Tigue Peaks

Brooklyn percussive heathens TIGUE have released an amazing record in the form of Peaks, a hypnotic gem of instrumental wormholes to lose yourself in. None of the tracks spiral out into gargantuan length, all reveling in their precise constructions - mini worlds fully formed. Helping to craft these mesmeric gems are the likes of Kid Millions (Oneida), Ira Kaplan and James McNew (Yo La Tengo), Shahin Motia (Ex Models) and Mike Turzanski, and the result is something of droning, immersive excellence, a heady chrysalis of unfettered rhythm that leaves you revitalized, reborn. Highly recommended stuff. Pick up Peaks here.

A Final Rush Of Cheer Before The Year Ends...#2

Another ten releases that I feel I need to pay lip service to before the year is out (sorry for not offering longer reviews...)

Last week I wrote about Carpet Yankers, the new album from Shrapnel AKA Sam Wilkinson. Another of his bands, Mope City, also have a new record out, Petri Dish (out through Tenth Court). This record was nearly Sonic Masala Records' eighth release - instead we released Wilkinson's OTHER band, Day Ravies' Liminal Zones, so swings and roundabouts. I don't know how he does it, but he surrounds himself with incredible, gelling performers, and every band has its own distinct feel. Petri Dish is a strong foray into laconic, slackjawed indie rock, where melody is omnipresent regardless of the scuzz that sneaks up to scuff the pop constructions meticulously built up. Mope City are a band of opposites - kicking out at and embracing apathy, empathy, cheer and chagrin. They aren't bi-polar so much as realistic - the seesaw of life being ridden with credibility, credulity and more than a lashing of cool. A bloody great album, guys.

The "resurrection" of Melbourne's incendiary electric punk pioneers Primitive Calculators has been one of awe and abrasion - their album The World Is Fucked was ahead of its time even as it existed in an Australia/Western world that mirrored the dystopian nihilism the quartet have always foretold would lie on the killing floor since the 70s. And now here is I'm Fucked, another 7" that emulates the anger and aggression that you would expect - disco doom. Give up Sleaford Mods, these cyber soothsayers echo our demise in more relatable fashion - and allow us to dance to our graves.

Christchurch slackers Salad Boys seemingly burst out of nowhere to jag a release through Trouble In Mind Records. The resultant album, Metalmania, is frankly one of the most addictive, hook-filled, fun yet accomplished records I have heard this year - it would have been in my top 20 of the year except I only listened to it for the first time two days ago when handed it for Christmas. They are clearly indebted to The Clean - never a bad thing - but listen to 'No Taste Bomber', 'Dream Date' and 'Hit Her And Run' and you realise that these guys are the real fucking deal.

Oneida need no introduction; the Brooklyn wildmen of unwieldy, experimental rock and insane percussion are legends unto themselves. They have just released Positions, a three-track EP through Rocket Recordings that is both furious and furiously fun (seeing as two-thirds of the EP are renditions of other bands' already fucked-up tracks). Opener, This Heat's 'S.P.Q.R.' references ancient Rome (and is also the title of this year's best history novel, by Mary Beard, check it out if you haven't already) and is brutal, propulsive and implosive; the original 'Under Whose Sword' takes the ominous middle road between dronal exultation and atonal oblivion; and 16 minute 'All Data Lost' stretches the source material (from Chrome) into infinite spaces, a blotted miasma of weirdnik noise before a rhythmic mantra kicks into overdrive. Pure Oneida, then.

Melbourne's Shards are one band very difficult to get a hold of, despite their unheralded self-titled debut being one of the best Australian releases of last year. Again the band have slipped a release in without notice - Best New Reissue. There is a more tempered, bedroom-issue undercurrent to this release - the cover art hints heavily as much - but their imaginative takes on more traditional pop conventions remain front and centre. Favourite tracks - lyrics and sprawled malaise of the title track and the percolating calm of 'Flurnz'.

Norman Westberg is a gargantuan figure in the noise rock scene, being guitarist for flayed beast that is Swans. He is also a apocalyptic soundscapist, and on his Room40 release 13 has three tracks of haunting ambient monochrome noise that stretches sanity to its limits (all done through his guitar, mind you...) 'Oops, Wrong Hat' is the most sonorously relatable here, and the most "fun" - 'Frostbite Falls' and 'Bunny Bill' inexorably pull closer to the abyss. In other words, it's mesmerising.

