So I was working in the basement on some stuff, with the mp3 player on random. I went upstairs for a minute, and as I was walking back down, I heard a weird song coming from the basement. I thought, shit, that sounds a lot like the Beatles but how is there a Beatles song I totally have never heard? As I got closer, I recognized the tune, but it wasn’t the Beatles. It was “Sub Rosa Subway” by Klaatu…

Read the story here. They got a little screwed in my opinion, but it’s not like a Badfinger story or anything. It’s more about how everyone loves a conspiracy.

Mixwit is a newish service that lets you grab tunes from all over the web using both the Seeqpod and Skreemer search engines, then put them together in a mixtape. It’s a lot like Muxtape, except you’re not uploading anything (so they’re probably farther away from a Cease & Desist), and it comes in the form of an embeddable Flash movie shaped like a cassette tape. Pretty cool. Here’s something I made with some old ska and reggae, and I’ll probably be using this service to flesh out some articles in the future.

It’s getting hard to keep track of Boris, really. I mean what the hell, they put out an album every month, usually as a collaboration with someone else (most notably SunnO))) and Merzbow). I believe the last thing I heard was Walrus and Groon, though I think the last “proper” Boris full-length would have to be 2005’s Pink. I loved Pink, especially the mopey Justin-Broadrick-like opener “Farewell.” The rest of the album was fairly straightforward 70s-worshipping heavy Boris-ism. If you can call anything they’ve done straightforward or typical.

Smile often still channels the 70s as only Boris can, but don’t call it “straightforward.”

Opener “Message” is a red herring, just like “Farewell,” though not quite to the same degree. It throbs and pulses with a big-ass electronic beat, and plays like a twisted-up heavy metal disco hybrid or (pardon this, trust me it’s good) Boris’s version of LCD Soundsystem.

“Next Saturn” is, for me, the centerpiece of the album, epic and heavy. It breaks down into a vintage-metal mess just when you least expect it, only to come back to moody melodicism and back again full circle.

But the rest of the album, aside from the driving hard psych Boris-jam “Dead Destination,” sounds to me like the culmination of what Boris has been doing over the course of the past few years. Sprawling areas of feedback drones, layers of hissing and slashing noise over top of their hard psych, and — maybe most importantly — liberal doses of spaced-out melody meshed with slow and heavy doom riffing a la “Farewell” combine to make what might be the quintessential Boris album. At least for the moment.

If you’re out there in RSS land, take a jaunt back to the site for a minute to gander at the new look. Some of your favorite stars of the stage randomly grace the header now. But we’re still here, and we’re still pink.

Also, there’s support for Gravatars in the comments now, so go get yours!

You don’t often hear people talking about Autechre as old school. Despite their obvious affinity for electro and old-school techno beats, they’ve been known for 15 years now as the guys riding the very front of the electronic wave. And since 1998’s LP5 (my and many others’ first exposure to them, since the predecessor Tri Repeatae++ had made them underground stars), they’ve been taking their unapologetic brand of software experimentalism farther than anyone else. Aphex Twin sort of petered out, Coil went back to singing, but Autechre got more and more dense and oblique.

Now I love abstract music, even abstract beats, but Confeld (the last LP I actually bought from them) lost me a little. It seemed to exist for its own sake, and that’s perfectly fine (I’m not going to get rid of it, it’s on 180 gram for fuck’s sake), but there’s not much enjoyment to be derived from listening to it. Some Autechre tracks require ages to decipher the location of the beat, but Confeld’s tunes didn’t always have something to decipher. Draft 7.30 came back to earth a bit, but Quaristice is really what people like to call a “return to form.”

Old school, if you will.

Almost all tunes have beats, save the bookending ambient tracks — and recognizable ones. Of course, there’s nothing four-on-the-floor about this, but the connection with electro is far more evident than it has been since Tri Repeatae++. They have clearly learned from their experiments: While nothing here really resembles throwing beats up against the wall and recording the shattered pieces, certainly the rhythms of “Chenc9″ were roughed up a little bit.

The occasional melody peeks out, as in “WNSN,” which resembles an Aphex-y tune. And the sounds themselves are still straight out of the future, satisfyingly artificial but with enough thud and smack to give them impact, unlike say EP7’s fuzzy bit-crunched sounds.

