Anomalous LA

Night Control - Death Control

2009-03-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

For the majority of musicians working from a standpoint similar to that of Christopher Curtis Smith, recording with limited resources functions as a reaction to the bells and whistles of big studio recordings and all they've come to represent. But, the charm of "Death Control," Smith's first release under the Night Control moniker, is that through all of its ramshackled, makeshift glory it strives to evoke the grandiose strokes and layered textures of a sixties studio pop record.

It’s an album that feels highly realized, calculated even. Each stomp of a distortion pedal is exactly where it needs to be. Each moment of reverb-soaked, blissful indistinctness is counteracted by a resolute piano interlude or a melody that would stop British invasion obsessives in their tracks. Nevertheless, “Death Control” remains on the periphery of pop music. It’s too laden with tape hiss and Jesus and Mary Chain caterwaul to please listeners unengaged by the music of the margins. This is part of its beauty.

The bells and whistles that make "Death Control" feel so complete are likely attributable to some well executed pedal tricks, tape loops, and Smith and his musician friends bringing their A-games. What ultimately brings me back to it again and again are the songs. Each is an ambitious hashing out of ideas that transcend recording quality. It’s just a hunch, but I imagine the songs that make up “Death Control” would sound great even if a Talkboy was used to record them.

Pillow Talk - Downtown Unga Wunga 7"

2009-03-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

Columbus, Ohio's Pillow Talk might be categorically lumped in with the minimal basement synth bands that seem to be making waves with the Ebay collector crowd. Like Blank Dogs et al, Pillow Talk's sound is alienated, driven by simple, previously bygone casio beats and stabs of jagged, fractured synth. It's unlikely that Pillow Talk will play a show and their online presence, now an integral element to the shaping of most bands' identities, is somewhat provocatively non-existent. While plenty of record collector bands get by on PR moves like these and little more, nothing outside of Pillow Talk's music can actually prepare listeners for what's going on, on "Downtown Unga Wunga."

Pillow Talk's debut 7" is truly confounding at a time when more bands are attempting to sound confounding than ever. "Downtown Unga Wunga" is baffling. It's a belligerent, amphetamine morass soked in the cold sweat fallout of too much speed and booze. It's a record on the verge of vomiting if there ever was one. With a penchant for the hardcore bands like Psycho Sin, who occupy a corner of the sub genre that is too warped to appeal to hardcore purists and too idiotic for the art set, Pillow Talk finds a way to breath life into a musical resurgence that hasn't been as captivating for me as it has been for plenty of others.

After Several Months, A New Post!

2009-03-11T19:34:00.001-07:00

Since my last post, I've had little interest in blogging and music in general. Maybe it was the lack of daylight or the excessive amount of work-related writing I was inundated with, but something clicked and I quit caring. In that time, I did, however, find plenty of time to dump a superfluous amount of booze into my system, listen to an annoying amount of Guided by Voices, and spend more money than I'm worth. The club is open, indeed. Since dragging myself from my barstool, I've run across some inspiring new releases I'd like to spout off about. I hope to start posting on a regular basis, but I'm going to set the bar low and hope to exceed expectations--an approach that has always worked in my favor.

Required Reading: Library Music - The Good, the Bad, the Great, and the So-So...

2008-12-04T12:27:00.000-08:00

Library Music: The Good, the Bad, and Great, and the So So

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/ignatius/library_music__the_good__the_bad__the_great_and_the_so_so___

I came across a pretty useful online overview of library music that is really worth a once over. After recently shelling out the money for a few issues of Strut Records' library compilation series "Music for Dancefloors," I've been fairly enamored by the vast world of library music. Like any genre, there is plenty of shit to trudge through within the library music niche, but the payoffs are worth it.

The first entry on the Library Music web page is a nice enough entrance point into the world of library music. What follows is a subjective, hierarchical overview of some of the best libraries and library releases. My tastes aren't particularly congruent to those of the site's creator (I like a lot of the funky stuff the site author deems corny), but his/her outline turned me onto a lot of phenomenal music.

