Releases of the Day: Gábor Lázárr's "Ils. 6" & Stine Janvind Motland's "In Labour"

Gábor Lázár's Ils. 6

I heard these album yesterday completely randomly. My friend Nick Zettel posted Jeremy Bible's "Top 10 & Beyond" and I gave it a read and was completely overwhelmed. His #1 record of the year Ils. 6 by Gábor Lázár was an exercise in the vein of "Variations on a Theme," where an artist picks a theme and puts different spins on it: like an artist would choose one note and play it with different instruments or at different lengths. Ils. 6 does this with electronica notes and rhythms. I think of it as a sort of sampling that you might hear on a mixing board when a DJ will repeatedly hit one sample button over and over again to get the effect of a stuttering entry point: the full sample rarely plays out, which is good and bad. It leaves mystery and provides an affect of rhythm.

Gábor Lázár does this with rhythm. Technically there's a pitch because everything has a pitch, but the pitch over a period of time loses its meaning, like when you say a word over and over again - eventually the phonetics are there alone and the meaning has seeped away into the ether. It's a stop-and-go meditation and an absolutely delight of a thinkpiece.

Stine Janvind Motland's In Labour

Bible's second album of the year In Labour by Stine Janvind Motland is one of the most bizarre listens I've ever experienced. It's a combination of site-specific background noise and human-made mouth sounds. These sounds could be sucking, or wailing, or slurping, or plucking. It runs the gamut and sounds like a nightmare. It's surreal, but brings up things that perhaps we've thought before. I'm at this concert but did I leave the teapot on? I can hear it crying in the distance. And where the hell are my pants?

The first song is totally disturbing. Something about a wet sound makes me uncomfortable and I can't be alone. The wet signifies the inside of a person or a thing and it's this physical internalization projected onto an external backdrop that makes for a rewarding, albeit uncanny listen.

Below are samples of each.

Release of the Day: Fang - Landshark!

"And I'll just sit and grin/The money will roll right in." So goes the chorus of Fang's best known song "The Money Will Roll Right In," the first song on Fang's second release from 1983, a 45 rpm 12" called Landshark. The song itself has been covered many times, but most notably when Nirvana covered it at their famous set at Reading in 1992. The other thing that Fang is known for is an incident of some significance from 1989: Sammy McBride, the lead singer, strangled his girlfriend to death and was served six years in prison. On his release in 1995, McBride renamed himself Sammytown like some phoenix of nomenclature. But that's more trivia than essential information.

Fang emerged from Berkeley, California in the early 1980s as a punk/hardcore band, though apparently with some protogrunge leanings if we check the hindsight mirror. There's actually a great comp from the era and locale that was put out by Alternative Tentacles with help from Maximum Rock n' Roll called Not So Quiet On The Western Front if you want to dig a little deeper.

It's a totally sinister record. Sammytown's lyrics are filthy, bringing out the junk and dope from behind the walls and forcing it into view. Like a toddler who learned to use the bathroom and needs to show you the results. There's violence, drugs, and all-around bad vibes, but it's a document of a damaged mind if nothing else. I mean the guy's vocals from the first song just sound like he's been slamming dope in his veins all dang day before he recorded. It ain't pretty, but it ain't a lie either, and the quality of the songwriting is really high, pun somewhat intended.

It just got reissued and is totally affordable and is absolutely EEEEESSENTIAL for your collection!
   

Release of the Day: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - I'm In Your Mind Fuzz

Let's talk about the criticisms I've seen on this album and there are two main ones. One is that the band sometimes sounds like krautrock pastiche and the other one is that there are too many people in the band. Here's the thing. Have you ever seen Tremors with Kevin Bacon? Yeah, the movie rocks. The slogan is "There's nothing new under the sun, but under the ground..." turns out the slogan is talking about these detached carnivorous uncircumcised penises and not music at all, so why bring it up?

Well, there's a big problem in music writing nowadays and it's about the need to push boundaries. There's totally an irony about a music writer saying that shit too because the chances are that the music writer is doing his or her writing in a totally pastiched way - establish ethos with some personal experience, or a quick biography (yeah, sure I know what I'm talking about, so what the fuck are YOU talking about? I'm not defensive at all!) followed by glancing descriptions, some tough dichotomy between parts (maybe something with the music industry), some more generalizations, and then a sweeping look at genre and possibly a play on the album title or the overarching style of music. Hey, music writers! WE'RE NOT PUSHING BOUNDARIES EITHER SO QUIT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK!

