TOO EARLY (OR LATE?) TO BE SO PISSED, VOLUME 1

Autre Ne Veut - s/t (Olde English Spelling Bee)
"Hypnagogic-pop" is part of that latter-day parlancery trying to substitute criticism with description: if there's an umbrella for it, ideally invented on the Internet, it must be good. The cat behind Autre Ne Veut is more in the hypnopompic-pop spectrum (if I can fire the first semantic volley at y'all candy asses), rubbing his morning wood in a permanently groggy state while the late-80s Prince record he found on Itunes the nigth before becomes an inadequately remembered dream. Wait--it would be inadequate anyway.

All the Volcanic Tongues (Shame on Heather Leigh Murray & Co for self-deprecatingly big-upping this shit biscuit!) in the world couldn't lick this thing into consciousness. People who only feel things publicly in a post-ironic-ironic state of ecstasy will have much to ooze over, however. Ferinstance, the fond remembrance of making up pop songs in front of your mirror as a lad or lass, using a brush as a microphone--not because of how fun it was, or because those songs were so great, but because of how much they miss that Ocean Pacific shirt they were wearing. Not to mention the British Knight hightops.
If your sorry ass is interested, check here first. Or eat a madeleine and shut the fuck up.

RUSTIER, FURRIER, BUT PROBABLY JUST AS DRUNK - One last romp in Ol Bill's honor

Here I am again, yanked from the anonymity of everyday life back into the strange, detached anonymity of the Internet. Not that anyone was plying me with tenured positions, free records, or even a wank in the Aldi parking lot with a powdered glove. I'm here on a mission.
Granted, it's a mission adopted by scores of others all over the jernt in the past few months as the waves of year-end jizz have dictated. But no matter. The tide has subsided and there is, perhaps, finally enough room for my gargantuan ego to stand and say, "Yeah me, too."
At the same time, this was not an easy piece to write. All the other critics seem to harp on the violence, the destruction, so easily gleaned from a record made by one-half of Harry Pussy. They all kind of read like PR sheets, too, which is just as unsurprising as it is disappointing, because this is a pretty personal record. Slapping all that marketing rhetoric on it just ain't couth, if you ask me.
Then again, personal has become sort of a dirty word. By "personal" I do not mean "intimate" like Jackson C. Frank or "outsider" like Bobb Trimble. No, sir. I am talking about personal narrative.
Let us, then, begin at the beginning.
History is smeared all over the acoustic axe like cheap lacquer. It has as many instrumental brothers, sisters and cousins around the world as the drum or the horn. It is also, perhaps, the most cliched, most overused instrument in western music and, consequently, the least-likely to blow me away. It's been distorted, smashed, detuned, prepared, played with a towel and an electric window fan, and yet remains, unequivocally itself. I have, in that sense, as much respect for it as distaste. I heard a lot of solo acoustic records this year, like many years; some old, some recent, and some brand new; some impressive, some momentarily resonant, and some totally forgettable. Rarely do I hear a record whose relish and loathing for the acoustic guitar resonate so strongly with me. Because it is on that rich and storied history that Bill Orcutt meditates.
But let's get something straight: this ain't some post-Alan Watts, post-Axonda, sandal-wearing, raga-taking, Zen snooze button. Bill ain't poppin' a squat on an Indian rug or letting the breeze roll through his beard as he sways in a hammock. This shit is lllllllooooouuuuuddd. Even with the notch on the volume knob staring at your shoes, it's loud. Every kind of loud. It buzzes and snaps and shrieks, wrapped in the quivering aura of an actual room. An honest to Christ room! Engines start, phones ring, floors creak--all of which make the weight and breadth of Orcutt's playing even more miraculous because there is no artifice. It could be happening next door. It's heavy and fast, slow and burning, taut and rapturous.
Of course, what was great about Orcutt back in the day is still alive and well; those serpentine figures still mince the air into crystalline matchsticks like an unholy usuba knife and he still does brake-stands on the E-string like nobody else. But there are also koto-like vibratos and ragtime slides in all directions. I'd call it a clinic, but that would be give you the impression this was one of those stiff, Derek Bailey derivatives. And I'd call it a blues record if that, too, hadn't become such a dirty word.
So, what is it, then? A throwback? An homage? An attempt to write the acoustic guitar into the 21st century?
No. It's an exorcism. Orcutt has calculatedly--but no less passionately--coaxed out all the ghosts dormant in those Kay guitars out of the musty basements of every plucker in Thee United States and into the streets for one last amp-draining zombie rampage; ghosts so misshapen and worm-eaten as to be barely recognizable. That could be Blind Lemon Jefferson gnawing on a SK-54, or just Sharrock chewing Karen Dalton LPs; Arto Lindsay getting his head shortened by a Bell Huey, or an 18th century riti player clubbing Rowland Howard with a slab board Strat. (But now I'm mixing my metaphors.) Who the fuck knows. They all, in whatever hellish state, can be glimpsed in the fracas.
In the end, it's the inspiration that gets me. This isn't that impulsive, peristaltic kind that usually kills on contact. No, I'm guessing Bill's been teasing this hound for a minute now. If we're lucky, this and that here-today 7" (also released in limited #s on Orcutt's own Palilalia) are but the first of many snarls to come.
Here's to the ensuing mayhem. May it never quite put the period on the history of the acoustic guitar.
Stupid fucking thing...