Overall, this is unlike anything they’ve done for a while, and structurally it’s unlike anything they’ve done ever: Twenty songs, all reasonably varied, and all (save the closer) 5 minutes or under. It’s also the most satisfying thing they’ve done in ages, and the first since Tri Repeata++ that is actually a blast to listen to front to back. If Autechre lost you in the past few years, come on back and kick it old school.

From the opening few seconds of Occasion’s first song, “Mew,” it’s pretty apparent that Florida duo the Goslings are not trying to go in any new directions. Actually, those opening seconds sound like some sort of glitch until a simple and absolutely brutal guitar riff creeps out of the distorted mire, followed by singer Leslie Soren’s spaced-out, reverse-echoed vocals. The more you hear the riff, the more it threatens to crush you under the weight of its psychedelic heaviness.

And that’s the main thrust of this album, and of the Goslings in general: heavy, heavy, noisy, and above all psychedelic. Bands like Comets on Fire or Awesome Color, in their stoner-riff vintage style, peddle old-school hard psych effectively enough, but for a real drug-binge experience without chemical aid, you’d be hard pressed to find a more face-melting vibe than the one oozing off the Goslings.

Sometimes the sound is more contemplative, sometimes it’s downright melancholy in that Justin Broadrick kind of way, but it’s never really tense or tightly-wound, and it’s always extremely distorted. Sometimes there are drums for extra crushing power (also distorted), sometimes not, but there is never a fast tempo.

While the Goslings are sticking to what they do best (distortion), it’s not to say they’re not moving forward. Listening to the progression from Between The Dead through Grandeur Of Hair until now, the sound is clearly refining. And by “refining” I mean that they have taken the elements that used to make up their sounds — nasty guitars, distorted drums, spacey vocals — and distilled them into one single textural entity. In fact, whereas before they sounded a bit like a doom metal band with too many distortion pedals, they’re more and more like a psych-heavy noise crew. Perhaps the production aid of grind/noise-meister James Plotkin (O.L.D., Khanate, numerous collabs with Mick Harris and many more) had a hand in that newfound sonic focus.

That is a mixed bag for me; the overall product is awesomely beautiful, but nothing stands out to me. At least nothing as ridiculously grandiose as the epic, melancholy, shoegaze-on-merzbow kick of Grandeur’s “Haruspex.” I was buying what they were selling from minute one, but that song made me want the warehouse.

I suppose saying that there’s no “Haruspex” on the album is a small complaint from such a holy-fuck experience. If you liked the Goslings’ other records, you will almost without a doubt like this one. If you don’t know them, Grandeur of Hair may be a (slightly) better place to start, but I couldn’t recommend against this one. Just killer.

And… for my own benefit, Technorati Profile. No need to follow that link.

The problem with most of these bands was that the extent of their discographies was comprised of little more than those Crass Records sides, and anything else was usually a much smaller print of a much more obscure 7″. The Internet’s great for hearing these things now, but for good quality sound and something you can hold in your hand, very unlikely reissue is pretty much your only way. Gradually, some of those have trickled out. The Cravats in particular have done a great job with their Land of The Giants comp, and Zounds with The Curse of Zounds, but this extremely long-winded setup is all in celebration of the newest of the lot, Anthrax. Yes, the name sounds familiar, but unlike Bullshit Detector 3’s Napalm Death, this is decidedly not the same band. Anthrax were featured on the second A-Sides for their Crass release “Capitalism Is Cannibalism,” and in truth it didn’t stand out much to me —compared to the catchier Omega Tribe, weirder Cravats, or darker Joy-Division-like Lack of Knowledge, they seemed like an almost run-of-the-mill punk band. But here, their complete works combined onto a CD called One Last Drop, it’s easy to see why they rise to the top of the punk crop.

Firstly, there’s no disputing that they must have fallen in well with the Crass crowd thanks to their being a total package: the intricate ink artwork is incredibly detailed and suitably menacing, especially the cover with its cigar smoking, fat-cat capitalist squeezing that titular last drop out of a punk rocker. The art immediately gives them an edge in my mind that should make you take notice: it looks like they mean business. They come out firing on all cylinders with “All The Wars,” and things start to fall into place even more solidly. Anthrax’s mostly mid-tempo stomp contains some genuinely intriguing riffs, and the band keep the energy level up the whole time. If I was in a comparing mood, I’d compare it to a harder-edged early Flux or a more melodically leaning early Conflict, but these (still relatively few) songs are very much their own.

