The Eye” dates from a few years back and is a fucking corker. I heard the main reason for its inclusion was that the Moron was particularly fond of the (now deceased) synth used on this track. All tear-jerking nostalgia aside, this is one of my favourite PFM slabs so far. Opening with scratched to shit vinyl and percussive clatter accompaniment, Giza takes the listener to church with some LOUD bell thumping while manipped vinyl liquid trickles behind it.
This tape is the result of two guys digesting copious amounts of drugs and pop music and farting out their own unique variations on the theme. Highly recommended to anyone with ears.

CISTERN CORRUPT

2010-08-11T04:38:00.000-07:00

Cistern Corrupt are a three-legged beast hailing from the scum-clogged bowels of the Hunter region. The band is 2/3 composed of former Castings castoffs, who would probably rather that their previous projects not be mentioned… Rightfully so, as Cistern Corrupt bears little similarity to their past groups, except that it is of the same fundamentally freaked-out nature.
Paisley Fucker opens with “Big Car Both Ways”, a low-end groove that is pounded out idiotically for a good few minutes to great affect. All the while, indecipherable ramblings drift out over the racket from somewhere within the depths of the local nuthouse. “No Certitude” sees CC drag the listener through the kind of muck BILLY BAO produce at their best. The last track, “Vaseline Wall”, features some almost pretty guitar strum in spite of the ugly terrain surrounding it, only serving to make the whole thing more unsettling. The method of recording/release, ‘old ghetto blaster’ and cassette tape respectively, serve to further emphasise the neanderthalic damage the sounds therein contain.

MASONS / MOLTEN HONEY

2010-08-11T04:30:00.000-07:00

This tape took three years from the time of its recording occurring to manifest into a physical release and it's taken me even longer to get around to writing about it. Like any truly classic recording, it hasn’t been affected by the delay in availability. The tape comes housed in an appropriately poxy photocopied j-card. Faded cover for faded vibes.
Molten Honey is the solo moniker of John Frank. His self-titled side (the weaker of the two on this tape) begins with esoteric plucking, crafting a spacey bit of folk. Frank then reduces the tempo for a clatter of inconsistently sped anti-dance, drum machine, moving into some synth-born astral travelling/star twinkling and he's done.
Masons is a duo comprised of filmmaker Matthew Lessner and his 14-year old sister, Sophie. The rumour is that their side-sprawling contribution (and sole release thus far), In The Basement Of The Temple, was recorded under shroud of darkness in the depths of their local Masonic Temple. The piece moves between escalating drumming, manipulated vocals and maniacal bad trip screams before succumbing to a looped skip with demonic lines spat over it. Think something like CRO-MAGNON (the sixties one) as a possible reference point, although even that’s not going to help you much.
This split, the Masons side especially, is some of the best improv psych stuff I’ve heard recently.

HUMAN MACHINES

2010-08-11T01:32:00.000-07:00

COMPILATION. THE DEAD HAND: HUMAN MACHINES
I picked up this tape on the strength of an unreleased Homostupids song that turned out to be an unreleased version of a Homostupids song that I already heard. This version was very fascinating and afforded valued insight into their unique take on recreating the sound of being booted in the testicles by an old lady with pointed toes. Other than this track, I found this compilation entirely tedious to get through, aside from the Christian Death cover from DRUNKDRIVER and an extended spastic piss in the trousers skronk from WEASEL WALTER. Any recommendations on records to track down by this man with the questionable and sinister name would be appreciated, as this was easily the best track on the tape, which also featured a lot of weak noisecore, a few post-screamo instrumentals and generally useless spuz from a bunch of Americans.
The liner notes read like some kind of paranoid JG Ballard spew about technocrats and state oppression, but without the class of JGB. This is like a mixtape from someone with a highly questionable taste in music that happens to like one band that you like. It generally sucks to listen to, with a few inoffensive moments and some shit that entices the FFD button. Though, it did turn me onto WW... I'd heard about him in the past from Scarcity Of Tanks, but never heard solo.
Will definitely follow that up.

