Sometimes you are lucky enough to get to interview someone who you hold in such high regard that actually talking to them is terrifying. I spent four hours on the phone to Eric and he was everything a dedicated Skull Servant could hope for and more. Below is an unedited version of what ran in Vice v6n10.
Work To Death
Eric Wood will never quit being a Bastard
Its hard to imagine how a band making songs played at hyper driven speeds with two bass guitars and song titles like “Screwdriver in Urethra Of Thomas Lenz” all played through speakers made out of salvaged junk ever failed to be anything other than huge in the early 1990’s. What else was everyone listening to?
Eric Wood’s work in a bunch of bands from Pillsbury Hardcore and Pissed Happy Children through to Man is The Bastard and Bastard Noise helped define hardcore punk music’s most extreme shapeshift: the west coast-centric powerviolence movement. Wood even wrote the song that first mentioned the term (“Hispanic Small Man Power”).
Backed by the totally never-heard-that-anywhere-before weird noises spilling out of Henry Barnes’s home made speakers Bastard Noise projects always stood apart from their contemporaries. With a brutally simple, aesthetic and politicized sloganeering Wood’s projects maintained a tireless work ethic that allowed them to stride along for years while their contemporaries gurgled and quit. Like Crass before them, Eric’s bands offered a self-sustaining alternative to a modern world gone to shit. Maybe in 50 years time in an alternate dimension they will be granted their dues. For now they can remain the most important band you’ve never heard.
VICE: There is a constant sense of intense brutality in everything that you have done. Why so angry?
Eric Wood: Listening to things like metal-era Agnostic Front, Rest In Pieces and Antidote just made us want to play and really play fast and hard. Make the bass prominent and just hyperdrive the rhythm section. Listening to and watching Infest was an influence in terms of that high level of uncompromising brutality and sheer velocity. They really took it to another level.
How did you end up playing in Neanderthal with Matt Domino from Infest?
We had played shows together and just knew each other. You have to remember that at that time there was a very small group of people involved in that kind of music. The night Pissed Happy Children and Infest played Gillman Street to record the split flexi-disc for Slap A Ham there were nine people in the room.
Is it true that you guys actually coined the term ‘powerviolence’?
Matt did. We were practicing one day and just talking about how we had to give what we were doing an identity and Matt just came up with it on the spot. He was really good at that: really great, quick, perfect ideas.
At the time was there a sense of the whole thing being this big movement?
Maybe later with things like the first Fiesta Grande festival that Dodge put on at Gillman but it was always more a sense of community. That is something that there isn’t so much of anymore. I’m not joking when I say that half the stuff we made happen back then communicating by letters was ten times better organized than half of the shit that goes on today with ‘ease’ of the internet. Just do it yourself and do it right.
The most obvious thing that set Man is The Bastard apart from your supposed contemporaries was simply not sounding like any of them.
We have the boxes to thank there. Henry and his boxes. They are a force of nature. They aren’t even government safety checked. Apart from the cones every part of those things is built by hand and they will fry almost any in-house PA. They make sounds I’ve never heard before. Joel Connell and I already knew we wanted to push the two basses way out front and Aaron Kenyon was pumping a lot of Magma through the hardcore template but the boxes gave us a whole new range and we were just willing to take a chance and do something different.
How did you meet Henry?
I kind of already knew him from around town because he was known for being this weird guy who built bikes out of other bikes. That was his thing: making new things from neglected old things. These bikes were insane, like choppers with the big wheel at the front instead of the back. We ended up working shifts together in this bakery and one day he invited me round to his house saying I had to check out these speakers he had been making. His place was like a junk laboratory but once he played me the speakers I knew immediately: that was it.
What was the first thing you heard through the boxes?
I think Henry played me these noises he had been working on to try and communicate with the birds that sat on his window. I can honestly say he is one of the greatest souls and a true friend. The whole band wouldn’t have been shit without Henry, he gave it that distinct sound naturally ‘cos he built the boxes for the love of building the boxes. Henry’s main influence was his dad’s TV repair shop as opposed Merzbow.
How did you come up with the stark imagery that gave the Bastard Noise projects such a distinct identity?
I was aware from the get go how simple logos like the Flag bars, the Infest logo and the Crass circle could give things an immediate persona. You can put something that simple on your record or a t-shirt and you immediately have a visual thing to go with the sound. I just went into a library, found the skull in some medical journal, flipped it, made all the font super bold and brutal, kept it black and white and that was it. You can go into all these realms of complicated presentation and sometimes the message can get lost. Basic is brutal.
You’re discography is like the ultimate collectors nightmare. What inspired that work ethic and level of output?
I can point immediately to two acts: Merzbow and Agathocles. Both pump out a high level of high quality. Nonstop. That is they key: high level and high quality. Matt Domino was also inspiring for that. He could come up with a riff of staggering quality in seconds. I don’t know if he realizes just how gifted he is with that whole thought/genius thing. Plus I have this hunger inside that I can’t even explain, it’s like a voice that drives me. I started playing bass again recently ‘cos I was going to see shows and it was like this voice going “hey Wood, better get playing, there’s only so much time”. Just listening to records stirs the hunger. I was listening to Rorschach the other day, just hearing it made me want to bang my head on a wall it was so intense. You know the guitar player doesn’t even play now? He just sits at home and watches the tube. I can’t understand that mentality. That just makes me want to bang my head through the fucking wall.
