Neon Lushell by way of (o)+HERS? Yes please, I’ll take it. A meeting of two formidable forces in sonic squalor: (o)+thers take tracks from Neon Lushell’s upcoming Modern Purveyors Of Filth And Degradation CD and give them the kind of noised-out, screwed-up, slowed-down treatment they’re known for applying to truckloads of well-known rock and pop tunes or anything else they can get their hands on. The result is a denser and more beat-oriented stew than the relatively minimalist originals, yet every bit as freaky and filthy. Stream below, buy a disc or download for free here.

It’s a dangerous proposition for someone who’s made their name outside heavy music circles to come out and say “I’m going to do a metal thing now,” especially with the sudden rise in hipster attention on metal of late and the backlash that engenders. But Iowa City’s renowned spazzy singer-songwriter Samuel Locke-Ward is the type of artist who would do something like Cop Bar not out of naivete or dilletantism but out of a mix of restless creative energy and fearlessness. Besides, metal kinda suits Sam in a way: his songs have always walked in dark places even when they’ve been presented in gentle folky arrangements. Furthermore, in his more intense moments as a performer, his voice has been known to lapse into a kind of strangled growl that in retrospect does have a bit of grindcore in it. He’s a longtime fan of the heavy stuff, besides.

Cop Bar is not quite the typical grindcore or hardcore band, though. It wouldn’t be like Sam to do anything the normal or typical way. I’m pretty sure there’s no other band this metallic sounding that would open an album with a guest appearance via voice-mail by R. Stevie Moore. Alongside the averaging-one-minute songs, chugging crust riffs, and blastbeats, No Justice Just Law bears the unmistakeable Samuel Locke-Ward stamp in its lyrical themes, multiple-personality-disorder vocal role-playing, screwball sense of humor, and basement 4-track production, all combining to make this a take on brutality that you most likely haven’t heard before. Sam’s brother-in-law Andy is along on drums, a fellow named Brando is on guitar, and there is no bass, and they take to hammering home these tunes with an appealing bluntness.

If I had any quibble it would be with the closing track “Jesus Saves” as it’s chorus is basically a direct rephrasing of that of “Save The Daughter” from Sam’s solo debut, the self-released CD-R EP Harness The Power Of Lightening, and recycles a lyrical trope that he’s pretty much beaten to death by ths point; indeed, Sam’s jabs at Christianity are starting to get a bit hackneyed and predictable to someone who’s followed his career since the beginning. But this is probably not going to be a problem for most, especially if this is your introduction to Sam’s unique brand of madness. So order up this cassette for $3 right now at Sam’s web site and bang your fucking head.

Yep. Already. Better get to work listening.

Also, just released today, this collaboration between Hal McGee and Kris Gruda:

Cheezy as it may be, I’d kinda hoped Workerbee Records would have this thing out in time for Halloween. This is great creep-out music so it would have been seasonally appropriate.

Neon Lushell is a duo of Ira Rat and Switchblade Cheetah lead singer and poet Brian Pitt. Ira backs up Pitt’s disturbing imagery with fittingly disturbing sounds, a mix of bad-trip-hop and cold ambient nausea that smells like a dank old basement with bloodstained granite walls.

Pitt’s performances are phoned-in — literally: he submits his vocal tracks via voice-mail from Tallahassee, Florida. Ira edits these into the final creations in Ames, Iowa, making the most of the distant, disconnected feel with which this process endows Pitt’s varied contributions of aggressive rapping, distracted crooning, madman raving, spoken-word storytelling, and stream-of-consciousness.

Although “Leave Me Alone” and “Sammy’s Rap” build their dark atmospheres around groovy beats, the rest of the album is rhythmically impressionistic, a series of mixtures of floating processed sounds that blur the distinctions between “real” instruments and abstract synthesized ones, even when something recognizable as, say, a mandolin or an acoustic guitar appears, and stubbornly refuse to completely cohere, leaving the listener helplessly adrift. “Everybody Died, I Survived” backs a dreamlike ghost story about a shipwreck with throbbing electronic bass sounds that will threaten to blow your speakers. Various Workerbee figures make guest appearances, including Thunder Bunny on “Grave Bells,” where an wince-worthy abrasive metallic scrape grows to dominate the mix.

