...summer's gone and summer saw you, waaaaaaa-steeeedddd

Long time no update. Nothing exciting to report, just working a fucking fuckload. I'm actually sitting here at the office after having spent about eight straight hours trying to letraset a whole tracklisting for a CD into place over some collaged backgrounds, the results were:

a) it looked like a really, really, REALLY FUCKING POOR QUALITY off of Adam Juresko from Stop It!!'s work.

b) it didn't work aesthetically or like, in terms of it being legible.

c) I fucked it up heaps

d) it sucked

so I threw eight hours of work into the shredder. Look I have to admit there's something inherently satisfying about such a little artistic temper tantrum, no matter how counter productive.

While we're talking about how I suck? Let's talk about mail, and how shitty I am with returning it. I owe people prints and mix CDs and I forget both every morning when I get to work, and usually go 'oh fuck it I'll take care of it next day' but then don't. This counsellor guy I speak to at uni seems to think this has something to do with the whole repetitive cycle nature of depression and stuff and the mind-numbing work routine that's like, a not-quite-existence state compared to when I'm out with friends and/or around music and they might be right. But I prefer to think I'm just a deadshit. Anyways like I said I was supposed to send someone a mix CD as part of a swap like...TWO MONTHS AGO OR SOMETHING. FUCK. It's actually completely slipped my mind. So, you know, I'll, uh, get on that, ASAP.

But while we're on the topic of mix CDs I decided to make one based off shit that's already uploaded onto my work computer for whatever reason. I've been listening to this a lot the last week or so, it's actually a kinda nice summer driving around mix. It's broken up into two parts.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jynyqhjgydy part une

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2tg2ivhqonj et la part deux

Schifosi – half lit world
Limpwrist – the ode
Moss Icon – kick the can
Look Back and Laugh – this cost we absorb
Please Inform the Captain this is a Hijack – the asymmetric enemy
Q and Not U – fever sleeves
The Lapse – the threat
The Nation of Ulysses – n-sub Ulysses
Twelve Hour Turn – how to build
Wrangler Brutes – unmentionables
Xiu Xiu w/M. Gira – under pressure
Young Marble Giants – brand new life
Tragedy – the ending fight
The Organ – basement band
The Van Pelt – his saxophone is my guitar
PG99 – my application to heaven
Off Minor – this is a hostage situation
Pygmylush – dreams are class
Hoover – breather resist
Frodus – 6/99
Challenger – brand loyalty
Broken Social Scene – windsurfing nation
Born Against – senderos
Blonde Redhead – loved despite great faults

Calvary – the very roots of words

WE LEFT OUR PLANETS LONG AGO

THRONES


Call me a humorless cocksucker if you want but I don't really like 'wacky' music. The whole thing reeks of circus metal, ska, and - god forbid, primus or mr bungle. Maybe it's one of those 'you had to be there' things and 'there' was being a bassplayer and going to highschool in the eastern suburbs in the 90s, I dunno. Maybe it's because, as discussed below, most of the music I enjoy I also find kind of hilarious in one way or another. Either way self-consciouly 'zany' shit generally tends to be unfunny uni funk crap, or reek of lame 'don't you like FUN' crap like doomhawk.

There are however exceptions to this: anything Joe Preston is involved with and anything Sam McPheeters is involved with. This is of course subjectivity coming into play but fuck you it's my blog and those two dudes make me laugh. A lot. I mean it's possible to combine 'humor' with 'a message' and lots of bands do that to varying degrees of success, and McPheeters does it too actually. But both of them are just completely out there on some whole kind of other level, it's not next level it's like at least 20 years into the future shit.

So the last few nights I've been pulling 14 hour shifts in front of the computer (after my usual workday) writing an essay and it's frankly driven me fucking insane. Just finishing up the final spell check and reference list now with Thrones as my soundtrack and it's somehow appropriate. Thrones is the solo project of Joe Preston, otherwise known as a guy that's played bass and guitar in a fucking TONNE of bands including the Melvins, Men's Recovery Project, High on Fire, Sunn and most recently Harvey Milk. Dude rules, and the record's still in print so I'm not upping the whole thing but here's four songs off the 'day late, dollar short' collection of comp songs and other shit on southern lord that's basically his easiest thing to find right now. It'll give you an idea of the fucking genius of this guy. A combination of the Melvins, Ween, weed, self-effeacing nerdy white guy humor, and Mystery Science Theater 3000. When I finally completely lose my mind I hope it sounds like this.

