Checking out the bandcamp stream of this new Marax joint on a Minneapolis noise label called Darker Days Ahead while checking out DDA’s website. Thinking maybe I’d like to work with this outfit when it comes time to release Explortation, the noise album I’m working on. In any case I want to check out their zine and that compilation. Anyway this is yet another fine release from Marax, another feather in Mr. Crowe’s cap. Listen below:

Meanwhile, I recently looked through some of the songs I had mixed down on my computer and realized I had an album brewing there. There was this group of tracks that just fit together, not a noise album, apart from one track, but still a pretty interesting set of songs and instrumentals, and it would fit pretty nice on 45 minute cassette. So I’m hereby announcing the impending release of a new Distant Trains album called Teen Lust both online and on cassette in an edition of 25 (and maybe another 25 to follow if those run out and there’s demand), once I manage to come up with some cover art. A major drawback of my having always been so focused in music and other things is that I’ve never developed any real skill in visual arts. I’m thinking of seeing if Ira wants to try coming up with something…

Anyway on to more stuff about Marax, and also his partner in yet another split 3″ CD-R, Molting. I think the ongoing series of split 3″ CD-R releases is a pretty cool networking tactic on the part of Marax besides its yielding some pretty cool sounds. I’m certainly honored to be among those to have made one with him (I still have some copies, check the link to the right). This is a particularly good matchup as their sounds have a bit in common. This is 18 very harsh ear-torture minutes. Two tracks from the more frenetic side of the Marax spectrum. Molting, a bit newer on the scene perhaps, is a fellow who calls himself “Moe Lesther” and claims to make harsh noise influenced by goregrind. That doesn’t, evidently, translate to gorenoise, but rather something much more abstract in Molting’s case. The first half of his piece sounds like a demonically possessed Atari 2600 speaking blasphemies in a language made up of explosion sound effects; after that maybe an overdriven mix of some immense heavy machinery through analog TV static. I’ve become pretty interested in Molting’s approach, he has a number of tracks up on a YouTube channel and Facebook page and quite a few releases out in a short time.

I also lucked into Marax’s 2008 release on Crucial Blast, Black Veil of the Sanguinarian. It’s a more subdued, slow-burn kind of death-drone, which is welcome after the assault of the above split. At “Returning to Rust” it’s evening in the countryside of singing metallic insects. “Inside the Inner Voice” uses very slowed-down spoken word, which someone somewhere mentioned in reference to last year’s Funeral Liturgy as a bit of a Marax trademark, but this is the first other place I’ve heard it. “Bleeding Black” has a great rumbling-crumbling sub-bass drone with what might be progressively higher-pitched and more-distorted versions of itself layered over. Seven minutes in I think I hear a distant voice in it but then it’s gone. Later it seems to resolve into a couple of chords, but only for a second before the piece ends. We find those chords again a little ways into “NOD”, a 22-minute sound trip that transitions nicely from a noise drone intro to a mesmerizing horror movie synth line that forms the basis for the rest of the track.

The first time you listen to Nobunny is kind of like the first time that you have sex.  There’s a lot of confusion, mixed emotions and you begin to wonder why your uncle is making that sound.  Raw Romance is where it all began folks, and it’s now on vinyl.  It’s all there in all of it’s Ramones Via Rocky Horror Picture show glory.  It’ll make you yearn for the days before First Blood came out.

ORIG∆MI – Memories (EP)
Sounding like a pop album set in the world of Blade Runner, Beau Manancourt creates a world cold and distant, yet not disingenuous or contrived sounding as many of his contemporaries.  This is my first exposure to Beau or the label he belongs to Disaro Records, but both seem very interesting and well worth the investigation. You can stream it over at bandcamp.

Seattle self-described “disco garage” (that description actually fits quite well!) duo Pony Time pony up six more nuggets of raw bouncy pop-punk fun on this EP available on CD, vinyl, or download from Per Se Records. Some of these could credibly be misrepresented as obscure Buzzcocks covers. There’s a bit of homage to the innocence and fun of 1960s garage/beach rock and roll going on, such as on “Ex-Girlfriend Beach” and “Lori and Judy”, but always with just a slight sinister undercurrent courtesy of that grimy bass sound. The new wave pops up on “Gary Numan”, propelled by its very apropos approximation of an electro-disco beat, and the dark sci-fi closer “Interzone” which manages to evoke spy-movie surf-rock entirely without presence of a non-bass guitar. Only quibble I might have is that I keep hearing some really great backup vocals in my head that I wish were actually there. Maybe some theremin too. This disc is a blast all the way through. After it finishes I usually just want to let it play over again.

Pony Time – Bad Behavior [LIVE] from Per Se Records on Vimeo.