Sorry, had to get that out of my system.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard's Im in Your Mind Fuzz is a group of songs that relate to each other in theme and motorik madness, which isn't to say that all the songs are motorik, but my favorite ones sure are. The first twelve minutes or so is a suite of songs related to the all-permeating mind fuzz. Who is in which mind fuzz? Who knows, sportsfans. But man, it's a ripper heading straight into the maelstrom that is the rad time express.

The record is out on Castle Face and is a blast and a half of psychedelic garage mayhem and certainly has quickly become one of my most-listened-to records of 2014.

Release of the Day: Alberich - NATO Uniformen

Alberich's NATO-Uniformen was originally released as a set of eight cassettes in an edition of 50 on Hospital Productions. It's findable online, but those cassette sets are few and far between and expensive to boot if you manage to find one. A set has sold for $300 on Discogs. Lucky for those of us who slept on the original set, Hospital has reissued it as a somewhat abridged 2 x LP in two editions: 250 white vinyl and 450 black vinyl. While there were 30 songs in the original set, this 2 x LP contains 19. In my opinion, it's a bit of a tour de force, and an expansive overview of much of what falls into the Industrial genre.

Obviously, Alberich is most widely described as a power electronics project, but NATO-Uniformen is more varied. That's not to say that there isn't straight power electronics here with rhythmic crunch, feedback, and distorted vocals, because there is. It's just that Kris Lapke also likes to throw in surprises, like a strangely danceable drumbeat at one point or a piece that might be more in the vein of dark ambient. This variety stops the album from becoming monotonous, which is the easiest pitfall for an industrial record.

If you're in Chicago, I know that Reckless gets stuff from Hospital, but other than that, I think you're best bet is to order online, and I'm not sure how you can get the white vinyl in the states. I know Heaven Street got the black vinyl and if Sean didn't get the white ones, then I don't know who did. I had to order my copy from Europe actually, but I'm collector scum so that's what I get.

Below is a full album stream.

Release of the Day: Anenzephalia - Task Force Terrorist

If you read yesterday's release of the day, then you've already been acquainted with Tesco's Archaic Documents sublabel/imprint: it's their label that reissues harder to find releases, which may have been  originally put out as CD-Rs or tapes, as beautifully repackaged vinyl records. So far they've really put out some heavy hitters with Genocide Organ, Grey Wolves, Prurient, SK1005, and Anenzephalia.

Anenzephalia began as the solo project of Brigant Moloch and is sometimes referred to as a Genocide Organ side project. It's somewhat confusing: not only does Wilhelm Herich of G.O. often perform in Anenzephalia sets, but Moloch joined G.O. in the late 90s after Roland Freisler left, and of course they're both German power electronics groups. Anenzephalia has put out records on Tesco since their 1991 seven-inch record Lyse. Their first couple of records, such as Lyse or Fragments of Demise are pretty impossible to find for under a hundred dollars, but probably can be found somewhere on the internet, albeit with much worse sonic quality.

Task Force Terrorist is a compilation of live tracks from their early days around the time Fragments of Demise came out, but before Ephemeral Dawn. What had previously been released on CD as Live Festival Karlsruhe 8.10.93 appears in stellar vinyl treatment with a couple bonus tracks from an earlier set in Munich of 1992 tossed into the mix. I don't feel the need to go into how wonderful of a job Tesco has done in the packaging of this record: it's simple, but noteworthy. Tesco's addition of the hand-numbered insert is elegant with a touch of the personal, perfect to look at when you're about to have an angry German dude yell at you for a while.

In my opinion, Anenzephalia already stands out for their cinematic structure. When I listen to an Anenzephalia record, I feel like I'm being guided through something, but not in some bullshit new age way. It's more like a bootcamp than some feel good journey. I mean, just think about it: Moloch would be one hell of a drill sergeant. If he says "Jump," chances are pretty good that I'm going to jump. His vocals are commanding and powerful without being overdone. And he knows how to weave them into his work to make something more similar to a song than the typical noise piece.

