Thursday, September 25, 2008

...by the fireplace, in white.


pg.99 - 'document #5'.

When it comes to $kramz stuff I think the stuff that's definitely going to stand the test of time for me is all the harsher, more fuck-off noisy stuff. Like Reversal Of Man, Orchid's last record, etc etc. I mean there's lots of great stuff still being done, like in any genre but personally I got lost when it became this 'screamo' thing instead of just another version of hardcore, a reaction against everything else and a way to make music that isn't polished and commidifed and stale.

Page Ninety-Nine I'll always love. Even if they didn't have like the great lyrics of other bands (some is cool, some is, uh, you know...), they just fucking ruled. They were as messy as a band with multiple singers and guitarists and bassists - famously at one point they had 14 members - would expect to be and completely unafraid of reaching outside any perceived limits of their music. And all "DIY" whatever that means and all that shit. I don't know, there's a lot of bullshit romanticism to it but they put out some great records, and a lot of great bands came out of this band (personal faves: Haram, Pygmy Lush and Malady), and something about the whole just fucking going for it, just not caring about the limitations and fucking doing it and making music that is personal and inspiring really struck me. "Love yr friends, die laughing".
Anyway Document #5 isn't actually my favourite record of theirs. I feel like whereas with this record there's like the screamo bits and the metalcore bits and whatever, on later stuff like Document #8 it got a lot more seamless. Also that record seems so unbelievably pissed and defiant about "punk rock in the wrong hands". But this one is still great and has two of their best songs. The end riff of 'by the fireplace, in white' is killer and apparently live could go on forever, which is something I definitely wish I saw. And then there's the song 'my application to heaven'. Seriously. If you haven't heard it I'll let you hear it, but it's so bone headed yet also in the context of the lyrics heartfelt and just so fucking awesome.
I was listening to the radio the other day and hearing about the church threatening to pull out of the hospitals it owns/funds if Doctors were forced to comply with laws that enabled women greater access to abortion technologies. I was hearing that and just going 'I can't believe you can be a fucking chrisso and into hardcore'. I just don't fathom it. Yeah there's the personal belief thing and that's great and all and do what you want there, that's totally cool. I have my own spirituality as well. But this fucking using economic discursive power to fuck with people and try and subvert their freedoms? That's no different than any other piece of shit corporate entity using their economic resources to fuck humans over. It's just hidden behind a belief system. And so yeah I decided rather than do anything meaningful I decided to post this record. Fuck you jesus indeed.

PG. 99 - 'document # 5'
Ruiner of Life / Comedy of Christ / Skin Pack / My Application to Heaven / Hotel Nevada 1982 / Humans With Forked Tongues / Murder, Conductor / (.................) / Sounds of Gravesites (upturned) / By The Fireplace, In White.