Your projects have consistently been preoccupied with man being the vilest most fucked up animal on the planet.
Yes. Man IS The Bastard. Man’s folly and plunders will be our downfall, poor choice making by the worst animal on the earth. You just need to look around to see it is true. My father forced me into the US Navy at early an age and the twenty months I spent there allowed me to view things in a totally different light. In addition I have never been a massive reader but working night shifts in the bakery I would be listening to spoken word lectures on KPFK public radio in LA. That was what really got me going. I was hearing Terrence McKenna, Noam Chomsky and all these people filled with wisdom and I was just taking it all in and being repelled by the political system we are subjected to in the US. I was just staring into this big oven, loading the big steal trays with bread or whatever and getting angrier and angrier.
At the same time you have advocated feminism pretty fervently?
We all came from woman so it is necessary to love the female and have utmost respect for the feminine you know? We were all loaded with our own concepts all of which I was keen to get heard, initially a lot of them were mine but Kenyon and Connell really stepped up and kept bringing quality concepts and ideas to the table. A lot of people thought we were this crock of PC horseshit but that’s bullshit. We just had a conscience. How can you not?
You had a lot of similarly named projects running simultaneous. Were you just trying to confuse people?
To an extent they are all separate and distinct but at the same time they are sister and brother or sister and sister. Charred Remains was kind of thrown in there to keep people on their toes plus I was obsessed with wanted posters as a kid and they all had AKA on them for all their murdering, criminal aliases so I always wanted a record with an AKA on the sleeve. The main difference was that MiTB had all the instruments and Bastard Noise was just the boxes. When MiTB came to an end the focus shifted to Bastard Noise.
Could you talk a little about why MiTB cam to an end?
Let’s just say that aside from cannabis drugs can be very dark and destructive things. Whatever has been has been though and those people are my brothers. In fact I have some exciting news I can exclusively share here.
Great! What’s the scoop?
Bastard Noise will now for the first time be incorporating live instrumentation. I just had that hunger again to play and R.D Davies who played drums on Infest’s “No Man’s Slave” LP has stepped up to play drums and Leila Rauf who plays guitars and synths with me in Ion Channel will also be contributing.
So MiTB has been born again through the Bastard Noise?
Yes, exactly!
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Vice September 2008 Reviews
As with everything in Vice v6n10 the record reviews section took the form of an interview. Here they are.
Jeremy Warmsley
How We Became
Transgressive
VICE: Who are "we" paleface? And what is it exactly you think that you’ve "become"?
Jeremy Warmsley: The album is vaguely about growing up and the title was inspired by a children's book by Ted Hughes called "How The Whale Became". It’s all these jolly little fairy-tail-metaphor creation myths for loads of animals. So it made sense to thieve the title.
You attended a posh boys school in Wimbledon that has spat out people like Patrick Wolf and Marcus Mumford. What is it about comfy SW19 that turns out such plaintive soul searching?
Tom Vek was at Kings too. Erm, I don't have a good answer. Maybe it was all those hymns they made us sing?
Deerhunter
Microcastle
4AD
Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno
Pink Lady Lemonade, You’re From Outer Space
Riot Season
VICE: Your sleeves are always make me feel like I have done a shedload of DMT. Makoto Kawabata (guitars): How do you go about whacking those together?
It varies case by case but usually I come up with the idea for the artwork. For this record our friend Pikachu did the sleeve but there is only ever one important thing: it is striking!
I think I am going bald. You guys all have really long hair. What you do if you started going bald? Long around the sides? Combover?
I have no idea about anything in future let alone hair. Nobody knows if they will be alive even in just the next moment so I don't think about future or the past, only the present.
Where can I get a hold of one of those Hawiian shirts you guys are all wearing on the back of the album?
That photo was taken at a hot spring in Okayama on our last tour of Western Japan in 2007. We were loving that kind of stupid fake atmosphere. I do not know where they came from though.
Religious Kinives
The Door
Ecstatic Peace
VICE: There are loads more of you in the band now. What happened. Were you getting lonely?
Chris (guitars & vocals): It’s hard to have a rock band without a bass player so we went and got one of those. One group I can think of did it just fine, and they're the one we get most compared to now.
Who’s that?
Guess.
I give up. What would constitute a knife making the jump to being religious as opposed to just a plain old knife?
I suppose Abraham's knife would have been rather religious. The name isn't as imaginative as your question, I am afraid. It's just something I saw on the list of items the FAA doesn't want Americans to bring onto airplanes.
Vivian Girls
Vivian Girls
In The Red
Vice: What’s with the Drager reference in your band name. Hasn’t that ben done to death? Fucked up did a Vivain Girls song on their last LP like a year ago. Get with the program.