BLACK ANXIETY

2010-08-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

Black Anxiety is the perfect description for that feeling .5 seconds after you realise that you didn't lock the door to work and it's 2am and you're about to go to sleep. It's the same feeling when you've ridden to work in the cold rain expecting to find a burning hole in the dirt full of leeches and feces and a note from a terrorist laughing at you for your idiocy, to find that you did lock the door. It's 3am now, and your memory hates you as much as your body. The Psychward Vs. TxSxSx Youth Crew have united before to create similar testaments to mental illness and ill health, and this is another stone cold hit.
Sounding very much like you've just fucked up, with such a bleak description you probably can guess what kind of horrors they're going to use to articulate the sensation. You get what sounds like a wide open room with a one track tape deck recording a couple of guys kicking their stereos cunts in, clanging away on effects pedals to reproduce the sensual rhythm of their vandalism.
There are 25 of these little beauties available from the deviants at Magic Crowbar. Yet another release capturing the musical output of those involved in Pathetic Human... these guys are fucking psychos. Get some sleep, assholes.

BLACK JESUS SHAVES

2010-08-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

Eight song demo cassette from Melbourne band BLACK JESUS. Ex-member game: Fallout, Extortion, Jed Whitey, etc.
I can not get it out of the deck for long. It demands constant play. My mind is controlled.
Somewhere between Celtic Frost and Slayer, Black Jesus have set up shop, peddling their wares to the disgruntled and malformed youth of Melbourne's inner city. They do not accept milk in their coffee, good sir!
If I had an older brother, I wish he'd played me music like this when I was a kid. I am an older brother, and I laid down pious speeches soundtracked by Minor Threat for my sibling. If only that firecracker hadn't exploded in my face and made a geek outta me, than I might have been in Black Jesus, and I wouldn't be up late at night ruminating on my petty failures with this WEB LOG. This band makes me insecure and miserable. Why haven't I learnt simple skills like guitar histrionics or knife throwing?
The cycle continues on.

HALF ALIVE

2010-08-05T06:13:00.001-07:00

When I opened the case, a pair of old testicles with grey hair popped out. "Holy shit. This is old." If you've been paying attention, this is the only tape that's made it on here older than a couple of months that wasn't still shitting on itself.
Well, this tape is older than I am. On the highly revered ROIR label, revered because their cassette only albums introduced the world to classics like the s/t Bad Brains record.
These are cuts of various rehearsal and live recordings from Suicide over a five year period starting in '74. It's not a real hard sell to interest someone in Suicide in 2010, you're probably thinking, so what makes the tape so fucking special? Well initially, this was only available on tape - the release was made for the format. Later it was digitally remastered, etc., for Lazer Disc. The live stuff sounds great: sure, it's no 23 Minutes In Brussels*, but it's still menacing and disturbed.
And, there is the liner notes inside by Lester Bangs, who oversells the thing as the pinnacle of the avant garde (and along the way peppers the piece with awkward punk journalism failures that I'm surprised made it onto paper - he must have cringed when he read it and he wasn't dripping with syrup after seeing that he'd thrown in jovial lines like "which you can also eat" in reference to the tape).
The whole package is pretty fuckin' special, and marks one of the earliest examples that I own of a cassette released to make PERFECT SENSE on a cassette player, exclusively.
As if that wasn't enough, I got a kick out of:
WARNING: This material not available on vinyl.
What do Suicide sound like? If I knew more about how to use the internet, I'd insert a photo here of a patch of vomit staining a street corner.

* This is a recording I only heard relatively recently courtesy of Al (UV), and it's a high benchmark for what environment a band could take their tunes into that would be entirely hostile to the idea - and yet persist through an entire set of their loathing.