Even if you’re already into the experimental/noise music milieu, Modern Purveyors of Filth and Degradation probably sounds like nothing else in your collection, and is likely to be one of the more unsettling sonic trips you will take.

NOTE: the following bandcamp player is for a 5-song advance promo version of the album; the full enchilada is expected to come out on CD like Real Soon Now. Get in contact with Ed and see about pre-ordering.

I was contacted via email by a guy from Victory & Associates because they had seen a review I wrote here recently for the new Poison Control Center album, and they had played some gigs with them out west and hit it off well and he liked what I had written so he thought he’d see if he could get These Things Are Facts slipped into my listen-and-write-stream.

Well, my listening and music-making habits have been on a turn for the weird of late, focusing on noise and agression and heaviness, so Victory & Associates was tough to fit into my mood, but it’s not hard to see how they make sense on a bill with the mighty Poison Control Center. Both play high-energy fun electric guitar music with catchy vocals. Of the two, I’d say V & A is coming from slightly more of the wiseass collegiate power-pop angle. They’re tight in most of the places where PCC lets it all hang out.

Going from the band name and the themes of the songs, I’d say V & A is a bit of a concept band, set up to do songs about victory and everything associated with it. Nearly every track on These Things Are Facts touches on overcoming difficulties, toughing it out, getting a move on, and winning through persistence and determination. This all felt a bit sporto until it occurred to me that these guys may have just got tired of all the defeat and victim-play and slackerism that has dominated popular music for the past couple decades and decided to do something about it. That’s worthwhile.

The whoa-o pop-punk-isms of opening track “Get Tough, Get Through It” were a tough sell for me, but should appeal to anyone who was one of those kids in the ’90s who couldn’t get enough Screeching Weasel. As that’s a description that fits many of my old friends, it’s an artistic choice that deserves respect on its own terms. It’s clear at the outset that Victory & Associates have a way with a hook as they wallop you with one after another. “You Can’t Eat Prestige” measures a little lighter on the cheeze meter, and together these two songs form a vector pointing towards a more indie-friendly approach, hinted at by the gritty fuzz guitar sound, where the album heads next.

I found These Things Are Facts especially appealing through its middle section. The best aspects of pop-punk’s melodic sensibility persist, coupled with a mix of riffy guitar crunch and new-wave angularity that reminds me of Enon or this Chicago band Geronimo! that I’ve been hoping I could get to come play in Des Moines, plus an edge of Nomeansno snark in the delivery. “You Can’t Stop The Signal” resembles a classic Fugazi song. A wide range of stylistic tricks are employed on the guitars including an East Bay Ray style surf-guitar solo in the middle of the reckless “Funundrum” and Gang Of Four scrapes and harmonics in the small-town slam “Not Returning.” Musically there’s enough to like here that I can just about forgive their using the word “haterade” in a lyric.

There are other definite cheezball moments — “Mistake Museum” makes two lyrical references to David Lee Roth, for example. I’m not quite sure what the point of “Turn Down The Guitars (’11)” is beyond a series of ironic self-referential statements about the volumes of instruments in a rock band, something that’s probably more fun live than on record. But I think maybe the whole album is intended to be self-referential, as if a big part of the band’s concept is in telling the story of the band itself. If this realization eludes the listener at first, it becomes clear with the closing track “Home Is Where You Hang Your Hope”, which mellows out the tempo and introduces just a dab of country flavor while full-circle referencing the opening track: “Got tough, got through this,” is shouted, as if declaring a victory in the completion of the album, but the song also declares their readiness for the next challenge they have ahead of them, the laid-back feel of this three and half minutes meant to be just a short rest and recuperation.

It’s hard to miss the inspirational tone of These Things Are Facts, it is indeed the album’s main takeaway, and Victory & Associates indisputably succeed in bringing over the energy level and memorable songs needed to communicate it. It would make a very good album for recovering from a depression, or keeping you motivated when you need it.

More noisy evil goodness afoot! I’ve just received my share of the mighty short run of 3″ CD-Rs of my split release with the awesome Georgia harsh electronics/noise/anything entity Marax, who by the way also has several contributions on Hal McGee’s Contact compilations found in the preceding post and a lot of other fine releases besides.

Have a listen right here and then score the 3″ disc from me (see the “mail order/trade list” link to the right) or from Marax.

