No Positive Visitors To These Dreams

Finally, I'm going to bed. It's been a sweet day - a long day at work, followed by my first university lecture gig, followed by some sweet Vietnamese (both brew and food), and finalised with Bardo Pond, supported by my friends in Dreamtime and Pale Earth. I even spoke to Isobel from BP about how they used my entire post about the UK reissue of Ticket Crystals verbatim for their PR - so yeah, sensational day.

And now I'm in bed, drifting off, with Quttinirpaag's No Visitors in my ears. Not only is it an absolute syntax nightmare, and it has the acronym for the university I'm working at in it, BUT this LP from the Austin noise marauders slays. This is what synthetic nightmares are made of - glacier of glass breaking down as an avalanche of sonic shards, barbed wire, silicon coffins, morphing membranous contusions, monotonous dark hallways, shadows that shudder frame by frame. Motorik contortions rise from the swamp, offering relief in electrified sleep, before static explosions rend everything asunder. Quttinirpaag list Skullflower, Drunkdriver and Twin Stumps as flickering guideposts in their headlight-void drive down a lost highway, so you know exactly what to (or what not to) expect.

Not really the best sleeping material, sure, but it's working for me. Let the Sandman come - he'll have a fight on his hands...

You can buy No Visitors (on deep purple vinyl) here.

Sheriffs With Dark Sides Make Bands With Dark Minds

There is something serendipitous about the sudden rise in interest in dirge punk slackers Pop. 1280. I went on a Jim Thompson reading frenzy about two months ago, reading The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, and finished with Pop. 1280. For me, this was the best of the four, which is saying a lot considering the high caliber offerings that the other more famous noir tales offered. There is just something to Sheriff Nick Corey that supersedes Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me - maybe its the fact that Corey is a scheming psychopath from the beginning, and it is slowly shown as the story unfolds. Anyway, its a brilliantly dark piece of art.

Which leads us to Pop. 1280, the band. Besides from choosing an amazing literary tome as their moniker, these New Yorkers dole out a vicious slice of visceral squalling post punk that is spat at you with violent disdain. There is more than a dollop of Venom P Stinger in Pop 1280's poisonous sonic stew, with a light pinch of Twin Stumps for that added kick...in the teeth.

The prowling, sinister groove permeates their sound, best heard on their Bedbugs 7". Now with The Grid, their forthcoming six-song 12" out on Sacred Bones, you can discover the fervent, fevered urgency for yourself. And to promote their new release, Pop 1280 are doing some incessant touring of parts of the US in November, most notably on the 6th in Columbus, Ohio, where they are playing alongside SM faves Puffy Areolas as well as the excellent Cheater Slicks. These guys are gonna produce something special in the next twelve months - you heard it here first.

Pop. 1280 - Step Into The Grid

Pop. 1280 - Bedbugs

I Can't Feel My Legs

Jesus Christ. Seriously? What the fuck am I supposed to do with you, huh? Fuck…

That is pretty much my initial inner monologue when first listening to Twin Stumps’ 2nd LP Seedbed. One of the most visceral, distorted, nihilistic messes Ive heard in a while, Seedbed writhes on a sea of post-millenial despair and angst, gnashing its fangs maniacally, eyes rolled up into its many heads, only the whites showing, foam flecked lips– its pretty much like taking David Yow and vomiting acid all over him before castrating him and feeding him to starving pigs.
In short, its fucking amazing.

Don’t get me wrong though – its dark as fuck, and can make you feel more than a little dirty. But the beauty of this album is how unrelenting it is in its unlikeability –and in so doing, becomes endurable and inherently likeable. The sonic brawl that is ‘Landlord’, to the roaring dirge of ‘Missing Persons’ and creepy surging white noise of ‘Lungs’ to the incessant rolling drone underpinning ‘Pigs at the Trough’ - it all combines to create a dire landscape that we nonetheless feel impelled to inflict upon ourselves. Its so primal and fear inducing – dripping menace – and yet its somewhere we want to go on our holiday. Fuck Butlins (fuck Butlins for a holiday anyway– unless its ATP…), I want to make sandcastles with Twin Stumps, before the whole shit goes down.

Or maybe its just me…

Seedbed is out now via Fan Death.

Twin Stumps - Missing Persons

Twin Stumps - Lungs