Oh and if you steal my idea for using 'oracle' as walk on music should the ocassion ever rise where I could get away with using it, I'll...eh...probably just cry about it on the internet.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?imwjkoy5tyz

Thrones 'day late, dollar short' (excerpt), Southern Lord

Reddleman / Silvery Colorado / Epicus Doomicus Bumpitus / Oracle (rush cover)

...alien landscape, doesn't seem that alien at all

This one goes out to the 'Shellac inspired' bands. Albini, Weston and Trainer didn't create the whole scrappy guitar over repetitive bass and drums played really hard with an overdose of testosterone or sexual frustation or not enough weed or ever but they seem to be the common touchstone for everyone when describing this kind of 'math rock' stuff. "You know, they sound kinda like Shellac". A disease melbourne suffered from for far too long. Or you could say they sound like Fugazi but that never takes into account that band's trademarks - the weird dynamics, pseudo funk/post punk shit, or the fact that they're fucking Fugazi, dude - and always leaves me disappointed when I go to old bar or something and see some bad that's loud and, uh, 'propulsive' or something but definitely does not sound anything like Fugazi. Actually personallyI relate this stuff back to Shotmaker a hell of a lot more because I think they really did that whole spazzy, mid-pace three piece thing best out of anyone but yeah...say "Shellac" and people are at least going to have some idea where you're coming from.

STAYNLESS

I have absolutely no information on this band. A while ago when 'zines' started calling themselves 'magazines' and getting coloured cardstock covers but well before the death before dishonours and what have yous of today there was a phase of moving up from the split 7"s you'd get with stuff like I Stand Alone or the occasional Ebullition 12" to the much easier format of compilation CDs of a whole shit-tonne of bands on different labels. Kinda like a promo CD but there'd be a bunch of stuff from a heap of different labels, together with self released things and whatever. Paying six bucks for a copy of Status or Nothing Left and getting a CD with 20 or 30 bands to listen to on it was a fucking awesome deal. I used to tape the CDs and listen to them on the way to school and back in my walkman for weeks, marking down in the tracklisting pages of the zines with a biro which ones I thought were really cool, making mixtapes of those songs and then trying to track down those records. I got introduced to a lot of that cool indie rock shit Status put out in the last few years of the 90s like early Waxwing and The Casket Lottery this way.

On one of those Status comps there was this crazy fucking song called relax and colour by this band Staynless. To me it just seemed so completely out of control. I was 16 and hadn't heard much like this, these guys sounded like they weren't even bothering to play chords on their instruments half the time, and I imagined it was because they were all going way too crazy to play, thrashing around and hitting all the open strings on their guitars because they were just losing their shit and hey when you're getting yr spazz on it's not like you can pay attention to that minor 7th inversion or whatever. But then it gets to the breakdown (the starting riff which I definitely tried to steal for an early terror firma song), the other guitar comes in with those clean arpeggios and the drums haven't lost any momentum, but now it sounds so much more refined. If I was some writer douche I'd say it was 'controlled chaos' or something, I don't know. All I knew is that it fucking blew my mind, this was heavy but not tough, out of control but not inept.

So I tried to track the record down, which for me at that time consisted of going to missing link a few times and eventually remembering that was what I was looking for and never finding it. And just forgot about it I guess. I lost that comp CD a long time ago although I could still probably hum/sing you that whole song from memory considering how many times I listened to it on my shitty walkman coming home from school, thinking that places where this kind of music happened, that was where I was going to be when I was done with all this highschool crap. (Angsty).