Lyrically, Anthrax seemed to avoid empty polemics in favor of a style that mixes thoughtful verses with a rallying slogan-based chorus. “Violence is Violence” is one of pacifist punk’s great lyrical angles, reducing the complexities of war to the same terms as a streetfight. Most other songs attack the capitalist system. Specifically “They’ve Got It All Wrong” goes after labels and promoters profiting from political music (without taking the same old easy shot at the Clash). It’s not particularly uplifting music, but it’s not the downer of Rudimentary Peni or, say, The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks. It’s got a very call-to-arms quality about it, and the conviction with which it’s delivered once again confirms their “professional” feel.

A lot of the songs are repeats, and each different version has something else to offer. With some bands’ compilations, I find the Crass Records versions to be the most well-produced tracks, but here Penny Rimbaud and John Loder’s trademark buzzsaw guitars and trebly snare thin the overall wall of attack that gives the tunes a lot of their impact. Not a huge fault though, it’s always interesting for me to hear different bands put through that same “filter” to see what comes out. Some bands get a bit sucked in; while Anthrax may lose a little impact, they never lose their identity.

Overall, it’s a great bargain at $10 US, and a good compilation for anyone into the Crass/anarchist punk scene of the early 1980s, anyone who owned but lost their records over time, and even for folks just starting to go down the “serious” punk road. Anthrax are an accessible enough band that fans of, I dunno, Stiff Little Fingers won’t be too frightened away, but fans of bands like Conflict and Flux will no doubt dig them a lot.

Coming in at #1? Des’ree – “Life” (Who? I’m not sure, but apparently it was a hit. Then again these Cheetah Girls and Pussycat Dolls are also apparently very popular with the kids these days, as are those screaming bands, and I couldn’t tell you who they are, either.) Even though I don’t know who Des’ree is, though, I will agree that this is some shitty songwritin’:

I don’t want to see a ghost.
It’s the sight that I fear most.
I’d rather have a piece of toast.
Watch the evening news.


Really, it’s that last line that gets me. It doesn’t fit. For the rest of the verse, the songwriting is transparent and logical. You know, the writer is afraid of ghosts more than anything, so “ghost” and “most” are a given, and from there, it’s no stretch to picture a braintrust sitting around, wondering, “what then, rhymes with ‘ghost’ and ‘most’?”
“Roast? Like roast beef? Doesn’t that sound good? I could go for a roast beef sandwich right about now. You want anything?”
“I’m not really hungry. I’ll just have a piece of toast.”
“THAT’S IT!”

See, I’m with them until they get to the part about watching the news. Must be a British thing.

Some of the rest of the list seems to have just gotten a bad rap. Like #2, Snap’s “Rhythm is a dancer”:

I’m as serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer.

That’s serious. I can’t think of a better way to imply seriousness, except maybe through a risky medical procedure, a painfully infected skin condition or facing felony drug convictions. And while they would all work here, they don’t rhyme. So what’s the problem with the line as is?

At #6 was Toto’ “Africa”. While I have little say about the lyrics that hit their list:

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company.
I know that I must do what’s right.
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.



Tell me you somehow managed to read that and then not belt out “Hurry boy, she’s waiting there for you!” If you didn’t sing it, you must be mentally deficient. Or I must be. I forget how that works.

At any rate, there is a lot more awful lyrics on the list (you can see the whole thing here), but I was amazed to see that Oasis was on there. Not because their lyrics to “Champagne Supernova” weren’t awful, but because that Oasis is such a giant pile of shite that I just figured they weren’t qualified for the poll. I mean, Vanilla Ice didn’t make the list with “To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal. Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle,” because nobody considered him a contender, as he was already a joke. I figured Oasis was the same.

Another surprising spot, was Black Sabbath at #10 with “War Pigs”:

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses.

Don’t get me wrong, that is also a terrible line. Basic lyrical skills tell you that you can’t rhyme a word with the same word, even if it has a different meaning (someone also should have told those bands that rhyming “knees” and “please” was played out, but it’s technically not incorrect, so we’ll deal with that later). What gets me is that a legendary, influential band like Sabbath is not immune to bad lyrics. In fact, no band is.

It’s fun to make fun of awful bands with awful lyrics (like Dinosaur JR), but what about those bands we like that manage to write some awful lyrics? Think about it: The Clash had a few stinkers, and the Ramones (and a ton of other punk rock bands) are endearingly wonderful for their bad lyrics.

What bands are you way into that managed to occasionally surprise you with awful lyrics?