A free download compilation of experimental/noise/electronic artists coordinated through a Facebook group by the great Hal McGee and posted to his bandcamp page. 60 artists, 1 minute each. You’ll find yours truly on there along with the likes of Marax, Elizabeth Veldon, Tree, Dave Fuglewicz, MUTATE, The Implicit Order, Subversive Intentions, Hal McGee, The Noisettes… and those are just the ones I was already half familiar with. Plans are for a second volume (which it is thought that The Earwigs will be on), followed by others of collaborative tracks by pairs of group members.

EDIT OCT 28: Volume 2 is out already!

EDIT NOV 6 Coming back from the Ruby Midwest conference last night I see there’s now a volume 3!

This short compilation of noisy fun put together by Igloo Martian just hit my mailbox today. Only 10 copies made ever, and I have two of them available for sale or trade, make an offer, and/or I’ll probably stick then on the merch table at the upcoming Fetal Pig shows. No text anywhere on the tape or insert. The track listing can be found here.

So Iowa has some pretty interesting local music scenes. Iowa City is sort of the perrenial favorite, as it’s had a heavily creative, artistic, literary, and weirdo-friendly atmosphere to it for as long as I’ve been able to pay attention. Traditionally it has the track record of having the best and/or most enduring music venues in the state. It benefits somewhat from an organic connection to Chicago, in that the University of Iowa is a popular college for kids from the Chicago area to go to. Des Moines is the other big one, mainly by virtue of just being the largest city in the state, though being on I-80 midway between Iowa City and Omaha and on I-35 midway between Minneapolis and Kansas City doesn’t hurt (but doesn’t seem to help as much as you’d think, either).

What fascinate me are the smaller communities, the hidden-gem scenes. Two come to mind for me right away, and neither of them is my old home turf of Cedar Falls/Waterloo, an area which has been pretty hit-or-miss for a lot of years now. The ones I’m thinking of are Dubuque, which I really need to make a point to write about more here, and unlikely, out-of-nowhere Ottumwa, which I’ve written about, and about bands from, quite a bit. What is it about Ottumwa? It’s not even on a major river.

The Speak Up Records label, which I think may be the work of Jason Bolinger, formerly of The Slats and She Swings She Sways and an ex-Eggnog for those who care about Iowa rock history, is behind two pretty interesting recent releases out of Ottumwa, both of which strike me as being quite good as well as the kind of things that would have pretty broad appeal if given the chance, and sound considerably more accomplished than what someone not familiar with the area might expect out of a place that’s as outsider with respect to the so-called music business as is Ottumwa, Iowa. One is by The War I Survived, which Jason plays drums in and is named after a Slats song. They are currently in the process of releasing their debut album one track per week, with videos, and they’re only about three songs in so far and I have catching up to do as it is. I haven’t listened to them a whole lot but they seem pretty interesting. I’d say they’re the trio plays melodic, intricately arranged emotive rock, but even for as literally as I mean that, it sounds like just typical music-writer BS so instead I will refer you to their facebook page.

Bolinger also recorded and mixed this 8-song EP by North To The Future. His former She Swings bandmate Troy Morgan is on at least some of the bass and they claim to hail from Agency, Iowa: Ottumwa is really just the center of a scene that covers a few surrounding towns.

As Good As It Gets goes by in a flash: eight songs that mostly average right about two minutes, just about enough to sink the hook and get the point across. It starts out with two songs of wise-cracking alt-rock built around punky attitude and a noisy, reverby garage-rock guitar tone that some might misguidedly label as retro. Then things mellow out for a bit. “On The Ground” reminds me, in its second-person lyrics and phrasing, of Helium’s “Honeycomb” and has an especially nice section of melodic solo-trading between guitar and bass. The toy piano that shows up for half of the verse right after it is one of those tasty little sonic details that are nice in moderation and North To The Future tastefully avoid hitting you over the head with too many of, letting the songs themselves have the attention. “Home” and the title track that follows it are more warm and folky, the former sporting a viola. “This Is A Girlfriend” has a country feel, and by this point I start to notice that a lot of these songs are about girls with some troubles and moral failings but who you can’t help but feel for anyway. “Tornado” picks the volume back up and then the tempo too in its furious instrumental chorus. “Butterflies” qualifies as the album’s epic by coming at the end and being just over three minutes long. While the preceding seven songs are good fun enough, “Butterflies” hints at what this band is really capable of in terms of arrangement and melody, particularly in its instrumental second half.

