Sun Hammer – There Is No-One Around But Flies (Futuresequence)
The incredible Jay Bodley, everybody. Recording here as Sun Hammer for Futuresequence’s second proper release, Bodley has made a jaw dropper of darkened drones. This thing straight up should have been the score to Event Horizon. Bleak creepiness infused with the vast nothing of space and some drops of sci-fi nightmares. The opening piece is a 19 minute droning juggernaut, patiently evolving from one movement to the next with static waves and long form regret. 4 shorter pieces follow, each one summoning the dark parts of your soul, stretched out haunted minimalism woven with pulsing, grinding, clicking, buy cialis online mastercard whining, and crying, all walking the delicate balance of dissonance & bliss. This is the darkest of grays, as dark as you get without going full Black Ambient or Black Metal or Black anything. Unbelievably fucking awesome. Digital only for now but FS is currently considering making the plunge to physical releases, so who knows what’s in the bag. And if you’re digging Bodley’s stuff as much as me, know that he also releases stuff as A Setting Sun, most recently December on Moongadget back in… December, and he’s been contributing to Disquiet’s Junto project every week. So, plenty more goodness where this came from.
C. Yantis – Rand (Holyoak! Resounding)
A new tape on a new label from a not so new dude. Holyoak! Resounding is run by Seth Chrisman with the aim of making every release a unique artifact with elaborate packaging. C. Yantis’ Box Elder, Cold Scholar is h!r-001 and if it’s any indication of what the future holds, shoooooot you’re gonna want each and every H!R release out there. Beautiful stuff. The tape comes in a hand stamped, wax sealed envelope (I love wax sealed music), inside of which is a photograph and a card with the liner notes on one side and an original Yantis painting on the other. And the tape is green. Nice. And the music is fucking outstanding, as should be expected. Many awesome sounds on here, dampened drums, depressed pianos, gritty guitars, that’s about all that’s recognizable. Maybe some creepy bowed metal, reversed & reverbed brass & strings. It’s all incredible, casting out a dark gray vibe that’s not to be fucked with. Each side has one short and one long piece, the long ones are definitely my pick of the litter. The A side is a stretched out 15+ minute slab of warm lush Mountainsy drone, macroscopically static, revealing an ocean of tidal currents when you stare really hard. The closer is a real ear fucker, guitars chopped & rewound to make some unsettling glitchy industrial soup, making its way into a burnt out feedback loop, throwing that eeriness out the window and going full bliss, cranking it to 11 in the clouds. Fucking awesome as fuck. So much is right with this tape, it would be dangerous to your health is you skipped over it.
Here’s something to get excited about. A new site that’s both webzine collective and donation platform! Seriously. This newly launched site, Amour & Discipline, is the real deal. The contributors to the webzine are like a fuckin who’s who of the coolest dudes alive. Check out this ridiculous lineup:
Aguirre Records, Amen Dunes, Astral Social Club, Ben Greenberg (Zs, Hubble), Ben McOsker (Load Records), Brad Rose (Digitalis), Bruno Dorella (Bar la Muerte records, OvO…), Carla Bozulich, Chris Corsano, Clint Simonson (De Stijl records), Dan Deacon, Dean Spunt (No Age, Post Present Medium), Deerhoof, Dustin Wong, Efrim Manuel Menuck (Godspeedyoublackemperor/A Silver Mt Zion/Constellation), Eli Keszler, EMA, Ensemble Economique, Giuseppe Ielasi, Jakub Adamek (Weed Temple), Japanther, Jeffrey Lewis, Jon Hency (Bathetic Records), Julian Lynch, Justice Yeldham, Kemialliset Ystävät, Lightning Bolt, Liars, Mount Eerie, Orange Milk Records, Prince Rama, Scout Niblett, Sculpture, Senufo Editions, Shawn Reed (Wet hair/Night People), Sore Eros, Sun Araw, Sunburned Hand, Tape Drift Records, The Ex, Volcano The Bear, Xiu Xiu
And I only mentioned the best. The best of the best. That’s what this is. The full list of contributors is posted on the site, with more to come.
Ok, so another music blog thing is good and all, especially with such a unique collection of voices as A&D is offering, but we already got lots of those. Not a lot of innovation there. But then there’s the donation platform, and that’s where this gets really awesome.
