Man, I am sooooooo in love with Marnie Stern. I apologise to my fiance, I do, but head over heels, right here. She is an awesome guitarist, songwriter, she gets Zach Hill and Kid Millions to drum with her - that is just some fucking ridiculous shit right there. I could go on. She also seems kind of stupid, as in she loves to muck around just as much as she does to hunker down with her guitar and blow everyone away, which every truly cool person must be. Because the truly cool person, is actually someone just like you and me - except they are really good at something, and it doesn't change them. Her new record, The Chronicles of Marnia, may not be in the same frenetic mash-up of previous recordings, but she nails even more because of that - there is bright, shiny pop mannerisms hiding underneath the manic aural colour streams. It's like Ponytail in structured form. I wrote a review of the album already for theMusic.com.au, and I've posted it below. (And by the way, Marnie, you should have extended your Win A Date comp to Brisbane, Australia. Just sayin').
Bursting
forth like a clusterbomb created by art-noise tricksters Ponytail and Lightning
Bolt (helped by the fact that the drumming duties, normally held by eight-armed
Zach Hill, are pinned down by Oneida’s whirling dervish, Kid Millions), Year Of The Glad, Marnie Stern’s opening
salvo on fourth album The Chronicles Of
Marnia, sets the tone for the entire record. Still featuring the
jawdropping fretwork dexterity that Stern is rightly renowned for, the track is
a maelstrom of hypercolour explosions for the ears, Stern’s high-pitched vocals
swinging from shrieking vowels to hushed murmurs, all evoking a sense of giddy
joy.
Yet
Stern has always countered her manic musical presence with a lyrical inversion,
straddling euphoria and melancholy in equal measure. And so it continues here:
the raucous math-rock punch of You Don’t
Turn Down is punctuated by Stern’s finger-tapping brilliance and a machine
gun delivery in the middle third that decries I’m losing hope in my body; Noonan’s
fizzing energy belies a tiredness as Stern implores Don’t you want to be somebody?/And you kept on bringing me down;
the kaleidoscopic singsong of Nothing Is
Easy underscores Stern’s proclivity for soldiering on. This continual
tug-of-war is what electrifies Stern as a person and an artist, and The Chronicles of Marnia has perfectly
captured this in all its effervescent glory.
And
the pendulum continues to swing – the one-two punch of closers Proof Of Life (with Stern imploring All my life, it’s based on fantasy/And all
the gods, they’ve stopped talking to me offering lows which seem
bottomless) and the feverish Hell Yes (which
quivers and jitters uncontrollably, and purred vocals I won’t give in/I won’t give up/All I’ve got is time). Marnie Stern
may feel torn, yet there’s no need to be – her musical legacy continues to
energise and impress.
You could tell by out previous releases that we were excited about this release... Hella are back together, and the new release is Tripper. Its everything you expect from these noiseniks and so much more.
You can get Tripper (on Sargent House) here. There has been concerns over its Australian release due to the Aussie distributing company Other Tongues downsizing, but rest assured it will be here in some format very soon. 'Self Checkout' was the first song the band wrote for the album, whilst 'Netgear' - well, it's just goddamn ace.
Can someone help me out here - is Chino Moreno taking the piss? Sure, the awesome Deftones frontman has done leftfield music before - see his pretty amazing Team Sleep project he did with Zach Hill amongst others - but witch house? And he's not only sounding like the genre's lynchpins, he is tipping the boat over in the middle of the fucking ocean. His band - Crosses (AKA †††, or daggerdaggerdagger if you want to be typographically correct). And there are plenty of †'s throughout the song's titles too - in fact EVERY t is replaced with a †. Anyway, I haven't listened to the album proper, but I have listened to the remix below - and suffice to say, I really like it. Im a bit of a Moreno softie though, so Ill let you be the judge. Plus, Moreno can beat the living piss out of Salem, any day...
Zach Hill brought out the ace Face Tat last year, which I went retarded over here. Easily one of the best releases last year. Not enough to excite us with the promise of a new Hella album, Hill is intent to make us eargasm with another solo effort, the EP Lil Scuzzy. Put out by Alamont, it is another six songs of absolute aural madness - not as sonically clear as Face Tat, but easily as addictive. Seriously cut up, edited, mixed, fucked with, and spat out in a technicoloured yawn. Well worth hunting down.