North To The Future cover a lot of ground in just 18 minutes, and don’t waste a moment. You don’t even need much of an attention span to appreciate what they’re laying down. There are stories in the songs, even if sometimes you just get a rough outline.

Matthew Dake’s one-man recording project You Are Home is known for hyperactive instrumental compositions built around bass guitar and drums that at their most accessible moments sound a bit like some kind of mathy Krautrock version of Lightning Bolt. Depending on who you ask, the results are either amazing, confusing, or maddening.

“…” is the first You Are Home album to be recorded in Dake’s shiny new basement studio setup. It revels in a richer color palette than most previous You Are Home material by incorporating a wider range of instruments. Where earlier You Are Home releases would tend to go for relentlessly bludgeoning, “…” is more likely to aim for a groove or mood you can really get wrapped up in.

“Idiot Police” starts off with a floor-tom roll that sounds like the beginning of The Stooges’ “Dirt”, then launches into a free-jazz explosion of drums, delayed Casio keyboards, and the crumbliest distortion imaginable. After this intro burst, the track alternates between a more guitar-heavy version of the well-established You Are Home sound, and what sounds like a distorted acoustic guitar, possibly recorded though a broken microphone, without ever losing hold of its furious 7/8 riff. The keyboards and junky acoustic guitar introduce one recurring theme I find intriguing in You Are Home releases, that of bringing lo-fi sonic elements into a relatively polished production. Next “Live At The Sands” keeps up the quick tempo and adds a ringing piano. It actually sounds like its title, like Neu or Kraftwerk performing in an exotic outdoor location.

Some tracks on “…” bear the mark of, or may just be borrowing the feel of, looper-based music, a hypnotic, rather mechanical repetition with instruments joining in one at a time. Helping to keep things interesting is a cross-fading of things into each other, such as the way “Dummy” fades into the ambient synths and organ that comprise the first half of “…”, sounding like something that Can might have done on either Ege Bamyasi or Tago Mago (“Peking O” maybe?), which then gradually cross-fades with a 6-beat funk riff that sounds like an intro in search of something to introduce, which then cuts off abruptly just a little after I start to lose my patience with it.

After being treated to a dense glob of noise backed by an intense Neu-ish groove called “somebodyupthereHATESme” and a very nice slow-build drone piece called “My Dirt Makes Your Mud”, we get to “Airborne,” which is the real masterpiece of this album, even though it is technically like another series of scenes fading into one another the way “Dummy” and “…” are put together. There’s a menacing one-note guitar chug forming the rhythmic basis behind a jazzy meandering clarinet and a piercing synth-piano note at regular intervals that evokes the seat belt sign chime on an airplane. It’s then joined by a descending horror-movie piano melody — in fact the whole track sounds like good horror-movie soundtrack stuff. A wide variety of different sounds fade in and out at different times, keeping the scene constantly shifting — there’s Eastern-ish percussion, an upright bass, and some watery synthesizer bloops, organ, and Claire Kreusel doing the kind of ethereal “human theremin” vocals she’s known for in Longshadowmen. By the end only Claire and one long organ chord are left standing, and then even Claire disappears leaving the organ and a distant wind sound to fade slowly out. It’s an intricate, highly layered, carefully constructed piece, particularly given its being constructed from repetitive elements, and is really something pretty special and profound.

Finally there’s “Ditchweed Blues,” a slide-guitar blues goof so raw and trashy sounding that I wonder whether it’s actually Pink Villa. Coming at the tail end of the album following “Airborne” it feels extraneous and a bit jokey but if Dake wanted to end the album on a not-too-serious note, which seems like him, then it works.

Matt Dake’s ADD approach to composition isn’t always easy to follow, and lives at a kind of nebulous gray area between “experimental” rock and the avant-garde. If you already are a fan of weird stuff, you’ll find “…” easy to get comfortable in, very enjoyable but not “difficult” listening. On the other hand, if you’ve found You Are Home dense and difficult before (delightfully so, in this writer’s opinion), “…” is a good opportunity to give it another try. It wins either way.