Imagine this. You’re off torrenting some obscure band’s discography because everything’s long sold out (you’re late to the party) and you think to yourself, I just acquired 3 straight days worth of music that someone poured their heart and soul into, and I got it for nothing. You think maybe I could be only half-asshole and donate some dollars directly to an artist. Because you consider yourself a semi-decent human being or something. I dunno. Or maybe you just downloaded some free ‘n’ legal album that a band posted and decide later you want to give them money. Amour & Discipline is allowing you to do exactly that.
They have a massive database of bands & labels that you can give money to via A&D, and if the artist you want to support isn’t in their database, A&D will track them down for you. The only money that isn’t going directly to the artist is to cover bank fees. That’s it.
I probably did a shitty job explaining things, but that’s the general gist of it. Amour & Discipline have short & full manifestos for your perusal that do a way better job getting the point across.
The donation platform should be rolling out very soon, but until then go explore the rest of the site. There’s already a bunch of blog posts from the likes of Dustin Wong and Eric Hardiman. This has the potential to be something truly great. I hope it goes even beyond that. Godspeed, Amour & Discipline!
Hexagon Sun – Plasma Sea: 256 Colors (self released)
Download +/-
/mainframe malfunction/
/lost distress beacon signals/
/anti-matter wind/
Double Awake – Lost Word (Slow Blood)
Double Awake (Will Mayo) has a new tape and a new label. As Slow Blood, he’s been booking amazing noise/psych/drone shows at Great Scott & O’Brien’s. Now Slow Blood is officially a label with Foundlings being its number one. And this thing is a fucking synth massacre. All live and done entirely on a Realistic MG-1, these tracks are insane. The first is a side long piece sounding like guitar feedback loops, repeated & echoed in a slightly tense/disturbing way, taking a long time to build but once it does, its a dense swirling cloud of black dreams. The B side has a couple of tracks that are fucking bonkers. One starts out all innocent and New Agey, old school warped & jumbly synth melodies and then flies into the heart of the storm where it drops out and goes pure red, grit & static bursts of the most pleasurable variety. The tape finishes off with a piece that’s weird even for DA. He blurs vocals and synth on here, making sounds that seem like you’re in a factory with gurgling air pipes screaming hot steam, almost like industrial beat boxing or something, super awesome, bizarreness abound, ends with him turning into a howler monkey and yelling like a madman while the world crumbles around him. It’s called “War Poem (For Tristan Tzara)” so it kinda makes sense. Kind of. Best of all, pay what you want for this sucker. Or drop a mere $6 for the physical embodiment of Slow Blood’s hard work.
I’ve been struggling a bit with the semi-regular blog crisis. Happens about once every year or so. It’s been especially rough this time around. I’ve dealt with so many deaths lately I’ve lost count, funeral after funeral, it starts to wear on you. And I’ve started a new full time job with a 3-4 hour round trip commute. You start questioning things. Why am I doing this? Who am I doing it for? etc, etc.
Anti-Gravity Bunny has not been fun for me as of late. It started out as a great leisurely way for me to share my favorite music but it’s grown into something else, something that takes a lot of work. I created a slew of self-imposed rules & guidelines that I was never able to keep up with. A post a day. Write about every submission I get. Ok, write about every physical submission I get. Write about a lot of Boston stuff. Way too much guilt. I imagined everyone hating me for not writing about the record they sent me and everyone else somehow knowing I had the record and that I wasn’t writing about it and hating me for that. It wasn’t fun.
These were the main questions I asked myself. Why did I start AGB? Why don’t I like it anymore? Can I like it again? The answers started to sound a little like a mission statement. Wait, I don’t have one of those. Hey, I should have one of those. So I made one. And now I feel like I’ve set up a framework for me to do exactly what I want to do and enjoy it instead of feeling bad about it.
So here it is. I’m curious to know what you think. From here on out it will be available on my About page.
Mission Statement
I love sharing music that’s crazy awesome and/or under-represented. That’s why I started Anti-Gravity Bunny and that’s why I keep it going.
I’ve always tried to maintain both quantity & quality in AGB but it’s a solo operation. I’m just one dude who, sadly, has more on his plate than a stack of records. I’ve chosen to focus on quality content without pressuring myself to keep up with a large quantity. I’m pretty sure this is a refinement everyone can get psyched about.