Howdy, J Mascis fans fair readers. I dug up the vault tonight and came up with a nearly two-year-old post about something near and dear to my heart a crappy band fronted by a once-decent punk star. This is old stuff, and I’m not sure if this band plans on continuing, but I suppose the thoughts are still relevant, since albums (sometimes regrettably) don’t disintegrate after leaving the charts.

The Transplants not only bring to mind but enforce two truths that I always hoped to stand by:

1. Jesse Michaels was the Joe Strummer of Operation Ivy, while Tim “Lint” Armstrong was the Mick Jones.
2. As a friend of mine said in high school, punk rock isn’t a poor boy’s way off the streets. That’s what hip hop is for.

(photo by carolinejperez, CC) That might be not overly kind to hip hop, especially since some of the best emcees never make it bigtime and don’t want to (one reason being that they share an ethic with punk – see the convoluted requirements for being “Underground” in KRS-ONE’s song of the same name), but take one look at the Transplants’ video for “Gangsters and Thugs” and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Armstrong’s gangsta fetish has only been encouraged by his new co-conspirator Travis Barker of pop-punkers Blink 182, a guy who clearly does not want to be the punk portion of the group. Check out the photos. Only Armstrong deems it ok to be seen in a studded leather jacket or pork pie hat. And it just doesn’t get any better from there. Not only have Barker and Armstrong let Fred Durst’s dumber cousin “sing” and “rap” for them, they’re hawking everything from shampoo (could there be a product any less punk rock?) to prepaid walkie-talkie Nextel phones (apparently there could).

I sure hope Jesse Michaels – or at least the ghost of Joe Strummer – is shaking his head as “Diamonds and Guns” (see a pattern?) transitions from Armstrong’s trademark slurred chorus into the mad tight flow of Rob Aston, whose rhymes read like the Ultimate White G Shopping List, circa 1992:

I’m wiggin out, flippin’ out, hearts is what I’m rippin’ out
I’m slippin’ out, I’m dippin’ out, killin’s what I’m livin’ out
Pick ‘em, let me pick ‘em out, spin and let me whip it out
Gat to your face with the fuckin’ bullets stickin’ out

Yeah, pick up the ice cream while you’re out. You know what flavor. Remember, even Vanilla Ice claimed to pack a 9.

I sure as hell hate Eminem, but the reason why he’s got cred (and why I have to begrudgingly give him some props) is that he never stoops to the fake-gangsta posturing that has tripped up so many of our honky brethren since the advent of hip hop. Rob Aston is the worst of all worlds, a poseur faux-thug cross-bred with a junk punk. He spends so much time glorifying guns, bling, cars, bitches, and heroin that it’s hard to imagine he’s not a parody, except for the fact that the only thing he could possibly be parodying is himself.

That said, Tim Armstrong can write a catchy song, and he’s got a good enough grasp of punk, reggae, and old-school hip hop to make the songs work (note: since I wrote this he’s put out a solo album and it’s far more entertaining than anything this not-so-supergroup has done). And it almost did on the first album. I started writing this post with the intent of reviewing their newer one, Haunted Cities. Unfortunately, I can’t make it through. At least 25% of any given song is catchy and listenable, but 75% is filled with a sound so consciously punk-meets-post-modern it sounds like the Exploited stopped by Beck’s garage sale to break stuff. Not a metaphor that will get me noticed in the local MC battle, but at least I’m trying. Rob Aston has only his intense negativity, fetish for violence (Cube could argue he was telling it like it is, not so much with you buddy), and literally monosyllabic vocabulary to keep him going.

The real fault of Haunted Cities as opposed to the debut? Actually, there are two. Firstly, Transplants sounded like Armstrong and Barker were having fun with their little side project, playing at being thugs, keeping their hawks under their knit hats and spitting when they talked. Even Aston was a little bit excusable because he seemed like a guy who just stepped in to drop some bad rhymes for a while. But on Haunted Cities, not only are they trying to have a full-time bad rhymer, they’re trying to be a “band.” In doing that, they lost their spark of ingenuity and slipped into a terrible and embarassing muck of amateurish posing not at all befitting some veteran mainstream punks.

Addendum: Since writing this post, I’ve seen even worse evidence of the Transplants’ wrongdoing. Seems that Armstrong has mixed his Clash fetish with his gangsta fetish and come up with a nasty Korn-esque cover of the Clash’s “White Riot.” Mind you, this is 3 years ago, but I’m proud to be behind this curve.