Contracting Cat Aids In The Noise Arcade With Jerk Kerouac

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Full Time Freaks With White Fangs

I have to say that Full Time Freaks, the new 22 minute LP from blasted idjits White Fang, is the prefect encapsulation of the Portland band. Songs called 'Shut Up', 'High On Life' and 'Pass The Grass' tells you that these meatheads eat, drink and smoke dudes like you for breakfast. 24/7 party punk munchies. Man this is so deliciously dumb. Grab it here.

VIDEO VACUUM - Violent Soho, Pairs, Arundel, Beat Radio

Man, I'm done for the day (can't wait for the weekend to kick off), but I know some of you are just about to wrap up for the week (and a few are just starting...) Either way, let's waste those last/first moments on some visual toons...



We've already posted about 'In The Aisle', the new track from local miscreants Violent Soho and a taste of new album Hungry Ghost (read what Nathan thought here). This video is brilliant for two reasons - it shows why it's great to live in Brisbane...and it's solely about a dude riding his bike in the nude, putting up flyers about nude bike riding. That's it. These two things aren't mutually exclusive (although in my eyes they are - sorry Dario), but it makes a killer video (congrats Dario!)



Next we have Shanghai maelstrom Pairs, another SM fave of late. They have just out out this video for 'Mean Buzz', a great little number off their double LP If This Cockroach Doesn't Die, I Will (out on Metal Postcard Records). The album is ace; the track typically droll, ramshackle and loud; and the vid is under two minutes of the duo in a warehouse getting shit thrown on them. Nice.

Another band that Nathan paid lip service to recently was NY's Beat Radio. They have released this video for 'Hurricanes, XO' (their best track IMO), and the stock  B&W footage of watersports of the 50s (some rather bizarre) somehow perfectly complements this fuzzy beauty (it also makes me miss Screamfeeder).



Let's finish off with an understated gem by another Brisbane native, Arundel. 'Flourish' found its way on the latest New Weird Australia compilation Sixes & Twelves (and is my fave compilation of theirs thus far - albeit with many friends' acts finding their way in there...) and he has synced it up here with re-cut scenes from the excellent 2011 movie Monsters. Truly beautiful and the best way to bliss out, fading to black.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

When You Kill A Giant, Blood Pours Out (Tenzenmen Update #3)

I finished up a week's look at Metal Postcard Records recently. The founder Sean Hocking sees Shanghai duo Pairs as an incredible band (and so clearly do we), following every half-baked venture the duo head out on. So to close out the week we are (figuratively) travelling back to Shanghai (via another Shaun, he of Tenzenmen Records) to look at another ex-pat band that calls the Chinese city their home, Death To Giants.  Death To Giants are even harder to define, a true amalgam of genres seemingly at odds with each other - math rock, metal, and hardcore, to jazz, pop (with moments verging on the fey)... With no guitar, the duo use yelps, a trombone and an array of collaborations (including scoring muted films, traditional Mongolian folk music and a System Of A Down tribute band) to flesh out whatever whims they come up with. Its a heady, insane mixture of molasses to swallow, especially over the course of a full album. But with Blood Pours Out, the duo start to make sense - like naive art drawn by a limbless Charles Manson might. 'Anyone Can Learn To Count In Chinese' feels like Deerhoof distilled through a Blood Brothers woodchipper; 'Jared Leto' and 'Girth vs Length' are maniacal gems that rot your teeth and eviscerate your stomach. And to add to the obliterated fourth wall, there is an instrumental version of 'Anyone Can Learn To Count In Chinese' for free download so that you can make your own remixes, submit them to deathtogiants@gmail.com and the band will choose their favourites for a future release. Death-pop indeed.

You can buy Blood Pours Out here.

Death To Giants - Anyone Can Learn To Count In Chinese
Death To Giants - Girth vs Length

Stellarium (Tenzenmen Update #1)

Having gone through some releases from the stellar Thrill Jockey and the always-intriguing Metal Postcard, this fortnight will be spent looking at some of the 2013 releases from Australia's resident global noise distributor, Tenzenmen Records.

The baby of Shaun Tenzenmen, the label aims to highlight the huge Australasian DIY music scene. Therefore many Asian bands that would otherwise not find a market outside their own regions can now be discovered by their own right. In the past few years I have discovered the likes of God Bows To Math, Yes I'm Leaving, True Radical Miracle, Dear Eloise, Mere Women, Hira Hira, Bare Arms, Hedgehog, Fanzui Xiangfa, Chui Wan, and Carsick Cars, PLUS they support local boys Nikko, Scul Hazzards, Quiet Steps, Make More, Little Shadow...all because of Shaun and his incredibly hard work. So thank you Tenzenmen!

The first Tenzenmen release I'm focusing on is from Singaporean abrasion provocateurs Stellarium. Their self-titled LP bears some resemblance to NY noisemongers A Place To Bury Strangers, albeit with a slighter sense of space - adopting a shoegaze wash alongside hushed vocals, Stellarium ensures their flood of feedback and guitar distortion becomes even more of an assault, both aurally and physically. The four-piece offer their sound up as "earbleedwaxpopsupersonicwhitenoisesoundfuzzkill" - and that's pretty much on the money. MBV by way of early Swans perhaps? Buzzsaw aggression, constant addiction - all very, very good (just not on the eardrums).

Grab Stellarium here - there's only one CD remaining! The digital album is free however, so it's win-win.

Stellarium - Any Day Is Fine
Stellarium - Harbinger

The Dub Chieftain Marches Through Stalin Gardens (Metal Postcard Update #3 & 4)

I missed the post I was going to do updating what Metal Postcard Records is involved with of recent months, so I'm jamming two together, starting with Shanghai's Stalin Gardens.