LOST ANIMAL

2010-08-04T05:52:00.000-07:00

New tape for the side project that enveloped Jarrod Quarrel's desire to continue with St Helens, who released a reasonably convincing album of inner-city Melbourne bummer bitch rock music last year before imploding. I enjoyed St Helens live, but there's something far more involving with the Lost Animal show. He seems very uncomfortable and agitated with what is happening, the music is generally never loud enough to match his voice (he's playing it through an mp3 player is why), and the audience is generally too loud for the band. But it's unique and engaging: essentially a crooner lounge sound that often throws out Suicide as a reference point. Jarrod drags each syllable out for as much as it'll allow, something like Dylan though lacking the nasally tone so it ain't too obvious. This is a 4 track demo tape on Albert's Basement, one of the most prolific tape labels in Melbourne's cassette rennaisance.
Would be great to hear this with real live instruments pounding around that voice. This demo really teases with a muted recording. I'd love to hear the drums punch harder and the synth lines to hold space in the air for a while.

CONDENSED FLESH

2010-06-10T21:15:00.000-07:00

With access to free internet pornography entirely changing the relationship between masturbation and guilt / shame / self hatred, it's refreshing to see a young hardcore band attempt to introduce these themes to their peers. Prior to the net, being a teen meant having to rely on creepy relatives and lax store owners to relieve onself of the torture of jittery bus rides to get a sight of heaven. This meant sex had this air of repulsiveness attached to it, empirically, courtesy of the filthy environs of a sex store and the odious manner that your peers liked to discuss getting their end wet or their fingers damp. While you may continue to feel theological guilt, you can hide behind a computer screen and have no contact with the individuals providing you with copious shots of copulative bliss.
The tolerant, open culture of modern political correctness and liberal free-for-all has successfully made everyone more comfortable with sex, and it's probably only a few years before we get over the miseries of the uptight 90's and Obama can out-do Clinton and Tiger Woods, appearing on TV with a Biggie Smalls harem. President Playa. But, til this disgusting event is allowed to happen, we're going to have to sit through more pornographisation of prime time TV, more tolerance of sexual gratification and openness, and less good hardcore bands. The guilt and the shame will be worn away, and from every open vagina will protrude a rainbow, in every dose of ejaculate a handful of brightly coloured crystals.
Hardcore is best when it is asexual. Hardcore was teenage aggression minus sexual release. The condemnation of an abundance of hormones, but nothing to do with it, because everyone around you is retarded. Being young is being retarded: your heroes are people who kick balls high and aren't gay, or who have nice clothes and aren't a dyke. That's basically it for young men and women. You feel a growth spurt and you recognise your peers as this seething mass of cretins fighting to get their mouth back on the suckling nib, though the pig is replaced with Jennifer Aniston, and Jennifer Aniston is the pig. So, you turn to hardcore as a way of escaping sexuality, sensuality, people talking about and of sex all the time.
This is where the nerds get it wrong: hardcore isn't sexist, it is anti-sex. And this is where Flesh World gets it right. Their new demo is a straight tribute to the Condensed Flesh demo by Void, though suffering from a poor recording and the fact that they have a wealth of great hardcore to draw from. Nonetheless, the guitaring is what makes this most Voidish, stabbing and slashing away with some great nods to Bubba, a fair distance away from being able to capture what makes their side of the split with the Faith "perfect", but nonetheless, on the right track.
So, modern hardcore bands, don't listen to the punks or the hippies. Renounce your hormones, renounce your desires, and suffer. This is the genius of Flesh World.

AIRWAY '78 CASSINGLE

2010-03-21T19:10:00.000-07:00

AIRWAY were a bunch of weirdoes, criminals, and desk clerks playing Free Music for the Los Angeles Society, all under the good name of L.A.M.F.S. (Los Angeles Free Music Society). This tape is made up of two three minute extracts, culled from a legendary sixty-three hour live performance where the band slowly removed their clothing and let their shit, trunks, beavs and noise fly before the disgusted eyes of dozens, brewing the kind of nonsent-savance that gets yer goat while milking it at the very same time. If you’re hip enough to have that as your bag, then you all but have to chew on this platter like it were an aged med-rare waygnu from the Breakfast Creek Hotel, but even those of you who couldn’t care to tell a Tom Recchion from the milky crust that forms around yer foreskin (that’s Smegma), then I’d hazard to say you’ll have a good time if crooked moderns like Paeces or Sun of the Seventh Sister turn you on. If not you then you probably dug that Real Estate record, or think Shock Value is the real deal. And I thought I knew shame!