Beer and Groaning In Atlanta: Your Unwanted Year-End Child

Oh the past the past the past. I can't look at it. The past includes yesterday, which I spent rolling around on a couch, trying to deal with the hallucinations brought on by some yellowish, viscous medicine that tasted of banana syrup and chalk. It was supposed to dull the weariness of an upper-respiratory infection--instead, it surrounded me with distant atonal bells and the feeling that everything was too tight. I woke up 2 hours later, ate everything in the house, and went back to bed where I slept for about 15 hours. In the gluttonous interim, I can remember watching something about sleep deprivation and trying to call everyone I know at once. I wanted them to be worried about what would happen if they didn't sleep. In the future, I'll just drink a gallon of water and cover myself in Vicks Vapo-Rub. No more things that come in tiny plastic cups.

I've decided Mississippi Records is my Record Label of 2008 because I can't deal with the dearth of alternatives. However, Sacred Bones comes to mind as a close second. I don't have a Record of the Year.

CUTTING UP WITH THE JONESES

Before I head out to stuff slow-food fans with vegan-friendly black bean soup* in the faraway (read: dull) countryside, I figure I'd clean out my ears first-like. The early morning trek looms like a grumpy hippo, so this night's done and called. Anyhow, there ain't a single smudge on this triptych, which is either a sign that the world really is brighter these days or I'm just spooning my wits away with each 4oz sample cup. Ticket, please. Sour cream and red sauce with that?

Human Eye- Fragments of the Universe Nurse LP, Hook or Crook 2008
I'll try to make this a quick and dirty sell: If pretty much all you want out of a "punk" record these days is a seemingly uncontrollable behemoth, blundering in and out of sister genres like, your unwieldy biker friend but ultimately holding it together through a lead guitar hissing and pissing like a stray cat, this one's for you. And me. The 'Buy' button is your savior.

Los Llamarada - Take the Sky LP, S-S Records 2008
Developing, harnessing and setting fire to a (recently acquired?) satchel fulla riffs is the task of the day in Monterrey, it seems. That and how to keep those three fingers between you and the snarling black hole at the end of your bed. Kind of a treat to see a band cuttin teeth and wax at the same time, like Jad Fair & Co used to do. I'm psyched for the Los Llamarada-related project Love Is So Fast LP what might be blowin in the 'Breeze come January, according to Midheaven. Mine eyes are peeled. In the meantime, this is stuck in all the ol familiar maws.

Home Blitz - Weird Wings 12" EP, Unknown Parts 2008

It's a testament to this little band's greatness that I was able to temporarily disengage from the free jazz tear I'm on (Leroy Jenkins, Marion Brown, Alan Silva) without gettin all crampy. I keep reading about an overwhelming Messthetics presence on this 5-song frisbee, but I'm guessing there's a copy of What Makes A Man Start Fires on somebody's floor, too. So, there you go. Bleach Boys taping over the Minutemen. They ran with it; I followed; you should, too. Pretty essential frivolty in the 08. Try Florida's Dying on for size.


*Vegan only so's I don't gotta hear the whines of wanderin trustafarians with wee ones in tow. I imagine this festival will be spewing them all over the park like cheap swill. Cheers, eh what.

ON AN UNKNOWN BEACH (CORPSE PAINT OPTIONAL)

Circle of Ouroborus - Venerations lp, self-released 2008 Remember that Mammal record on Animal Disguise? Lonesome Drifter? Okay, so imagine if that had been adapted by Peter Jefferies or Alasdair Galbraith. Now imagine that album played by amateur Finnish dudes. Now realize that their last 800 releases have been black metal in one way or another. Insert periodic, unidentifiable percussion (Castanets? Finger snaps? Faulty wiring?) and record the whole thing in a musty cathedral. Now take a nap. You've earned it.
I'd call it essential for followers of that pedigree, but there are about as many of them as there are copies of this record in existence. I kind of like it, but I also eat offal, so keep that grain of salt handy. Scour the eBays, you wispy New Zealand trolls.