Since the "Music for Dancefloors" series is out of print, I'm comfortable posting download links. Have a listen...

Music For Dancefloors: The Cream Of The Bosworth Library Sessions
http://rapidshare.de/files/19300039/BoseworthCream.rar.html

Music for Dancefloors: The Cream of the KPM Green Label Sessions
http://rapidshare.com/files/40429357/Music_for_Dancefloors-_KPM_Sessions.zip

Music for Dancefloors: The Cream of the Chappell Music Library Sessions
http://rapidshare.com/files/95860250/Music_for_Dancefloors-_Chappell_Sessions.zip

Unrelated LA :: Recommended :: Tin Man "Wasteland" 12"

2008-11-28T13:46:00.000-08:00

Lately I’ve been fairly reclusive and moderately tired of my record collection. So I was pretty jazzed to find one of the best records I’ve heard all year in a music niche I've neglected over the years: house. Tin Man’s fourth release, “Wasteland,” harkens back to the most barren instances of classic Chicago house tracks, stretching the sound’s murkiest undercurrents into desolate, expansive drones that float beneath rhythmic throbs and deep, anesthetize vocals.

“Wasteland” is a dérive through the streets of a city’s seedy underbelly, lights streaming past while distant, shadowy decay drifts in and out of sight. Even without the dystopian evocations of the title and lyrics, the record’s soundscape signifies a world beyond redemption – cold, indifferent, entropic. The record occupies the same unsettling end times as Scott Walker’s The Drift without reveling in its dissonance or hellishness. The tracks are never convoluted or muddled by over indulgence. It’s textbook - the way creeps like myself hoped Deep house would sound the first time we heard it.

At its core, “Wasteland” is as much a rock and roll record as it is an electronic dirge or subversion of Chicago house. The spectacle, tension and attitude are all present; that’s likely what keeps me coming back for more. Like Kraftwerk’s best records, Tin Man never celebrates or condones the austere world his music evokes. It just is. He’s content there; he gets it. There are still drugs to take, sex to have, and music to dance to.

Rodriguez @ the Echo 11/21/08

2008-11-14T18:01:00.000-08:00

Like Jim Ford’s Harlan County and Hackamore Brick’s One Kiss Leads to Another, Sixto Rodriguez’s Cold Fact is something of a masterpiece that fell into obscurity the instant it landed in record bins. Victim of poor promotion, market saturation and mixed reviews, the Rodriguez parable is structurally familiar, but ripe with lore, peculiarities and enigma. Writers and record collectors have speculated, embellished upon and even chased the Rodriguez story, tracking clues that reach from Detroit to Mexico, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand.

By 1970, the year Cold Fact was released, the industry of rock had paid off big and was starting to bloat. For the first time, a popular consciousness large enough to generate real profit found personal and social redemption in the songs they produced. Music was the vehicle of a revolution and their was money to be made from it. Record labels burgeoned and multiplied, throwing money in all directions hoping to score the next Dylan, Beatles, or Stones. Album after album after album dropped. Some made waves; many more sank. The cash that landed Rodriguez was that of Clarence Avant, creator of Sussex Records. Avant, a Beverly Hills resident now considered a legend within the black recording industry, built Sussex on the hits of West Virginia R&B artist Bill Withers. Known as a playmaker and negotiator, Avant cut his teeth managing soul and R&B artists. He founded Venture Records, the first subsidiary to a major label to exclusively release black music, but was never able to hone in a truly successful label. Both of his attempts, Venture and Sussex Records, failed within five years.

Cold Fact was Sussex first release and Avant demonstrated little understanding with regard to marketing Rodriguez’s music. Sussex was distributed by Buddah Records, a label known for putting bubblegum pop acts like 1910 Fruitgum Company and Ohio Express on the map and successfully distributing the music of a number of soul and R&B artists. Much of Buddah’s early success was the result of its relationship with Kama Sutra Records and that label’s strong tie to AM radio. Kama Sutra released a number of hits like “Goodie Goodie Gumdrops” and “Do You Believe in Magic” that now define the AM sound. But once flower power broke, the FM airwaves became the movement’s mouthpiece. Through their industry ties, Sussex and Rodriguez had little access to the airwaves that suited his music. Cold Fact and “Sugar Man,” Rodriguez’s warbling, dope-laden first single, took to collecting dust on radio station shelves and record bins. Sixto disappeared.