Monday, September 22, 2008

...faded, grey, like smoke



BREATHING WALKER
I was listening to the Boris w/Michio Kuwihara record 'rainbow' on the way to work and reflecting how really, this was blatant hippie shit and why am I tolerating it? Then I realised I was wearing my tie dye Occult Blood shirt and basically shit was all over and I had to pull over to the side of the road to give myself a good sound punching.
But there's been an acceptance of elements of psychedelia into my music listening over the past five years. Not just in a 'hey this is fucking hilarious' way with like Ghost or something, but a genuine enjoyment of fucking out there whacko psyche rock shit. This has not been concurrent with my resumption of smoking the weedian nazareth either, happened when I was still straightedge.
See the thing is I actually enjoy a lot of music that I find at the same time absolutely fucking hilarious. Sleep's 'dopesmoker' is one of my favourite driving records, and I love the shit out of the post Sleep band Om. But seriously. Have you read the lyrics? It's all like HIGH PRIESTS ASCEND THE TEMPLE ZIGURATT STAIIIRRRSSS TO GIVE OFFERING TO WEEEEEDDDD GODDDDSSSSS. Fucking funny shit. And the cover art's like some Arik Roper painting of like barbarian chicks with huge swords and druids and stuff and like...how the fuck can you not find this utterly hilarious? Maybe my whole life is utterly consumed by irony and I'm like that dude in the homerpalooza episode of the Simpsons whom, when asked if he was being sarcastic, replies with dejected confusion: "I don't even know anymore dude".
Moss Icon were dismissed by many of their detractors as 'punk rock's answer to the grateful dead'. I'll back that. And I fucking HATE hippies man. I fucking despise them and every other non-funny-but-just-plain-annoying aspect of weed culture (ie pretty much anything you can buy from Off Ya Tree, mirrors with shit like the 'ten commandments of the native american' screened onto them that you bought from the Carribean market, and also I'll put Mr. Bungle in there. Drawing a long bow? What, like, bow and arrow, like living a natural primal existance? Fuck you hippie!).
Umm where was I? So yeah I can see what bummed people out about Moss Icon but for me they were always somewhere in the free-expressive side of 'emo' music or whatever where you basically, just let it all hang the fuck out. I used to refer to it when I was younger as like the whole 'talking song' idea, the repetitive basslines, arpegiated clean guitar, repetitive, half ad-libbed vocals, all reaching some kind of crescendo. Part of what attracted me so much about Hoover like I probably mentioned in my post about them. Moss Icon nailed that with the song 'lyburnum wit's end liberation fly'. It was a pretty inspiring piece of music, as a guy who plays in bands and seeks to express a lot of himself through that as well. To be able to just let go and say what was on my mind is - while being the height of self-indulgence - pretty fucking great.
And through on to bands like Indian Summer, whom I find it harder to enjoy now but their live record is still a pretty phenomenal listen, there's a tradition there of wearing yr heart on yr sleeve or baring yr sould through music that was specifically about that place and that moment that you were performing it and none other. And what was on yr mind at that time would come out through it. This I honestly just seem to connect with more and therefore have in the past judged it as more 'sincere' than the usual boy loves girl, fucks it up, writes a bunch of songs blaming her for it all while she doesn't get to answer back 'emo' stuff. Whether that's valid or not is another story.
Breathing Walker is Moss Icon plus some other people with the 'hippie' stuff amped up a zillion times higher. It's very much built around the same repetitive musical figures but there's extra instrumentation and the guitars themselves seem inclined to be more about texture and sound than playing the actual notes. And it's a pretty wonderfully naive and fun way. I used to sit with my bass and my crappy little practice amp and play two notes over and over again, marvelling at the way the sound dispersed, the overtones that would come in as others decayed, the vibrations that would change as you contrasted one note to another. Nowadays if I want to create texture and experiment with sound I'll automatically get like five delay pedals out or something, I think my brain has been ruined by music theory knowledge and I've become dependant on toys. I miss that ability to just create a simple noise and make it into a song, which Tonie Joy does so fucking well on the first song on this recording, 'Elephant'.
The wikipedia entry on this record describes it as "Moss Icon with a more tribal feel", which means, I don't know, more hand drums or something? Fuck that's really questionable territory but this record is musically evocative (to a western ear) of the South American cultures singer Jonathan Vance was definitely interested with. But I think they manage to be evocative without actually committing plagiarism. I don't know hey, it's just a weird ground where something like this works for me but something like Paul Simon's 'graceland' kind of reeks of post-colonial dilletantes exploiting cultural product. Vance's lyrics as always have a 'political omg' aspect to them as well. Many of his songs dealt with capitalist intervention in third world countries and native cultures. And the subtly of it, of a song talking about the Elephant, and Vance just branching off on that subject and going wherever the hell he wants, incorporating through some kind of freeform rant ideas of hegemonic intervention, environmental destruction and our own disempowerment in privileged societies is to me as powerful as a more 'direct' approach that sets out the problem in facts and figures and names and places.
Anyway it's Breathing Walker and it is what it is. A kind of naieve experiment of the early 90s where shit like this could be tried because there wasn't some godawful abomination of a band to compare it to and ruin it all. Sort of like I'd love to do a band that sounds like Quicksand or Guilt now but there's too much nu metal in between now and then to make it work. Two songs specific to them, two re-done Moss Icon songs (including my least favourite, 'moss'...fuck that guitar riff, seriously) and a couple of live songs that gives you even more of an idea of the improvisational nature of Vance's approach to being a singer in a punk band.
Breathing Walker - s/t (Vermin Scum, cassette 1990, LP, 2001)
Elephant /All Over Heaven / Guatemala / Moth / Demon / (live) / Guatemala (live)

Friday, September 19, 2008

first world problems




Come to this if you want.


You know what pisses me off at the moment? People who think they're yr friends and therefore have like, the liberty to say shit to you that yr real friends do, because we're part of some imagined punk rock community. I feel like such a jerk saying this too but fuck it's annoying. If hear inane comments about the fact that OMG I HAVE A BEARD from one more person I've never even fucking met in real life I'll write a self centered complainy little blog about it...oh, yeah...


Anyway we'll return to our regular updates once life and uni has stopped being such a big bunch of dick.




Thursday, September 4, 2008

shameless self promotion

expect potaters songs up on our myspace. http://www.myspace.com/exspectatorband