I’ve created content criteria to give myself some guidelines and so you know what to expect. Posts will fit one or more of the following:
1. It’s so great that I passed out from it’s sheer fucking greatness. Good music is good and all, but there’s too damn much of it. 100% great 100% of the time.
2. It’s from an artist I haven’t already written about. One and done (unless they’re that fucking good. see #1). Once I’ve introduced you, I’ve done my duty as a sharer and now it’s up to you to follow through.
3. It’s a hidden gem. I go crate digging and find some old bizarre LPs. It would be criminal to not pass such rare & unique treasures on to all of you.
I just crave music that’s weird & rad and I know some of you do, too. I do this for free. I do it for love. Sharing is caring.
P.S. Since AGB is all me, I can change the rules whenever I want.
A couple of my friends and I started a mix trading project. The idea (not mine, sadly) is to take a track number and make a mix using only songs that are that track number on their respective albums. Hence the title 3. My inspiration was A Faulty Chromosome’s “Groaning Like A Grown-Up” (third track off of Craving To Be Coddle So We Feel Fake-Safe) which is one of my favorite songs ever. I even wrote about that song specifically after I had already reviewed the album. It’s just so fucking good. Anyway, this mix starts out kinda poppy, ends up pretty noisy. I had fun making it, so I thought I’d share. Enjoy.
Download 3
1. A Faulty Chromosome – Groaning Like A Grown-Up
2. The Hospitals – Rules For Being Alive
3. The Goslings – Vitium
4. Neptune – Paris Green
5. Nadja – The
6. Pete Swanson – A&Ox0
7. Dan Friel – One Legged Cowboy
8. Power Pill Fist – Fisticus 2:36
9. Lightning Bolt – Dracula Mountain
10. Millipede – Daphnes Nohansen
11. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – Loving Love
12. Prurient – Memory Repeating
Textile Trio – Untitled 1 (Songs From Under The Floorboards)
Two French turntable brutalists (Alexandre Bellenger and Arnaud Rivière) and drummer/trumpet destroyer Aaron Moore (of Volcano The Bear) joined up for some truly devastating stuff on AAA. This is fucking killer. Free jazz noise taken to the furthest level, a neverending cacophony of hardcore. Turntables getting torn to bits to make sweet skree crumble, I can only imagine what they look like when these guys are done with ’em. The equivalent of smashing your guitar into your amp and lighting them on fire, that’s what these guys are doing with their turntables. Fucking insane. And Moore is a beast on the drums, absolute reign over the kit, furious & cathartic. I’ve only recognized the trumpet for a brief moment on here, which either means a) Moore is mostly taking care of the drums or b) he’s warped his trumpet sounds beyond recognition and it just melts together with the rest of the chaos. I’m rooting for the latter. And for the whole goddamn thing. This album is punk as fuck and needs to be heard. Intransitive sub-label Songs From Under The Floorboards has graced us with 100 copies of AAA, make sure you give one a home.
Nop – Queenlord (self released)
This record is insane. Some guy from Roxbury (aka Boston) making twisted bedroom jams of a hundred different genres. Every song is another sound, tropical drone, gritty technoise, dubby witch house, skittery ambience, spastic jungle DnB, chilled catchy AnCo pop, lo-fi chiptuney party starters, everything under the DIY sun. And it’s super sample heavy, almost every track has some clips from films and interviews and stuff. Definitely demo style, but not demo quality. This is fucking killer, it’s just all over the place. It makes for one chaotic mindfuck of a record and clearly that’s something to be proud of. Plus, IT’S FREE. Go download this shit before he changes his mind.
Keroaän – Untitled (excerpt) (Copy For Your Records)
Wow. Just… fucking wow. This is awesome. Reed Evan Rosenberg and Ian M. Fraser have created a musical AI by “implementing XENAKIS’S Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis.” That means this shit wrote itself. A computer composed this. And this is INSANE. Crazy computer noise that borders on unlistenable, except for the fact that it’s totally fucking listenable. Sounds of all sorts in here, helium struggling to escape from balloons, metal coins scraping against hard plastic, hail storms & train wrecks, avalanches & atomic bombs, DIY prop plane motor whir, NES consoles aflame, ancient computer hardware disintegrating before your eyes, even a brief techno interlude. Absolute aural destruction. Daunting In Its Variousness is a goddamn workout and a half. 100% intense & 200% amazing. And apparently the live show is just as nuts, “lasers, strobe lighting, and fog synched to both audible and structural qualities of the music as an infinitely morphing chorus of digital voices croon, cry, scream and everything in between.” FUCK these dudes need to send their genius computer on tour and hit up Boston stat.