In a sense, the Rodriguez story begins here in his absence. While he returned to Detroit from Los Angeles and took to working construction jobs and raising a family, his global fan base began its slow development. In South Africa, word on Rodriguez spread quickly among white dissidents because Cold Fact was one of the few records with racy lyrics to slip past the Apartheid’s stringent censors. Australia and New Zealand picked up on Rodriguez as well. In America, Rodriguez’s cult is still in its infancy, but developing. For years, no one knew for sure what had become of Rodriguez. Fans speculated, building a small mythology of suicides, drug overdoses and prison, some even said he set himself on fire on stage. Rodriguez could signify whatever or whoever the listener desired, his only context being the music and album cover of Cold Fact.

The songs inadvertently play into and transcend the Rodriguez myth. Cold Fact is coated with the urban grit of a musician born into the street life that plenty of 60’s folk artists observed, sang about, and even chose to enter from more fortunate, peripheral, social positions. Dark themes of drugs, sex, struggle, and manipulation abound. Even when his lyrics are political and tend toward convolution, Rodriguez’s never sings at his audience, always remaining a member of the proverbial crowd. Sonically, Cold Fact is balanced by wandering psychedelic miscellany and elements of more straight forward baroque and folk pop. For all the Theremin drones and woozy children’s choirs that revel below the surface, there are able horn sections and sharp guitar hooks directing each song. Rodriguez’s approach remains cool and even keeled even when his lyrics provide fairly scathing social critiques. Even at its weirdest, Cold Fact never attempts to be anything more than a pop record and that’s its biggest asset.

Albums like Cold Fact, with its enigmatic cover art, interesting history and relative obscurity, are the reason why collectors continue to scour dollar bins, thrift stores and flee markets for records. We search for intriguing, maybe even profound artifacts of all but forgotten songs and stories ripe for reclamation; stories and songs that become our own in conversations, listening parties and DJ nights. And when the songs and stories happen to be as rich as those of Rodriguez, the hours spent flipping through shitty records seem all the more worthwhile.

Unrelated LA :: Recommended :: King Tuff - Was Dead LP

2008-11-06T13:02:00.000-08:00

I recently picked up King Tuff's "Was Dead" lp and I must say, the King's brand of Volkswagen Vanagon punk is really hitting the spot. Apparently these songs have been floating around on CDRs for a couple of years now - unbeknown to me - but, the fine people at The Colonel Records were gracious enough to give them the official release they deserve. Kudos to The Colonel. "Was Dead" is a real slow burner, channeling the clean, treble guitars of Television, dumbed down via the Ramones, and blasted through the barbiturate haze of Joe Walsh's "Barnstorm." There are some power pop flourishes on a number of tracks, but thankfully King Tuff's a little too baked to recede into simple Milk N' Cookies worship. The result is the best record of the year to dub to cassette and blast in your AMC Gremlin. Let the good times roll.

The World of Wounded Lion

2008-11-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

In a recent heart to heart I had with Wounded Lion singer/guitarist Brad Eberhard, he mentioned that Scott Soriano, curator and owner of the ever alluring Sacramento imprint S-S Records, said Wounded Lion sounds like they’re from Columbus, Ohio. As a Columbus expatriate and avid follower its musical past and present, I’d say Soriano’s ears are perceptive. Wounded Lion’s brand of charmingly timeless, lo-fi pop would fit nicely on a bill with Columbus bands like the Guinea Worms and Times New Viking. But, I would take Soriano’s assessment a step further. Wounded Lion don’t just sound like they’re from Columbus, the band embodies the city’s marvelously ass-backwards musical ideology, rejecting conventionally accepted aesthetics and approaches to revel in an ecstatic indifference toward time, place, trend, and fashion.