The Lovely Eggs are a couple outta Lancaster who thrash around a lot, make a lot of scrappy punk noise with pop fizz, and love to get on, get loud, and get off. Their 7" is just that sharp, drunk and hook-laden. There is nothing better to do in Lancashire I hear - and The Lovely Eggs do it best.

Cult Of The Dead Bird is a Brazilian dude taking time out from his band duties to expand the psych sprawl. I like it best when it gets heavy and dark, like on 'Autumn Mantra', but there are so many variants of seasonal haunts on here that every shadowed corner is a delight to explore.

And we can finish off with a more familiar record to some, as Hozac Records re-released New York sleazoids Chrome Cranks' debut LP on its 20th anniversary. I never owned it on the first run around - I barely knew the "real" world twenty years ago - so the dirty bluesy rock and roll squalls that these guys ooze out of their pores suits the year's end pretty well, I reckon.

Unspeakably Divisive Noise Practices

The only Rick Moody novel that I have read is Purple America, his 1996 familial tragedy that is in the vein of Joyce Carol Oates - one of sad, blunt analysis, an autopsy of a dysfunctional family that is breathtaking in its gritty minutiae and heart-rending in its inexorable decline that loss and addiction inevitably brings about. He's better known for his previous novel, The Ice Storm and of-its-time hipster ennui bible Garden State. He is a figure of adulation in some circles, of derision in others - but he is ever defiant. And, in the halls of Sonic Masala, he is now renowned for The Unspeakable Practices, a band project undertaken by Moody and one Kid Millions of Oneida fame. The group is bristling with talented intensity - David Grubbs (Gastr del Sol), Richard Hoffman (Sightings), Brad Truax (Spiritualized et al), Shahin Motia (Ex Models and also Oneida), and experimental brass wizards Nate Wooley and Michael Foster. The album is indicative of all of these combined talents - post-punk militaristic precision, sudden blasts of crunching squall, free-jazz cycles, discordant implosions - with Moody's deadpan vocals a monotone incision. 'A Steady Effect' plays into the kind of dead-eyed meticulousness that Disappears or, indeed, Sightings carve out in sonic flesh, but most other tracks stand true to their improvisational beginnings. The Unspeakable Practices is likely to be as divisive as Moody's prose - his lyrics here bordering on Beat-lite banalities - but this kind of self-aware deconstruction holds a fitful, fearful energy that deserves its time in the sun - or at least in a cloistered experimental noise den near you. Out through Joyful Noise in excellent blue-yellow or green-black fried egg vinyl (see below), you can get the LP here.

Soldiers Of Fortune Are Tough As Nails

Man, this track kills. 'Nails' is the new song from veritable rock god supergroup Soldiers Of Fortune, whose album Early Risers comes out on Mexican Summer in November. Featuring slayer Kid Millions (Oneida, Man Forever et al) on the drums, and Oneida buddies Barry London and Papa Crazee, Jesper Eklow (Endless Boogie), Matt Sweeney (Chavez), Mike Bones and Brad Truax, Soldiers Of Fortune are built to kill all speakers and pretenders. But that isn't enough for these heavy lifters, asking for the aid of the likes of Dan Melchior, Cass McCombs, and goddamn STEPHEN MALKMUS. Yep, this is a blasted rock testament. You thought you knew your rock and roll? Soldiers of Fortune just put the final nail in its coffin, set it on fire and watched it rise like the phoenix, reborn. I haven't heard anything so unadulterated yet so good in a long, long, LONG time. Pre-order this bad boy here - do it NOW.

I Believe In Lightning

You need to get into Lightning Records and its quarterly magazine and its Tumblr and its art and its one-off releases. I want to say way more but I'm fried. I'm listening to the People of the North song. On repeat. It probably sounds even better not fried, but then probably not too. They've released stuff by Wooden Wand and Cy Dune too, and support a lot of cool stuff, like Sam Amidon and Pontiak. It's a collective that I want everyone to be involved in. I believe in Lightning.

In The White Hills Is Where You'll Be

Ever since I saw New York's spaced out oddities White Hills play a Thrill Jockey co-headliner at The Luminaire in London's Kilburn back in 2009 (the other band - Pontiak; the night - one of the best gigs I've seen), I have watched the movements of Dave W and Ego Sensation avidly. Their eponymous album of 2010 is still one of the best psych rock albums of the past decade, yet with each release the trio (often with Oneida's Kid Millions on the skins, but it is a bit of a carousel) manage to stretch out their baked noises into wider and weirder realms, yet have always brought the bluster and brutality.