Haute-Cimes – Pertt (self released)
A caustic debut by this new French dude, and he’s giving it away for free. Grab it first, read later. This is some awesome fucked noise, like Yellow Swans on a murdering spree or Gnaw Their Tongues doing power electronics. Scary brutal static, nauseous paranoia, fucking intense blow outs of grit & grime, clear and distorted vocals, dappled with moments of respite, beauty, chirping birds, none lasting too long before being jerked back into the terror. Film samples get thrown around, sometimes recognizable & enjoyable, like a clip from My Neighbor Totoro, others are a bit more horrifying, like the one of a girl screaming for her life while a maniac laughs. Some uniquely killer shit, no reason to pass over this. Digitally free, or pay some cash and get a tape.
Clint Heidorn – 2 (Ashes Ashes)
A new dude self releasing his first album on vinyl with killer packaging, you should already be paying attention. Heidorn is making some stellar tunes on Atwater, channelling a sparser Dirty Three or a dustier & less gloomy Jakob Battick. Truly awesome stuff here. I see it getting labeled a lot as black folk and even black ambient, and I guess, for lack of a better word, I might as well. But this isn’t black. It’s hardly even dark. Somber? Certainly. But this doesn’t conjure any woodland specters or rain the plague down on your soul. It’s an earthy minimalism, guitars, strings, reeds, and a slew of noisemakers echoing in the trees, sprawling out over the leaves on the forest floor. Chill as fuck and absolutely amazing. But I just can’t see the whole haunted spin on this. And as rad as it is using “tree bones” to adorn your hand tinted record jackets, I’m not a big fan of the upside cross imagery. Especially here, where it seems to be pleading its case instead of representing the sound. But clearly Heidorn created Atwater with dark intentions, so I’m not hating. I’m just not on board with the theme. I see Atwater in my own way, and it’s super fucking cool.
Parts & Labor – No Nostalgia
I don’t enjoy doing these eulogic write-ups, and for the most part I don’t have to. There aren’t many bands fit the criteria of a) me loving them enough, b) them fitting the aural aesthetic of AGB, and c) them breaking up. The only other band I’ve officially said goodbye to was Big Bear (RIP). Now I add their partners in maximum volumage Parts & Labor to the mantle of memories.
Parts & Labor technically aren’t “broken up.” They’re on “extended hiatus.” I’m personally not making any distinctions between the two because if I think “extended hiatus” means there’s any chance of them recording & playing shows again, I’ll probably pass out from holding my breath and just have my dreams dashed regardless. So this is it. The nail in the coffin.
The first time I saw Parts & Labor was at the Brahloween CMJ showcase in ’06 where BJ Warshaw performed the whole set dressed as Batman and Chris Weingarten destroyed the drums for about 2.5 songs while wearing a white sheet before tearing it off and finishing the set mortally (Dan Friel went as a party pooper?). This was the first of innumerable P&L shows, each one making me 10 times more euphoric and giving me 20 times more neck injuries than the last. Honestly, there is no other band who I enjoy seeing live more than Parts & Labor. And the fact that they’re pals with Big Bear made me lose my shit on a regular basis seeing them play together all the time. And that show with both of them plus Neptune at the Middle East Upstairs? Fucking legendary lineup, I tell ya. I count myself lucky that I didn’t live in New York or I may have just ODed on P&L shows.
Some scoff at noise pop. Maybe it’s the term. Too oxy-moronic? Whatever. Parts & Labor fucking perfected it. If you want soaring buy cialis and levitra online hooks, sing along choruses, and epic climaxes paired with the grittiest electronic filth, scuzzy buzzing bass reverb, and crumbling avalanche drums, Parts & Labor are the goddamn gurus. They have made music that wholly encompasses my happy zone. Every time I hear them I instantly become a better person. And it takes every ounce of energy to not turn into an explosive dancing madman that air drums the shit out of everything.