TYVEK DEMOS

2010-03-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

In between appreciating Jim Carrey films for their subtle comment on Canadian Government, sucking down ten dollar six packs of Hammer and Tongs, and attempting to conquer the greater West End district with a series of progressively functional bands, I write for a zine called Negative Guest List. The rag is on a temporary hiatus while my computer is being fixed after one too many splashes of drink or semen fried its keys, so while I wait for the gentlemen at Vanilladick Computers to kick it back up to scratch I’m happy to devote some time away from NGL’s release schedule and the self-destructive pill binge I’ve been on the last few weeks to get shit done quick and easy for DX’s cassette themed interlog. I’ve listened to a few new tapes lately and the first one I wanna talk about is a Tyvek demo CS
If you’ve been following the trajectory of this band then you probably know their deal by now; their tendency to release multiple versions of the same tunes across a slew of "new" releases surely must be grating to the average paypal junkie, but their ability to write a good tune is as obvious as it is that Scarlett Johansson’s looks and sex appeal have gone downhill since Match Point and the silly thing’s taste for Ryan Reynolds’ dick. Here is a band who’ve been spending the last few years taking notes from the Eels, the Tronics, the Swell Maps, and just about every other tribe of Do-This-Yer-Selfers who’ve managed to pull triumph out from their panties when crumbling under the weight of ineptitude seemed like it was always the way things were gonna go down. These brave American musicians have sucked the soul and spirit from Marineville and dosed it with all of the freaked out nihilism inherent to a life spent toiling through Detroit decay, the same kind that made Funhouse such a wild, unprecedented ride, and a record that forty years after the fact we’re all still eager to reference and get unreal to. That I’ve heard most of these tunes before doesn’t matter much to me, and if you’ve already dug this clan’s U.S. blooze then it shouldn’t mean shit to you either; it’s shook a bit here and the tunes sound as tense and vital as ever.

Available via Fag Tapes.

ROYAL VOMIT / REUNION SACRED IBIS

2010-02-10T23:34:00.000-08:00

This split tape is titled African Goods, a side each of horrid ceremonial gurgling, spitting and scraping from two Australian necrophiliacs (this may not be true). The Royal Vomit side opens with a heavily treated Morricone line (Good, Bad, Ugly) that conveys desolation and destitution (lots of reverb, warping of the notes). It would make a great sample for a sci-fi Western (something a little more elaborate than Back To The Future 3). The remainder of his side introduces harsher feedback tones and looping to less effect. Reunion Sacred Ibis is the elaborate appellation of Mr. Cooper Bowman, who confided his approach: take one Nintendo DS, download one program, and manipulate the range of sounds that said program allows. My Nintendo DS is strictly used for Brain Training and Chess Tactics; the fact it could be used for such nefarious purpose has no doubt lead to social upheaval in less tolerant societies. His side focuses more on the fluctuating spasms of digital squealing, offering the discomforting alarm that a skipping DVD at crucial moment of movie can offer: image jumping forward and backward in time and speakers elicit nanosecond blasts of audio. He named a song / composition / ditty after a PKD novel (Time Out Of Joint), so maybe picture the paranoia of that book's protagonist, and here is the soundtrack.

REMOTE CONTROL

2010-02-10T22:55:00.000-08:00

French band TELLECOMMANDE's cassette 3615 opens with a layer of samples that reminded me of that awful band The Go Team, and thus had my stomach turning. It turned and churned a little further when the actual songs came in: Marked Men styled pop punk with a drum machine. The artwork and design had me expecting something inspired by the kinds of bands heard on the incredible Des Jeunes Gens Modernes compilation of French post punk and cold wave.
Fortunately I left the tape running and the last song is the hit: a sparse high pitched keyboard pummels away at a simplistic riff, the drum machine patters away, and the blown out vocals squawking in froggery make for a perfect minimal synth punk tune. Highly recommended for this one song and I think it'll be their sole moment of glory, because they obviously don't know what they're doing: there's a song called 'GG Allin' on here, which probably intends to point out they're drawing the pop-punk affectations from Always..., but the drum machine and clean mix just DO NOT WORK.
Hopefully someone can steal their guitars and put some bummer in their coke.

