Folksy yet long and experimental. A good balance of male and female vocals. Great entrancing moments with lines repeated over and over again. If Godspeed had singing.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra :: Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything
Folksy yet long and experimental. A good balance of male and female vocals. Great entrancing moments with lines repeated over and over again. If Godspeed had singing.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Bent Shapes and the Art of Feeling Weird
Bent Shapes has strong connections to the band’s hometown of Boston and the music community there. Listening to the record almost drops you right into the streets, brick buildings everywhere and rats scurrying around corners. They’re the kids that worked behind the counter of the local thrift store, hocking treasures and oddities from lost decades. Or the kids in the coffee shop that you recognize from the basement show the night before and that you have a supremely awkward conversation with, almost as if “Fight Club” rules applied. However, they’re just the same type of socially clumsy dudes that embody the title of their debut LP, Feels Weird.
The project began with guitarist Ben Potrykus writing songs under the name of Girlfriends. The trio, including Supriya Gunda on bass and Andy Sadoway on drums, teamed up (oddly enough) through musical basements and working at thrift stores. On Feels Weird, they all share the microphone with each member singing at least one song. For a few years now, the group has been consistently releasing solid EPs and singles on cassettes and vinyl. Their debut Girlfriends cassette was a group of songs that complemented each other well, recorded in a more lo-fi style that really lent itself to the content of those particular songs. A few of their singles were released as flexible vinyl 7″ discs–translucent squares that appear as if the manufacturer forgot to pop the record out that can be flexed in half (or maybe it’s better to say it could be bent in a plethora of shapes).
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
The Knife :: Shaking the Habitual
All you have to pay is attention:
SOME FEELING IN THE BELLIES OF THE TANKERS WHO PASS US MAKING SAD MANIC BONGS LIKE DRUMS
Everybody is always desiring already imagined things.
When we travel between thresholds, people say: “you’re hiding.”
Not everything can be so easily explained.
We have a bellyache, a big stink, a major grouse or two with manufactured knowledge.
But how do you build an album about not knowing?
Now your voice is in my throat, floating there…
Often people take pills for these things.
To us the body is no longer psychological.
It’s certainly not a container, we don’t believe in metaphors.
Like dog/wolf—there aren’t many anymore.
Still at twilight something blurs over your shoulder.
Which is it?
It’s prickly.
Our hair is out.
We have made some decisions.
We want to fail more, act without authority.
Plus there’s something phlegmatic about the world state don’t you think?
There’s a blood system promoting biology as destiny.
A series of patriarchies that’s a problem to the Nth degree.
What about hyper-capitalism, this homicidal class system, the school system that’s kaput?
Then there are castles everywhere—look at them fake tanning and signing autographs!
At least there’s one thing we stand behind.
There’s still an ecosystem right? And here’s this sound system.
We dusted it off. Electronic is just one place in the body. We went temporarily acoustic.
We made our own instruments. We took an old bedspring, a microphone and:
“Stay out here…”
Now we’re bending our voices to sound like Emily R., who recorded the track on her cellphone speaker.
No habits!
There are other ways to do things.
Still sometimes it all seems so bad.
Don’t worry we won’t commit Harakiri, stomach cutting or anything like it.
The honor system is corrupt, just another privilege.
Like how it’s a privilege to make an album, to move freely.
We just have to go faster we mean breakneck we mean “like crazy.”
How at 5am that warehouse beat is coming up like sour steam.
All over the dance floor we’re asking: can this DNA turn into something else?
It’s not metaphorical. It’s explicit.
There are surgeries and fantasies and holes sweating through the wall.
It’s a question about feelings. It’s a question about who gets to risk.
But things don’t change so easily.
There’s still Monsanto, fracking and “terminator seeds.”
Every morning we wake up wondering: who’s kicking who on the street corner?
Now we have to start. We choose process over everything else.
Letting go of outcomes is another privilege.
Keep it lateral.
We ask our friends to help.
Together we leave the village and walk down the road. The light starts exercising itself. The old sun is out in his winter jumpsuit doing sit-ups and squat thrusts between the nettles and moldy brush.
10 more! We say to him. Get shaking!
Our walk gets longer. It’s a walk in the panpipes of the body. We come to the edge. So much water. The ocean is twice its original size. We take a bunch of surveys.They know everything about us. We don’t buy what they say. We take a heap of estrogen. All around us things are howling and then we stand on the pier end. The light is pink and green and pink and green. It reminds us of home—like we imagine it could be. But when the color pancakes out over the horizon, we don’t know what we’re looking at. That’s ok. This time it’s structural.
No habits!
Of course we’re growing restless.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Saturday, February 09, 2013
VIDEO: Greg Mullen and the Cosmic Band :: Best Ever Birthday Party
A new video from Greg Mullen called "Best Ever Birthday Party"
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Philip Seymour Hoffman :: Your Loving Brother
A new release from Philip Seymour Hoffman who just moved into the Dreamhaus in Allston. See also: Liz Pelly, who rulz. I don't have a lot of time to write this, but suffice it to say that this is some of Mr. Hoffman's most melodic and entrancing recordings yet. So glad he's on the Boston team now.
Buy it fools! It's actually a split with Mutual Benefit so check them out too.
philipseymourdustinhoffman.bandcamp.com
Friday, December 14, 2012
Univers :: La Pedregada EP
Another excellent 12/12/12 present was the release of Univers' first EP La Pedregada. It's heartwarming to see the holiday crosses international boundaries. Too bad it only happens once a century.
I covered Univers for The Bomber Jacket in a piece called Spaingaze along with two other drone findings from Spain. You can read that piece here. Univers contains a member from another Barcelona favorite, Mujeres, specifically singer Yago Alcover. The gutteral Joy Division-like vocals are split between him and Eduard Bualance and capture the mumbling monotony of the all knowing universe quite well. If you ever had one of those moments where it felt like the universe was trying to speak to you, but you weren't quite sure what it was saying, maybe it was because the universe speaks in Spanish.
The EP was released on Fàmelic Records too, which is another friend. Read my piece about them on The Bomber Jacket. It's cool to see these two come together.
univvers.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/univvers
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Bent Shapes :: Panel of Experts 7" :: The Best 12/12/12 Present Ever
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Until now.
Boston's Bent Shapes have a new release that makes the perfect 12/12/12 present that you've surely been tearing your hair out trying to find. It's their second in what will hopefully be an onslaught of 7" flexi vinyl singles and EPs. A flexi is a vinyl that's so thin, you can bend it nearly in half. The group released one earlier in May too, that you can listen to here. The image below is from that EP.
The new 7" is "Panel of Experts" between "Bites and Scratches." The latter track is also from the band's "Girlfriends" days. It appeared on a demo before they changed their name. Both of the single's songs are freshly recorded and feature some of the group's cleanest recordings yet. Although I personally think the band sounds better dirty, lo-fi, and overdriven, these recordings are well done. "Bites and Scratches" features some majestic backing vocals from bassist Supriya Gunda.
The release is exciting, because it means we're getting even closer to the band's debut LP.
Get the 7" here.
bentshapes.bandcamp.com
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