Heard about this last week and shoulda been on top of this... Yep, Hella are back! Zach Hill, mega drumming legend that he is, confirmed that the album had been recorded and finished in April...wait, what? WHAT album? The Californian nutso spaz math rock fucktards even gave out a new track! Well, its been out for a little while, Ive been naughty and hogging it to myself... Its currently called 'Hella - Track 1'. Evocative.
But that can all change - if you want it to. See, Hella is inviting its fans (AKA you and me!) to create visuals and videos for "Hella - Track 1" and post them to the Hella Facebook page. Sargent House wont be releasing the new album until August, so there is enough time allotted for Hella to name their shit at some stage. But regardless of what or who wins out, one listen to the new track and you will be in thrall, stating that whilst its good to have bands like Tera Melos around, and Zach Hill's Face Tat album of last year was fucking ace, Hella have their own niche and only they can fill it again.
I was sent this double LP opus by experimental act Joan of Arc for my birthday, but I have only gotten around to listening to it now. The Chicago collective that hovers around the nucleus of Tim Kinsella has eschewed classification for years, endeavoring to pretty much do anything that came to mind rather than come up with a continuing rock aesthetic. On Oh Brother, Kinsella incorporated fourteen different musicians - including Zach Hill and Lichen's Rob Lowe - to create four 20-minute suites of sound with the intention of making four albums, but instead being interwoven to create a movie-length sonic journey into Kinsella's mind. Its hard to really say what this is - it's as much free jazz as it is motorik, ambient minimalism, Eastern drone or cacophonous noise. There are no limitations to where the music may go, its a cerebral free for all. Every second listening to this draws you further into the vortex of the unknown, until its fuses into your core being - an aural Akira. Its an astonishing achievement, if one that takes every mental fibre to get inside of.
So this is what it all comes down to, the most important list of them all, Sonic Masala's Top Ten LPs of 2010. So in reverse order...
10. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal
This album took time to grow on me, in fact I think Brooklyn based Daniel Lopatin's beautiful drone masterpiece is still growing on Brendan, but in time I'm sure he'll be won over. From the chaotic noise opening of Nil Admirari to the dense shimmer of Describing Bodies and even its blissed out drone wanderings of Stress Waves - this is a sublimely gorgeous abstract work.
Out on Mexican Summer, this Austin rock four-piece seems to have been overlooked by many this year - but not Sonic Masala. The most considered raucous pop-punk album of 2010, jagged and rough but touched with a solemn emotive mood, this is like fighting with tears in your eyes.
Simply this years most beautiful album. The Cleveland trio really have captured something timeless in Does It Look Like I'm Here? With its delicate variations of mood and intensity each track seems to build its own momentum. Something I'm sure this album's reputation will do also, building momentum to be regarded as a modern classic.
If there is one album this year that relentlessly pushes the totally insane card, then Drum Eyes' Gira Gira has to be it. Brooding, maximalist sonic expressions of the most warped minds. One minute sci-fi futurisms, the next driving trash insanity. A scarily fun riot of epic soundscapes.
My Disco is yet another band from Australia I wouldn't have found without Brendan's guidance. Criminally overlooked this year, Little Joy is the Melbourne trio's third LP. Pounding but calm, it is a work of rhythmic subtlety and relentless drive.
5. Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky
Right from the start Brendan has been telling me that My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky is one of the albums of the year, and just like the 13 year long road its taken Swans to reach this point, it took me a little while to see the true genius of this album. More approachable than the Swans' earlier brutal work but no less uncompromising. Swans with humanity and beauty? Maybe. Epic? Yes.
Even with its early release Sisterworld was always going to be up there for Sonic Masala. The fifth Liars album is relentlessly tense, full of surreal imagery and anxiety. Strangely it didn't make the impact on the year we thought it would, but for us its the Liars at their most contagious.
Zach Hill is a sticksmith genius, that can't be denied. But Face Tat, his second full solo LP, underlines his credentials as a truly innovative musician. Astrological Straits was truly a bizarre and mesmerizing album, but Face Tat really takes Zach's solo work to a new level with the ferocious style with which he assaults his drums underpinning it all. Intense, deceptive, challenging, Face Tat sounds disorienting and alien at first, thanks partly to Hill's bizarre sound sources - but the more you delve into this 40 minute frenzy the more you are rewarded.
Super groups are a strange thing. Whilst the depth of talent that makes up the Rangda trio is eye wateringly impressive - guitarists Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls) and Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and drummer Chris Corsano - it can be hard for the end result to be greater than the sum of the parts. However, Rangda's False Flag so is. An uncompromising beast of a record, it is simultaneously brutal and dynamic, subtle and beautiful. Rangda landed and took our breath away.