Couple months ago someone posted a complete discography of Staynless' stuff on VLV and I of course was like 'holy fuck! I remember them!' and downloaded it all. Have listened to it at least once a week since and even now still haven't absorbed how amazing this band was. There was a time where relax and colour by this band was track one on side two of every mixtape I made. The band actually cover a pretty huge dynamic range and that one song isn't really indicative of everything they were doing. Maybe it was because there were so many people doing something simillar at the time or maybe it's because their one full length LP, Transistor Theory and Circuits Made Simple, on Undecided Records had cover art (see above) that looks like something Alison Wolfe would've been a member of and so they missed a whole bunch of people who would've otherwise dug it but didn't like Riot Grrrl or something (suckers). I don't know. Either way this record is incredible and something I feel almost evangelical about. So many people who're into this spazzy, grinding shit that you can use dumb words like 'angular' or 'mathy' to describe would love this record.

HUGE EDIT: Thanks to Yellow Ghost Forum user 'clarky' I now have tracklisting info:

'1. Old Salt (Side A) (4:0 2. Old Salt (Side B) (3:29) 3. The Camera Shop (4:13) 4. Red Giant (4:54) 5. Haunting the Haunted House (4:11) 6. Pay What You Get For (5:42) 7. The Dead Bell (4:46) 8. Relax and Colour (2:0 9. First Law of Motion (4:24) 10. Activator (3:05) 11. Staint Christofer (5:02) 12. Rail Roads Follow Rivers (4:47)

tracks 1 and 2 are from the Old Salt 7", it was one song over 2 sides of the record tracks 3 and 4 are from the Snowfields and Sand Dunes" 7 (i think?) tracks 5-12 are the album "Transistor Theory and Circuits Made Simple" '

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jznjojoxkwg

THE GREAT UNRAVELING - KRS LP

Tonie Joy and A.S. Malat's band after Universal Order of Armageddon. Another band that Pete Hyde got me into actually. The LP came in second hand and he was like 'hey you'd dig this', and mentioned Tonie Joy, who at that time I just knew of as 'the dude from Moss Icon and Born Against' but in the last few years has become one of my absolute favourite guitarists (even though he plays a strat...gross) so yeah. He was right.

Again on the Shellac tip, or whatever you want to call it. Actually I was listening to this once in my car and a dude who used to do that 'I pretend to know this music because it will make me cooler' for some dumb reason (seriously, who cares how esoteric yr knowledge is?) was like 'man I love this Shellac record'. Lulz. I'm sure if they were playing now in melbourne there'd be a certain amount of people willing to call them a 'My Disco ripoff', because people are silly like that. Playing from 95 to 97 they sort of took the slower, darker moments of U.O.A, and the energy, but none of the speed and short songs. They have that thing that I like to think of as the three piece effect that makes bands like Shotmaker and Frodus (and Former Republics) so fucking great: everyone's playing an instrument and often the vocals can take a back seat to that. There's no one with a microphone feeling like they need to fill in that space and so consequently the music can breath and stretch out. Which is exactly what the Great Unraveling did. I don't know how much weed was smoked in the course of this band but it definitely jams out a lot, makes a hell of a lot of use of reptition and the amelodic possibilities of Joy's noise guitars. This must've been so much fun to play.

Reading in the wikipedia article about them there's something about their last music being written in an old house in the maryland woods Joy bought, where apparently ghosts or witches would appear and sing along with a certain bassline. Again...maybe the weed. But there's definitely a creepy element to this music. Not as creepy as say Slint's last record but definitely creepy in terms of lots of space and just an overal general feel of dark rooms, grey skies and solitary afternoons in this music. So naturally I love it.

The Great Unraveling - s/t LP, Kill Rock Stars.

I can't be fucked writing up the tracklisting and catalog number because usually I'm doing this at work and don't have my LPs handy to check. Also I ripped this one off a CD that might be a little scratched, sorry. Tracklist for this will be in the file. Has a song, 'head for the hills', that's not on the LP as I recall. I think I gave my LP copy to fellow Tonie Joy enthusiast Alex or something so I can't remember.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?grqvytntjmy

...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.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ninyd2zzjru

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.

...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.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?hjlmjobolwb

Breathing Walker - s/t (Vermin Scum, cassette 1990, LP, 2001)

Elephant /All Over Heaven / Guatemala / Moth / Demon / (live) / Guatemala (live)

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.

shameless self promotion

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