CIRCUITAL BREATHING

Rafael Toral - Space Solo 1 LP reissue, Taiga Records 2008

(Just a note before I dive in: the cover really is really the most Raster-Noton throwaway I've seen in a long time. Deep in sad, limp, Touch Records-territory. It's a real shame. The vinyl is either red or white, depending on how fast you run to the label site.)

Synthesizers: maligned by six-string knuckledraggers, sublimated by scores of creepy krauts & Euros, and occasionally made innarestin' by out-there jazzbos and the skin-tight-black-leather-wouldbe-punk set. That about cover it? You know, ya got yer haters, your Snowy Reds, your Klaus Schulzes, your Tod Dockstaders, your Sun Ras (well, one really), and yer Primitive Calculators. Everybody doesn't like them but nobody hates them. Right. So where's the next chapter?
The next chapter, as you might expect, nicked some pages from an earlier draft. The Sun Ra draft, thankfully. Rafael Toral's transformation from a gauzy, Fennesz-y, drinking white wine in your backyard with friends from Brussels-y, guitar-based droner to his present incarnation as a free-improv collaborator and mad scientist pricked my ears right quick. It'd take a technical mind to explain how Toral goes about feedin all manner of homemade plunder into his Doepfer modular synth, so I'll skip the procedural section of this talkie. Just know that, at his best, the man is like Kaoru Abe goin feet-first into a gravitationally completely collapsed star, if you know what I'm sayin. Sun Ra treated the Moog like it was a piano married to a protractor. Toral's movements, like the second on "Portable Amplifier," can feel as...how shuddaputit...peristaltic as Ra's but without the statement-ending blurts or woozy fizzles, leading to a strangely library-LP feel in the end. That is, it never threatens to lose itself, which might be my sole complaint about this record. This may also be due to the generally handheld feel and limited tonal vocab of Toral's source gadgetry.
I gotta say, it's a tricky path to snake, specially if'n you're makin it up as you go. Yet, somehow, there's some deftness, some historic sensibility detectable in these faint-yet-screechy grooves. Hell, if anything, it's a way more adventurous road than his last. Will appeal to fans of the Creel Pone aesthetic, the freakier end of 80s minimal synth mayhem, anyone down with scouring the BYG/Actuel back catalog, or folks than dug the bent-electronics parts of Chris Corsano's The Young Cricketer (I dug all of it). Minneapolis-based younguns Taiga Records'll probably cut you the best deal, if not Mimaroglu.

TO EVERY SEASON, TURD TURD TURD

Having prepped a garbage bag full of kale at the restyrant while weaving in and out of passing electrical wires and carpenters hitting on my 61-year-old coworker (and, no, 61 is not a dyslexic typo), on a stomach empty save for a cup of Dancing Goat and a fistful of atomic fireballs, I came home starved and delirious. Through the ride and behind dead-bolts, these two thangs, for betta or wurs, was on my mind and in my ears.

Size - El Diablo en el Cuerpo, cassette reissue 2008
No idea what groupa folks decided this shouty, herky, late-70s/early-80s Mexican synthy-punk-wave anthology oughta rejoin the fold, but my hat's off my head and out the room to em. This band housed the amphetamine-fed circuitry of the Screamers and Units in a Southwest proto-punk wood-and-clay box. The keyboard lines in "Lucrative Methods" would've made Eric Burden blush. Boy, they had some prickly career changes, too; check the primpy, Neue Deutsche Welle squiggles on the title cut for evidence. Cumulatively, I don't know. If ya treat each moment as just that, its a bit more engaging. Hopefully, needles everywhere can strike a proper LP reissue of this someday, but for now, my Technics tape deck is spinnin purdy.
Sacred Bones'll getcha.

Gary War - The New Raytheonport LP, Shdwply Records 2008
Hoooo, I wanna carve Brooklyn off the map so bad sometimes. Then this kinda shit hits the deck and I remember that, most of the time, bein right's just about the most overrated feeling in human history. Granted, it borrows from R. Stevie Moore-fanboy Ariel Pink as often as it purrs and rubs against Mayo Thompson's leg. But, once again, the tried-and-true lenses of Oar, Barrett, and Twin Infinitives sees it all through. Cracked, but in-control--since we're probably talkin bout the trustfund district of New Weird America. If it came out on ESP-Disk around the time of Yodeling Astrologer, it'd probably be some kind of legend by now... In this way, The New Raytheonport says something about the tried-and-true real estate cliche, too: location, location, location. This is absolutely perfectly completely okay.
$10ppd in the US, courtesy Shdwply Records.