Their latest record, So You Are...So You'll Be, continues the trend. Starting with the squelching scrawl and bleeps of 'InWords', before 'In Your Room' explodes, an insidious, almost idiotic circle jerk of leering quirks that somehow manages to ingratiate and grate at the same time, for the same reasons - that's an impressive feat, thus creating an imperceptible unease. 'The Internal Monologue' plays into more astral expanses, a drone-centric malaise that fires the synapses. The title track is classic White Hills, a rhythmic, incessantly repetitive groove that threatens to tear the lining from your brain. There is nothing overtly new being done here - it is just being done right. Then it cuts short, and we disappear down another modem line into a pixellated world of swirling psychosis - 'Forever In Space Enlightened' is currently my favourite track on the record, a undulating mind fuck that turns over to reveal a scorpion's tail of a guitar solo. That said, the album is made as an album - every song segues into the next, informing others that have already played or are yet to come... It takes investment into this warped, conceited world that White Hills inhabit, a barbiturate menagerie of hooks and bytes, but expect the narcotics to kick in and take you way, way away from here.

You can pre-order So You Are...So You'll Be here - get in quick to get the green vinyl and the special bonus 12"! They are also about to become the support for a huge tour of The Cult - seriously (those old bastards don't know what they've let themselves in for...)

White Hills - In Your Room

The Marnie, The Witch and the Wardrobe (And Me)

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 can get The Chronicles Of Marnia through Kill Rockstars here.

Marnie Stern - Year Of The Glad

Marnie Stern - You Don't Turn Down

Looming Over The Burning Mountains

Further down the rabbithole I go...Here's two more albums to soundtrack your loss of touch with reality, your fragmented brain, your wasted elegance.

New York noisemakers Oneida released A List Of The Burning Mountains through Jagjaguwar last year, a two-track odyssey that roils over you like a burning sea, wave after wave of sonic menace flowing through you, an unrelentlessness that somehow evokes tumorous beauty. The doom elements draws you to the edge of the abyss, the stark coldness is like Nicholas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising, brutal grandeur. The press release says of Oneida here as "drunken-master drumming, howling guitar and scouring drones." Shit yes.

You can grab A List Of The Burning Mountains here.

Oneida - A List Of The Burning Mountains 2

Just so you can punish yourself more, here is Looming, the debut record from Brighton three-piece Negative Pegasus. Taking the aforementioned Oneida as well as Ex Models, Can and especially Knyfe Hyts as musical cues, Looming represents a tonal shift that plays more like schizophrenic motorik, if Battles were less about glossy oddities and more about aggressively euphoric mantras. Blasts of noise interspersed with echoes, warbles and abrasive electronic emissions. Evangelical, puritanical, diabolical - Looming is a joyous purging of the senses. Brilliant.

Buy Looming through Smalltown America here.
 

People Of The North Create Steep Formations, Melt Minds

This has been around for months, but People Of The North's Steep Formations is one heady exercise in aural endurance. That isn't to say that Oneida stalwarts Kid Millions and Bobby Matador have crafted something boring (well, if you aren't into twenty to thirty minute songs I guess it may be), but this kind of elongated noise takes some Zen-like preparation to properly consume. Millions' drumming, especially on 'Border Waves (Part 1)' is jaw-shattering. This track alone warrants spinning this double LP opus. It is aggressive in its singlemindedness - the thirty-plus titular track is pretty much an exercise in one distorted note - yet the audaciousness is for the most part extremely warranted.


Grab Steep Formations (out through Jagjaguwar) here.