So yeah, still reading? Tesco knocked this fucker out of the park. The Live Festival Karlsruhe 8.10.93 is streaming on Spotify so listen to that if you're not certain, but I'll just be honest - the stream does not do the music justice. This is definitely a record you'll want in your collection.

I couldn't find a full track from the record so here are some excerpts from the new Task Force Terrorist reissue to get a better idea.
 

Release of the Day: Prurient - Despiritualized EP

It's hard to keep up with Dominick Fernow. The dude has released an ungodly amount of music under both his Vatican Shadow and Prurient monikers, not to mention Ash Pool, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, Machinegun Warfare, and...well, you get the point. It's as impressive as it is overwhelming. Many of these releases have come out of his own Hospital Productions label, though it's an equally daunting trying to figure out exactly what has been released and who the hell did the releasing. And it's a total gambit as to whether his next release will come out in an edition of ten or one thousand.

Dom also has a bit of a maniacal, obsessive following: people will pay a LOT of money for some of his more obscure releases. Fortunately, a lot of his recordings is streaming more or less for free, and a lot of his output is very good. But for those of us who revere the physical and visual aspect of an artist's recording, finding an original cassette or lathe cut of his may be difficult or expensive.

Luckily, Tesco has recently started putting out/reissuing harder to find/acquire releases on their Archaic Documents sublabel starting last year. So far it's been knocking things way out of the park for industrial and noise lovers with some heavy hitters like Genocide Organ's KwaZulu-NaTal, a document of a live show from 1994 released as an LP, and Anenzephalia's Funkspiele, originally released as a CDr but redone as a vinyl LP in October 2013.

The newest batch of Archaic Documents is an LP of live Anenzephalia recordings and also a 10" vinyl reissue of Prurient's Despiritualized. Tomorrow's release of the day is going to be the Anenzephalia record, but today we're going to focus on Despiritualized.

Despiritualized originally came out in an edition of 110 on Hospital as a double cassette in October of 2011, and has been out of print pretty much since then. Some of it is on YouTube, but the whole EP is also streaming on Spotify, as is a lot of Dom's output. The 10" release that Tesco just did, however, is really something special. I mean, it just looks fucking great. Heavy stock packaging to ensure a healthy life on the shelf, and a properly weighted vinyl pressing to make for a full-sounding listen.

The music itself hinges somewhere between noise, power electronics, and dark ambient music. There's less of a crunch here than on an earlier record like History of Aids, but it doesn't share any of the techno-influence that a record like Through the Window has. There are moments of harshness cast throughout the record and a vocal performance that wavers between a militant roar and an elegiac coo is dotted here and there, though the mood of the record is the obvious star.

Definitely worth picking up and should be done soon, as these things never stay in stock for long.

Release of the Day: Espectrostatic - Escape From Witchtropolis

Alex Cuervo of The Hex Dispensers has a synth-spun side project called Espectrostatic and he just released his second album Escape From Witchtropolis. The name "Espectrostatic" is pretty perfect as a description. "Espectro" is Portuguese for "specter" and "static" is English for "static." You put the two together and have some ghost-riddled electronic jams. That's not to say that the music is straight up Goblin worship, either. Alex draws from the trans-global lineage of psychedelic music in addition to simple horror icons.

For instance, the title track relies on a motorik rhythm while a playfully sinister synthline dances on top. Part of it sounds like it could have been on a Neu! record, but only if Neu! were running from some ghouls as they were cranking out some kosmische shamanry. But not every track can be pinned down to the same influences. Like, let's take a gander at the first track, which is more or less the calm before the storm: "Removing the Bandages" is a piece dedicated to mood, and while electronic instrumentation is apparent, unfamiliar wafts of stringed accompaniment find their way in. I think I hear a cello and a violin, though to be fair, I don't have the best ear for figuring out arrangements, so there may be more.

So what does that mean for the record? Well, first off, it means that the record excels at making a hell of a lot of diverse sounds. It also means that it is absurdly fun to listen to. It really does sound like it could be the soundtrack to a great horror flick. And, to be perfectly clear, there is not even one dud on the record. All eleven tracks are evocative, strange pieces that blossom with repeated listens. It's a must-listen-to for anyone even remotely interested in the weird, the psychedelic, or the electronic.