So here it is, the Sonic Masala best LP of 2010. Surprised? Maybe, but its not a compromise. In fact we really didn't want our end of year first to be just what we agreed upon, this choice has got conviction behind it. Some may have dismissed this album at first listen. In fact I almost did, such was my love of Woman's self titled debut. But give Public Strain repeated listens and its infectious off key claws and howls work their way into your soul. We're not calling Public Strain a grower - oh no, it much more deadly than that.
At first Public Strain's sunny rhythms might come to the fore, but as the drone driven aesthetics build from behind the scenes it becomes a different beast, sweet but sour, bleak but beautiful, crisp but soaked in reverb. Those chirpy tempos hiding its dark noise underbelly waiting to leak into your consciousness. With Women's first outing pop sweetness was kept separate from dark drone noise, but here Women have spawned something of frightening beauty. Public Strain is Sonic Masala's record of the year and its been quality gaining ground since August - now we can't let it go.
So there you have it, we left the list late so we knew we had everything. There's nothing more annoying than an end of list that drops in early November, we're the polar opposite. So what do you think? Have we missed anything? Is there a gem you'd push to the top? Let us know.
What to say about Face Tat, Zach Hill's latest hyper frenetic aural fuck fest?
Hmm, tough one.
Hill, possibly the greatest drummer on earth, and definitely the busiest, has here come closest to his Icarus-like devotion to reach the sun. His interlaid drum solos as always showcase his brilliant technical instrumentation behind the kit, but it is the way in which he has constructed his songs that is the true coup here. The manic mosaics are skewed beyond belief - skritching guitars, whorling loops, distorted and monotonous vocals - and it is one of the busiest, most disconnected, and fucking greatest albums released this year. It is so much fun.
But that doesnt mean its an easy listen. Oh no! Its disjointed, confronting, incredibly strange and fucking loud. Imagine, if you will, that Menomena went camping with Lightning Bolt, with Battles stoking the fire and cooking marshmallows and Angus Andrew from Liars dropping by for a brew and some peyote - and thats as close as the intricate spazzfest that is Face Tat can come to a descriptor. Or try this on for size: it all melts together like a fiercely burning cock candle, until all you have is a white hot pool of gloop with a flickering flame at its epicentre. Then its up to you to move the wax around and do what you will with it...
It does has its slight faults - Hill's vocals are still a bit one-dimensional, and he is yet to unlock the greatest mystery of all - a technically faultless yet melodic album with clear structured pop anthems at its core - but Face Tat proves without a doubt that he is perilously close. And if that means that this is a failure - then my 'achievements' haven't even left the petri dish.
Face Tat is out now on Sargent House - I implore you, get this album. Here's what it looks like:
And what's more, Zach Hill is touring the US incessantly in Jan/Feb 2011 with likeminded pop fucksters Deerhoof (whose drummer Greg Saunier - a brilliant skinsmith in his own right - appears on blistering opener 'Memo To The Man'), with current Prince Rama support act Ben Butler - I wanna go to America! February is my birthday - they play Nashville on that night - it'd be my 30th - who's coming?!?!
Once again - BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Still itching for Face Tat, Zach Hill's much anticipated new album through Sargent House, to hit the shelves? Well, chew on this tripped out biscuit for a minute or three! Not sure if its a placebo though - looks more like it'll fry the few dumb brain cells you have left. Its the vid for another track of said album, 'The Primitives Talk'.
Last week Brendan posted news about the best drummer in world Zach Hill's new L.P. Face Tat, well the first track from said long player is now doing the rounds in blog land and I though SA needed to grab a slice of that twisted, start stop drummer boy action and its well worth it, taste Memo to the Man below.
But I thought this would also be good chance to drag up a track from the drum god incarnate's first solo L.P Astrological Straits and the massively addictive track Hindsight is Nowhere, and its ace video too. If you can keep with this one then your a better man than me. Enjoy
Drumming wunderkind Zach Hill (resurrect Hella, come on!) has been involved in anything and everything this year, as always, even finding time to be involved in the Boredoms' Boardrum exercise this year. Now he is bringing out his own album, Face Tat, out through Sargent House. We have to wait til October before it comes hurtling into our lives, so this vid for the fourth track off the LP, 'The Sacto Smile', is the best you can get right now. I don't know about you guys, but this girl scares the shit out of me - and Im totally in love.