They did a lot in the 10 years they’ve been around, and as tragic as it is that they’re vanishing, they made their mark and certainly didn’t go unappreciated. They found a major-indie label to love them (Jagjaguwar, along with Brah), got tons of praise from the mega-blogs, and even had an album filled with every sound that their fans submitted (Receivers). Some bands go 10 years and don’t make it half that far. Parts & Labor are motherfucking rockstars.
BJ and Dan plan on continuing their solo stuff (as Shooting Spires and Dan Friel, respectively). Joe might, too, I’m not sure. Both solo things are great and all, and perhaps each slightly more than half as good as Parts & Labor as a whole, but still incomparable. In their wake, they leave us a single song leftover from the Receivers sessions, called “No Nostalgia.” Fuck that. Gonna reminisce of the glory days when they played the no-stage Crane Room at Tufts a foot in front of me and the first time I heard “A Great Divide.” They were the gnarliest mood enhancer I’ve ever experienced, I just hope the magic lives on “extendedly” every time I play their records. Gonna miss you guys so. fucking. hard.
Their final show, on their 10th anniversary (more or less), is a week from today at 285 Kent in Brooklyn with Oneida, Neptune, and Noveller. I’ll be the dude rocking his heart out through the tears. It’s not sold out yet. See y’all there.
Pataphor – Public Transit (MRSA)
A Boston newcomer, by way of Milwaukee, Pataphor (aka Shannon Smith) has made some awesomely inaccessible noise on Probably Not. 3 tracks each around 10 minutes or so, the middle one a slight respite from its two rattling bookends. It starts with an interrupting “Special News Bulletin” morse code thing, attention grabbing tension, building/crumbling into a public school fire alarm, standing right in front of it, no chance of walking by and unplugging your ears, repeated indefinitely, which is definitely a theme here. Nothing is too dynamic, she finds a group of tones and just works & tweaks until you’re left with an erupted eardrum. The second track starts by dropping all the harshness and upping the creep factor, the sounds of a haunted buying cialis online legal swamp, gurgling on its own, ghastly moans drifting through the fog, peepers & cicadas making a tinny racket, but not even the swamps are safe because by the end of this it builds into another static shriek of noise. The final track is for the most masochistic. Solid square waves of sustained tinnitus, it’s amazing what she can do with just a few sounds, terribly piercing, an impenetrable sheet of high wire feedback, with just enough alterations along the way to make it fucking incredible and not making you want to jump through a 10th story window. This is some creatively despicable noise, and fuckin killer. It’s the first release on her own MRSA label, and you can pay whatever you want for a digital copy.
C. Spencer Yeh – Two Guitars (Intransitive)
A “proper” solo album from C. Spencer Yeh… finally? 1975 is being billed as a debut of Yeh’s, but regardless of what solo-type stuff he’s released in the past, this is a departure from his usual Burning Star Core sound. This is, um, weirder. And way more minimal. The track titles are either hyper-descriptive or giving just enough info to make your mouth water depending on your point of view. I’m in the latter. “Voice”, “Drone,” “Two Guitars,” that’s about as much as you’re gonna get from Yeh. But he’s being pretty straightforward about it. No mysteries as to what’s involved, just infinite mysteries as to what the fuck is going on.
The first half is alternating back-to-back “Drone” & “Voice” pieces, the drone ones being perhaps most similar to BXC material, just way more stripped down. Sustained piercing tones, just hanging in the air. “Voice” is some of the most engaging stuff on here, with Yeh’s vocals chopped up into discrete millisecond notes, patched together in a mind-bending glitch with almost no pattern or rhythm. But the best pieces on here are the couple of “Two Guitars” tracks. Absolutely amazing. Taking the stretched out tones from the “Drone” songs and adding a few more layers of rumble & grit but still keeping it totally bare, not one sound more than is necessary. The end of the record looks back to early avant garde electronics, the lo-fi scattered experiments that paved the way for today’s accessible niceties. Yeh burns through the weirdness like it’s his job, pounding away on echoing pianos and retro sci-fi effects. Unbelievably cool.
I haven’t heard a record like this in a while, and definitely not from anyone contemporary. Yeh is pushing for an old new drone noise, ignoring his bliss-obsessed colleagues and making something that requires more attention and contemplation. You need to try a little bit more with this one. And godDAMN it’s worth it.