SNIFF SNIFF SNIFFA

2010-02-08T19:22:00.000-08:00

Oi, sorry about the silence, I haven't had much regard for cassettes lately so have been putting them in a stack waiting for the interest to hit me. I picked up a Grateful Dead LP for $5 on the weekend wanting to hear what all the bullshit was about, and ripped the needle away before too much of Garcia's load blew into my ears, looking at the yellowed skin, the lack of muscle structure in my arms, and knowing there were a few things that I'd put aside in a stack, like discipline and self respect. Maybe I'll come back to the Dead in another couple years when I don't feel so sorry for myself for letting myself go so bad, but right now the only thing that'll pull me back to the peak is tape piss.
Or not. These guys certainly aren't going to push me out the door to get some sun in my pores and some oxygen in my blood, but they have got me back at the keyboard. I helped press 4 of the songs on this tape to a limited run 7" a few months back with Distort, and this tape also features their track from the great US scumpunk compilation 7" just out called Fresh Cuts & Cigarette Burns, thanks to Criminal IQ. What's new? Nothing really, but it's a great tape and worth tracking down if you've got an affection for the Pagans, Electric Eels and Freestone: the members of this band (members of Out With A Bang, Grabbies, Inmates, Darvocets, Puncture Wound, Gordon Solie MF, Upstab, Annihilation Time, Youth Of Today) know what they are doing.

GARBAGE AND THE FLOWERS

2009-11-12T17:05:00.001-08:00

Near Tapes have re-released this 'Stoned Rehearsal' cassette from Sydney's unsettling Garbage & The Flowers, a loooong exploratory piece of a reverb drenched jam that brought to mind a very sedate Les Razilles and serving the same functional purpose (great environment music). This label rules at the moment, highly recommend everything they release.

THE NEW FLESH

2009-11-12T16:08:00.000-08:00

Reissue casssette of a 2003 release from long dead band THE NEW FLESH presents an assortment of tunes most fitting in the genre-formerly-known-as-noise-rock, with a perfect rehearsal space tape deck sound that flatters the songwriters kicking off the first section of tunes. About halfway through the side, the sound becomes a little more easy on the ears, and the songs become pretty audible, and you can now hear they are standard, earnest affairs with that kind of suffering artist vocal torment and fractured song structures which probably got a nice review in the pages of HeartattaCk at the time. Though inconsistent, the opening songs are strong enough that if you have a couple extra dollars in your paypal account and an operable walkman, this could get you from the house to the bus to the next mid era TOUCH AND GO tribute show.

VILE GASH

2009-11-08T15:30:00.001-08:00

It's been a great year for cassette releases, but this is number one for me, the one I would most be upset to hear stretching and snapping in a psychotic deck. VILE GASH are a hardcore band from mid America who have released two demo tapes so far. The first was given to me outside a STRAIGHTJACKET NATION show while we were on tour, and I lost it when we returned to the country and I had to find a space for my tour accumulations. The second has been imaginatively titled 'Demo Two', and the members have courteously dubbed 'Demo One' on the B side to compensate for my negligence.
Each song is a momentary spasm out of the harsh blare of guitar feedback that seems to open and close each side, as each instrument seems to have been given as much raw power as conceivable. It's one of the loudest recording I've heard a hardcore band achieve, on par with the best moments of DISCLOSE, and that is a HIGH COMPLIMENT. The band draws heavy influence from the nihilistic abandon of Cleveland hardcore and the cold menace of old New York, with several moments of brilliance (mostly concerning repetitive riffing) peppering each side. They've got a 7" coming out sometime soon, but if you have the means to track these cassettes down, use them.