A Chinese band influenced by Swans and the Birthday Party? You better believe it. Shanghai Void plays like the film Jacob's Ladder directed by Gaspar Noe - rooted in the real world, yet a creeping sense of dread pervades throughout, with sudden bursts of feverish noise, intertwining confrontational sexuality and violence with stop/start convulsions. This kind of bowel punk, like Gira and Moore hanging around the basements of Copenhagen, is even more disembodied due to the geography that it screams out of. Even on their Bandcamp the trio fuck with you, charging between $100 and $600 for the download of one song.

Stalin Gardens - Osteosarcoma
Stalin Gardens - Night Apartment

Also recently shot out the birth canal is Skill, Stamina and Luck, the decidedly weird album from Glasgow native Dub Chieftain. This record took me a couple listens to truly get what was going on. Whilst some tracks are immediately penetrable (the 8 minute frenetic instrumental opener 'In Amongst It', 8-bit friendly 'Erraweetrack' and the mewling, geek-hop 'New to Me' come with candy embedded within their sonic DNA), it is the warbled half-speed early-Beck ramblings of 'Increase the Dose' and the dub-centric 'Four Track Mind' that at first seem out of place. The intermittent use of mandolin and banjo throughout further distances Skill... from any sense of reality. Yet its the eclecticism and off-kilter humour in the brogue-inflected vocals that string these aural beads into a gaudy, garish yet palatable sugar-rush whole, like a Lifesaver bracelet.

Dub Chieftain - In Amongst It
Dub Chieftain - Erraweetrack

You can grab both albums here.

Fangin' For A White High (Metal Postcard Update #2)

You want wonky, diseased stoned guitar slop pop? Portland's White Fang have you covered. High Expectations (out through Metal Postcard) offers shoddy, gif/ppt related cover art, fuzzy distortion, vomit, urine and big swinging dicks, all with the kind of stoner off-handedness that makes you want to give the stuff up forever, even as you stuff your yellow alien bong with an overabundance of purple-veined buds. It remains sharp and spiky, even when phased out closer Far Out Journey threatens to disappear through the temporal hole in the ozone layer. It's the longest song at just over four minutes. And seriously, you couldn't wish for anything more. This is a ride around the neighbourhood, making cocked-up social commentary whilst sequestered away in your mobile dutchie. Above all else, it is surreptitiously addictive - like everything else that's bad for you. Just shut up, breathe in, hit repeat and spin out.

High Expectations can be got at here. Do it. Seriously. Champion Wavves all you want - Nathan Williams is a fucking brand. This is the real deal, and as they say, "you can't deal with being real."

White Fang - Can't Deal With Being Real
White Fang - Christopher's Dick

Eating Asian Pears With Elton John - A Dyslexic's Journey (Metal Postcard Update #1)

The last fortnight we have looked at Thrill Jockey releases; this week we look at something a little more obscure. In fact this post is a tangential lead-in, but whatever.

Metal Postcard Records come out of Hong Kong in China. Named after a Siousxie & the Banshees track, it is run by Sean Hocking who started it in 2002 in Sydney, residing for a while in New York but now calls Asia home. The idea is to release music in a range of formats, remain outside of genre specificity, and avoid the strictures of the "music industry" as much as humanly possible, thus granting complete artistic control to band that otherwise would most likely be ignored.. It also helps to shine a lot on an area of the world where the music scene isn't as readily accessible.

The only reason I have been introduced to this amazing endeavour is because of Shanghai duo Pairs, whose excellent noise-rock double LP If This Cockroach Doesn't Die, I Will was brought to my attention earlier in the year. The band have not only released an about-turn piano-and-vocals only album Eltham Join, till barbed with the crooked lyrics that makes Pairs such a bright, amusing prospect, but also enters into the avant-slacker realm of ballads that are atonal, hammered out with slapdash and carelessness, out-of-tune vocals (and yes, Xiao Zhong is indeed an Aussie, if the vocals didn't give it away) and yet an effusive mood is created throughout. This album should be horrible - and some people will think exactly that - but I think that there should be more of this. Think Amateur Childbirth meets Lehmann B Smith.

You can get Eltham Join for free here. Metal Postcard also champions a mixtape that Pairs put together made up of other likeminded bands from China. Head here to get it - it's rad as. The listing is below the two tracks. Pairs are also doing a split with NZ noise-rockers God Bows To Math, and Zhong does other stuff like stand-up and DJing - so expect to hear a hell of a lot more from these guys on these here pages.

Pairs - You're No More A Doctor Than I'm A Good Singer
Pairs - Red Light Green Light

Tracklist:

1. Yantiao - 扭曲的房间  

2. Colourful Z-bra - 和谐号 

3. Belly Mountain - Traveling 

4. Alpine Decline - Alligator 

5. 比卡超- 鬼斯通(现场)

6. Islet -二十

7. 炸脖龙 - 合适 

8. The Fuzz - Postpunk is cold (demo)

9. Chinese Football - ·飞鱼转身（DEMO

10. Round Eye - Carne Seca

11. Cheesemind - Bush with heart-shaped leaves

12. Your Boyfriend Sucks - 波兰首都是上海(live acoustic)

13. Naohai - Outsider 

14. LowBow - FAST EDDY 

15. Deer - Fade into the night 

16. Next Year's Love - I know 

17. 吴维纯 - Night Side B XL 

18. Thruoutin - Chicano Heaven Blast

19. 路新配 - Fail 

20. The Last Three Minutes - 青蛙