Columbus, and to a lesser extent smaller regional cities like Dayton and Youngstown, have been producing their own brand of insular, uncompromisingly lo-fi rock for over three decades to a small but growing number of people outside the 614 area code. In certain respects, Columbus and Los Angeles represent two opposing urban polarities, each functioning to reaffirm and stabilize the other’s differences. Columbus is a test city for Hollywood projects. On a systemic level, much of Hollywood’s most unfortunate work acts as a direct or indirect pacifier for the kind of Americans marketing think tanks associate with the population of Columbus and its surrounding area. Hypothetically, Hollywood prospers on Middle America’s escape. Whether or not the figures associated with Columbus’s population have any merit, the stigmas surrounding the town, its isolation and expansive urban sprawl do a number on the minds of its creative population. Living in Columbus, it’s easy to feel despondent. Many of the best records produced in the city deal with the feeling directly through lyrics and reactionary aesthetic choices, operating as big, black, work-worn middle fingers to banality, boredom, fear, rejection, and conventional expectations, musical and otherwise.

Wounded Lion, like their Columbus brethren, is inspired by the space the band inhabits. For those abroad, LA is less a place than a destination – a space people dream of and aspire towards. Its image is shaped through depictions, lore, and the fantasies it has provoked from each generation. There is, undeniably, a grain of truth to the assumption that LA is filled with anxious people pounding the pavement, chasing dreams, hopes, and aspirations - trying to patch the proverbial void. The city has its neuroses, but the vanity, superficiality, and image concerns are a product of one demographic’s desire to experience the fantasy, to make it tangible through empty façade. The façade weighs heavy on the city’s consciousness. We drive ridiculous cars, get plastic surgery, and accumulate insurmountable debts. We meltdown, burnout, and pick up the pieces. Amidst paradise. Thankfully, we have Wounded Lion to show us how to have fun again, despite it all.

Wounded Lion’s formula is relatively simple. The band writes shambling, alternately silly and poignant songs that bend and twist timeless pop hooks from the sixties onward. On their debut S-S 7 inch, Eberhard’s lyrics concern pony people and a girl named Carol Cloud. They’re funny on their own, but Eberhard sells them with his languid approach and straight-faced honesty. When it works, and it usually does, it feels as though Eberhard is gloriously unaware of the separation between the real world and his fantasy world, a place where troubles are coupled with and defused by raw imagination. We know he’s goofing, but it doesn’t matter. The band has pulled us in; we’re helpless. Live, Wounded Lion bring a small piece of their fantasy world as an offering the audience can take or leave - a short time with the band when nothing has to matter. The band plays and dances hard, in a fit of energy and jubilation - oblivious to personal concerns and anxieties. I like to imagine the band practicing or playing to no one with the same kind of energy; it honestly wouldn’t surprise me. In Wounded Lion’s world, people trade instruments, tune each others guitars and everyone gets a chance to sing lead – a truly democracy not unlike Dr. Hook and his medicine show, but without the cocktail of drink and drugs. In Wounded Lion’s world, no one looks stupid dancing or has a bad hair day. No one is afraid. The world is a party and everyone is invited.

Like the bands of Columbus, Ohio, Wounded Lion escape the everyday by refusing to accept it, refusing to be burdened by trends, trivialities, and contrivances. They create a space where postures are null. However, unlike the musicians of Columbus, Wounded Lion isn’t burden by Midwestern hopelessness. The band’s message is never sardonic, cynical, or hard to swallow. In times this heady, self aware, and neurotic, we need bands like Wounded Lion to remind us that, in the grand scheme of things, a lot of this shit we obsess over doesn’t matter. Regardless of pretense, two things that get us out of bed every morning are catharsis and personal connection, both of which Wounded Lion offer generously.