CONFINES

2009-11-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

As this decade rolled in, there was a pretty active hardcore scene developing in the northeast of the US, and there were a bunch of bands like TEAR IT UP who released forgettable records, but apparently served to introduce people to a sound that was out of vogue. CONFINES come out of this scene, their members played in BLANK STARE and CUT THE SHIT, and they draw from the sounds of early 80's US hardcore in a way that is far more memorable than their precursors. Their demo tape is one of the best I've heard this year, recalling COLD SWEAT, one of my favourite bands of the last decade.
CONFINES. This is definitely a great name for a hardcore band, and fortunately at times and at their best these guys are able to capture the claustroheadfuck that characterises the best of the loud-slow-rules: think 'Skank' by URBAN WASTE or 'With Time' by AG FRONT for the best reference points of what I mean here. This tape doesn't approach the glory of either tune, but they are aiming high: the guitarist sounds like he schooled in GINN101 and got a pass grade, but the sound he gets out of it is pretty softened in the mix for reasons I am not Guitar World schooled enough to understand. The best moment on the tape is when the last song kicks in: a threshing fit of feedback and drum pounding give way to a heavy BL'AST styled riff, and the song lumbers around the room with hockey stick in hand.

PSYCHWARD

2009-11-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in the previous post, Magic Crowbar is one of the labels to keep an eye on for their dedication to the cassette cult, and this Psychward tape Tommy passed onto me at a show is an indication why. Featuring a cast of thousands in the Melbourne noise / scum / terror crowd (members of Pathetic Human, Chrome Dome, Occult Blood), and considering all those bands practically have C90 tattooed on their assholes, this is the ubermensch, a highly blown out impertinent tantrum of synth smashing, repetitive and ill-timed percussive smudges, with treated vocals writhing through somewhere... like you've probably come to expect from the sounds coming outta that house on the street! Sweatlung later reissued it in a larger press as Psychward Cult, and you can read a little more about it there.

chrome dome

2009-10-30T00:34:00.000-07:00

Along with Magic Crowbar and Inverted Crux, Near Tapes is the Australian label to watch for cassettes that drip and drool out of your player. This Chrome Dome tape is quite literally a recording of the original duo practising their tunes, so contains a series of false starts, some illegible dialogue of slurring between the two, and the skeletal frame of songs that became the 7" / cassette released a couple of months ago.
The sound of this band was well considered at this point, and you can practically hear the pill bottles rattling in their jacket pockets as the pair stumble through these songs. They capture the feeling of psych-med fogginess with a distinctive ease, referencing Suicide and Nervous Gender as influences, and on a spontaneous neighborhood peregrination I came across hirsute continuing member SS, who informed me that he'd just come into some bread and was purchasing a handful of synthesisers and samplers with names I can't recall but sounded impressive. For anyone who remains fascinated by the promise of the Screamers, Chrome Dome remain among a handful of bands internationally (the Anals, Krysmopompas are two others) that get it.

hungarian hardcore

2009-10-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

Aside from the last couple of cassette reviews, I've been avoiding listening to music at the moment. Working in a record store and having my ears constantly attacked to and from work and at home by tunes has allowed me to develop the superhuman ability to turn on a record and shut it out. Taking a break from music for the first time in 12 years (literally, every moment I wasn't sleeping or it wasn't inappropriate to do so I've had records playing or my headphones on) will hopefully allow me to retune into actually hearing the music again.
On the new COMBAT ACTION TAPES label of international (ie. non US) hardcore from Canada comes the RAKOSI tape, ten songs of dense, hyperactive hardcore. The recording is either unmastered, or excessively weirdly mastered, as the levels dance all over the place and from channel to channel, so it's a pretty disorienting listen. I would compare it to the sound of recently booted early New York hardcore demos, when they wore chains and were finding their feet after ripping heavily on the Bad Brains joint. The sound is putrid, with cymbals crashing through like someone is throwing crockery around the studio. But this is good, people. Good shit.