People Of The North - Border Waves (Part 1)

Getting Bludgeoned On The White Hills

White Hills, along with Thrill Jockey stablemates Pontiak, have always been on my playlists ever since their lightning show at London's now sadly defunct Luminaire March last year (that's a pic from it above). Dave W. and his surreal soiree havent sat idle since then, releasing live DVDs, cassettes and splits over the past year. now it's time for something more permanent, and so we have they second LP, H-p1. I have to say that I don't enjoy this one as much as their self titled debut - although this may change over repeated listens. The New York space-out rockers dispense with ambiance in the normal sense of the word, here exploring the various measure of sound - LOUD sound. It gets a bit...well, samey in the middle third, but this kind of music is made to be experienced in a full sitting anyway, not really in bite-sized chunks. They are very much a live band also - fuck that Luminaire was amazing... Or maybe the issue was the Oneida album - two albums of similar M.O.'s might be too much to take for this tiny mind... Whatever it is, H-p1 is what you'd expect of White Hills - and you can't really wish for much more than that. Plus it will only get better with further listens. Just make sure you do anything to get to the next White Hills show when they are in town - even if it means debasing yourself in the most humiliating notion deemed possible. Ive eaten rottweiler diarrhoea for less...


H-p1 is out now - get it here.

White Hills - The Condition Of Nothing

Oneida Steadfast With No Absolutes

I couldnt wait to hear New York sonic marauders Oneida's new album Absolute II, the third and concluding chapter in their conceptual Thank Your Parents triptych. Not because they are one of my favourite bands - they are pretty amazing though - and not because I had been hanging out for their new release for a while - which I have been - but because of the hugely divisive reviews that the album has been collating. I absolutely loved the slating it got from The Line Of Best Fit - check it out here...

What the fuck do people expect from one of the most deliberately polarising acts of the past five years? They flutter around the edges of many genres without being decent to fully inhabit any of them. They repeat, juxtapose, refute, improvise, contradict. That is who Oneida is, and that is why they are such an exciting and esteemed act. Sure, Absolute II wasn't exactly what I expected either - a four track aural bashing, droning guitars, little vocals and - what the fuck? - no drums?!? That actually shocked me, as the drumming is to me the pivotal part of their entire back catalogue. Yet it didn't appall me like it has some - in fact, I thought it made more sense than not. They are the subversive demons of the psychedelic noise Underworld, and they will do whatever they damn please. If you like your repetitive drones - which I most certainly do - then you will find solace. If you embrace Oneida's self destructive notion of constant reinvention, you will admire the veracity of their perseverance. Many of you will think this is shit, though, and in some way, fair dues. This isnt Oneida in almost any guise you would recognise. If you actually make it the concluding chapter of the Thank Your Parents trilogy (the others being 2008's Preteen Weaponry and 2009's epic triple album odyssey Rated O), it has the right grooves and notches to fit the missing piece of the puzzle. Or not. You decide. I like it, anyway.



Absolute II is out now through Jagjaguwar - you can get it here.

Oneida - Pre-Human

Oneida's Dr Jekyll

And here is the second Oneida-influenced post of the day!

People of the North is a collaboration of Kid Millions and Bobby Matador, with a revolving door of musicians lending a hand since 2002 (including most of Oneida's past and present roster). In fact some of the PotN compositions have morphed into Oneida staples ('Lavender' is probably the most obvious instance of this). The music is in many ways business as usual here - but a little more compact, more bite-size chocolate bar than a chocolate carry bag. However you want to sell it, if you like hedonistic psych-rock that revels in taking everything beyond the ether, the outer reaches, and keeps going - then you'll love this stuff. Ive loved these guys for a couple years now, and my adoration will never wane.

People of the North's latest output is Deep Tissue, a pulsing minimalist LP that came out back in April via Jagjaguwar. The below track is from it!

People of the North - Tunnels

A Maelstrom On The Surface Of A River

AH, Oneida. Paul has raved ad nauseum about these guys ever since I met him at Offset in September 2008. Admittedly I had never heard of them until I got home, all sweaty and sunburnt, to look them up. He was, of course, correct - Oneida are an experimental tour de force, who for some unbeknowst reason has garnered a reference here yet - AT ALL. Well, although this isn't an Oneida piece, it is the first of 2 - count em - 2 posts on Oneida side-projects. Both made responsible by the one, the only, Kid Millions.

First is his about-to-be-released-through-St. Ives vinyl drum explosion, monikered Man Forever. It is an experiment in drumming - with seemingly infinite drums rolling and thumping each other over the period of an hour, reaching a tone of 180 bpm. Im finding it hard to explain - but I love it. This is the album for the people that appreciate the art of the beat - but are also open to more than a gallon drum of crazy. There isd still that overall obsession with repetition that is a hallmark of Oneida, but this is without a doubt a pulverising Kid Millions masterstroke. Not likely to be overly popular, but amazing nonetheless.

A drummer's orgiastic paradise...