Week of 10/27/08 to 11/2/08: Anomalous LA Happenings:

2008-10-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

October 31st @ The El Rey Theatre /// Roky Erickson
Roky Erickson brings his trademark brand of idiosyncratic, horror obsessed guitar pop to the El Rey Theatre on Halloween night. Erickson's still got serious pipes after all these years. Black Angels open and, if their recent studio collaboration is any indication, may act as Roky's backing band. We shall see...

November 1st @ the Smell /// Sam McPheeters spoken word
If Sam McPheeters spoken word is anything like his previous musical endeavors with Born Against, Men's Recovery Project, and the Wrangler Brutes, Saturday's Smell attendees are in for a real treat. At once surreal, whismical, misanthropic, and absurd, the last McPheeters performance I witnessed saw him belligerently spout off some famous lines from Shakespeare's Henry IV part 1 and storm off into a frigid, northeastern winter night shirtless.

10/26/08 @ the Redwood Bar and Grill == Human Eye / Static Static / Imagine the Band

2008-10-25T18:18:00.000-07:00

Detroit, once a city of industrial success and seemingly endless potential, now stands as a feeble paradigm of American loss and abandonment. The recent economic downturn which shook the nation at large to its core resonated with a vengeance in Detroit, forcing the city’s auto companies to cut even more jobs than what now seems to be their semi annual quota and leaving thousands without work. The city’s tumultuous, seemingly prophetic future present alludes to what could be the ultimate conclusion of the American dream deferred. Considering their city’s state and its history, rock and roll and otherwise, it isn’t hard to fathom what inspires Human Eye’s twisted sounds.

Few bands approach the garage template from as far out in left field as Human Eye. Ambitious, some say to a fault, Human Eye crams each song with burned out shards of punk, glam, psychedelia, metal, and perhaps most notably, vintage sci-fi theatrics. At their most unhinged, Human Eye is a wrecking ball of dense rock and roll shrapnel covered in iridescent space slop. The band constructs an exhaustive aural dystopia of ugly libertine fantasy and smashes it just for kicks. The band forgoes the conventional approach of interweaving influences; instead Human Eye opt to kitchen sink it all at once, offering a collision of Swell Maps at their most frizzled, Debris’ proto-punk swirl, and Chrome's post apocalyptic swagger. The effect can be disorienting, but remains compelling even when entropy seems to be taking over. Only when Human Eye comes up for air does their brand of histrionic future cheese begin to harden and become less palatable. But the steam that is lost is not due to a lack of ambition. Even when their songs stumble and the lyrics are a bit too baked, Human Eye’s strut remains deliberate, uncompromising, and provocative.

Like any good science fiction text, the fantasy world that Human Eye conjures is at once an escape from and affirmation of the reality that produced it. Few bands working from this aesthetic standpoint nail it like Human Eye. There could be something in Detroit’s water; I wouldn’t discount it. But I imagine it’s a healthy dose of Detroit hard living that inspires the band’s fantastic wreck.

www.myspace.com/humaneyedetroit

See Human Eye Sunday, Oct. 26th at the Redwood Bar and Grill and Monday the 27th somewhere in Long Beach (no info available on that one). Static Static and Imagine the Band open.

Introduction

2008-10-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

Since moving to Los Angeles a couple months ago, I have yet to find a blog that keeps folks up to date on the kind of musical happenings I like to be a part of. Sure I've found multiple blogs devoted to generating buzz for the droves of mediocre, fame-seeking indie pop bands that populate the city, but not one that functions for the city's weirdos – the artists and musicians working only to satisfy their innate desire to produce sounds with less pretense and fewer contexts. In the city that was once home to the Los Angeles Free Music Society and currently acts as the headquarters for Not Not Fun Records, a site needs to exist that promotes and documents what I would consider a pretty damn decent time for new music. I’m not sure if I’m qualified for the job, but I’m willing to take a stab at it.First and foremost, the site will act as a database for fringe artists’ upcoming shows, releases and news. In its infancy, the emphasis will be local, but I also hope to cover national acts, certainly national acts that make their way to LA. We’ll see where the process takes it from there.