a dirty drug

2009-10-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

Absoluten Calfeutrail's 'Ice' cassette is limited to 40 copies, and online searches of the Sabbatical site to glean more information were met with nothing.
The design is tribute to pamphlets that hang in the wiry racks of pharmacies and STD clinics (and I imagine rehab centres - but I do not know this), and the gentle tone of blue used actually appears more insidious than if he'd copped a photo of a beat up factory (slash atrocity photo slash S&M still), because if you are a human being in 2009 you are used to atrocities being delivered in the tones of pleasantry and calm.
Absoluten borrows a phrase from Government Health Warnings for the spine of the tape: "ice. it's a dirty drug." This recalls a spate of punk bands in the late 1990's in my hometown who would borrow the messages of these Government Health Warnings and, in an ill-informed way, attempt to deliver them with the passionate fury of youth. Thus we had punk bands singing "Do The Right Thing", or "Homosexuality: what are you afraid of?". When young people are not spending their time smashing bottles in empty carparks or writing their names on the wall of their school, but are actually discussing government slogans for community values with their disenfranchised friends, then advertising executives are getting more convincing hair plugs, a greater variety of exotic blowjobs and slicker cars.
Could it be said: this is the world's first concept album about crystal meth? Probably not, and because I don't know any juggalos it's a difficult question to answer. Lou Reed belted out a couple of records that were no doubt concept albums about concept albums about crystal meth, such was the invigorating heights of excess he was willing to scale, but nobody has yet attempted to convey the exciting impact of a lung full of crystal meth and a head full of flickering synapses on a cassette like this. Some of my favourite writers / thinkers were speed freaks (Hunter S, Philip K Dick, L Bangs), and this tape documents the space in their brain that was carved out from constant stimulation with a series of controlled feedback bursts, squeals and grating metallic shrieks, and buried within, a tormented howling on the part of AC. This is my favourite music from Absoluten Calfeutrail so far: it is effectively repressive, aggressively evoking claustrophobia and paranoia. Very, very violent music.
My conviction to abstinence from amphetamines has been vindicated. In order to guarantee an arts grant so he can spend next year studying professional musicianhood and releasing new tapes like 'Be A Mate: Don't Let Your Friends Get Violent In Melbourne Inner-City Nightclubs' or 'Beyond Blue: Youth Depression, and You', I think Sabbatical should have marketed this cassette more to children. Anyone past the age of 16 will hear this and think "man, this sounds great... imagine how great it'd sound if I was tweaking?".

video violence

2009-10-27T00:37:00.000-07:00

I wrote this in Distort #21: "This tape has been around for a couple of years, but I’ve never read it referenced in print, and the band has since disappeared into the beer dens of Germany, so it’s unlikely it will be referenced anytime soon. This demo is great fast and loose hardcore punk with a real classic recording sound, and any Midwest hardcore freaks should seek it out."
Does anyone know of any further recordings from VV? Would like to hear.

THE TAPE PISS

2009-10-27T00:10:00.001-07:00

The first music I listened to by choice came with the comforting whir of a single speakered cassette deck, low volume in my bedroom in the swampland of Western Australia in the mid 1990's, a mixtape from a kid at school of grunge and punk shit typical of the time. I hailed Boston Celtics but I never saw a game, ate 2c sugar bombs all day while playing Doom and stealing beer from the fridge when it got too hot, but the best shit was blowing off school and lying in my room reading comics with the air con on (the only time I could use it was when the parents weren't home) with the tape deck clicking away in the corner. It is a cult ritual when in 2009 when I press PLAY and my AKAI HX-1 single deck clicks into action, something people smarter than me would probably explain with better words.
Most anyone my age (late 20's) can have the same attachment to the cassette tape, so the majority of bands releasing their shit on tape are old and enjoy physical things. I decided to start a blog to catch some writing on new cassette releases that will eventually appear on paper in a fanzine somewhere.
I am not going to upload the tapes or anything stupid. The idea is to encourage real world effort at hunting band down and extracting solid artifact, not necessitate me having to learn my way around more technology so you can listen to a watered down file.