Cassie Ramone (guitars & vocals): Frankie, our ex-drummer thought of it. Katy and I had never even heard of Henry Darger until then. It was the only name we came up with that didn’t sound dumb.
Would you have still called gone for same name if you had been three boys?
Kickball Katy (bass & vocals): But then we would be boys. Gross.
Through all the fuzz you guys have some real girl group harmonies going on. Which girl groups float your boats?
Cassie: My favorite girl group is the Shangri-Las. I know everyone says that but I listen to them all the time. So yeah. Them
Katy: My favorite is The Shirelles beacuse New Jersey rules.
Racebannon
Acid Or Blood
Southern
Vice: What the hell is a 'Racebannon'? It sounds like a bucking bronco or a muscle car or something.
James Baumen (guitars): Ohh, I like that. I wish it was a muscle car. Chrome and black with red pinstripes and a screaming small block engine. Yeah, that might be more fun. We're from Indiana and we like fast cars there. Actually, it's a raging force of fire and blood determined to deliver the rock to any soul willing to accept it. It was born 12 years ago and refuses to be brought down.
What is with all the fear, sexual diseases and terrifying song titles? They all have names like “Candida & Parasites”. I wouldn’t want to take “Candida & Parasites” home to my mum.
We are disturbed individuals and I guess we don't mind letting people know that. I’ve always wanted the band to be like when you’re watching a scary movie and you have to cover your eyes during a really disgusting bit but you can't help but peek through yourr hand so you don't actually miss anything.
Death Sentence: Panda!
Insects Awaken
Upset The Rhythm
You guys use a clarinet in a rock band. What are you? Coconuts?
Chris (drums): The clarinet is a symbol of juxtaposition. On one hand, it is small, light weight
and seemingly poses no major threat. But, when book-ended by the human spirit and a chain of vicious analog and digital agents: triumph!
Why would you ever want to give a Panda a death sentence?
The context of the name is not to imply the delivery of a death sentence to
a panda. That's ridiculous, who would ever do that and why? The panda IS, in fact, the death sentence. As in: "when that panda gets it's hands on you, you're going to die". Street justice.
Christina Carter
Original Darkness
Kranky
Your lyrics are pretty off the wall. What the hell are you going on about on this record?
I was thinking a lot about spies, double agents, government agents, corporate executives, assassins, mafia men, and the women who love and support them as well as moral double standards and a girl from my grade school and politicians. I put myself through all of these people or all of these people through myself.
Have you ever been mugged? I got mugged yesterday. It sucked.
I was once in Galveston, Texas with Tom Carter, Shawn McMillen and Heather Murray. We were walking late at night back from the beach to their new apartment past a big, dark old Victorian house and we heard this weird noise. We lingered for a moment trying to figure out what it was when two guys jumped from out of nowhere with ski masks on and some kind of weapon glinting in the moonlight. One of them said "what's up bitch?" and started lunging at us. We ran and started screaming thinking all the time they would grab one of us as we ran frantically losing shoes and getting feet cut down the street. When we finally made it in to safety we immediately got in the car and drove to Houston. That certainly crosses my mind often when walking around late at night.
Lovvers
Think
Witchita
VICE: This whole record is only 13 minutes long. Come on, you did that on purpose right?
Shaun Hencher (vocals): Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. It is very real. The majority of appartement blocks in Manhattan are built without a 13th floor. In Sikhism the number 13 is considered a special number as “Tera” in Punjabi means “yours” as in “I am ours, O Lord”.
Right…is it true that your guitar player is proficient in yogic flying?
Yes. Yogic flying was practiced in a golden dome in the centre of the council estate Henry grew up in but in order to lear how to fly you had to take a course at a stately home in Kent with a bunch of Indian Siddahs.
El Guincho
Alegranza
Young Turks
Vice: You make all of your music and play every night on your own. Don’t you ever get lonely?
Pablo Diaz-Reixa: Yes. It is horrible. It makes me sad. I have a friend who will be playing the bass guitar but on a computer on stage with me now though so it will all be ok soon I think.
Your record sounds like it’s the soundtrack to a carnival in a rainforest on Jupiter. It’s pretty intense. Do you ever intend to make a less excited record? I dunno, like a Café Del Mar chillout thing or something.
Maybe yes, I like all that Baleric sounding stuff so it might be fun. Just for home though. It would be too boring live.
What’s an El Guincho when it’s at home?
It is a rare an endangered bird that you find on the Canary Islands. They can be quite vicious. There aren’t many left but the ones that are still around can peck out your eyes. They are tough birds.
Jeremy Warmsley
How We Became
Transgressive
VICE: Who are "we" paleface? And what is it exactly you think that you’ve "become"?
Jeremy Warmsley: The album is vaguely about growing up and the title was inspired by a children's book by Ted Hughes called "How The Whale Became". It’s all these jolly little fairy-tail-metaphor creation myths for loads of animals. So it made sense to thieve the title.
You attended a posh boys school in Wimbledon that has spat out people like Patrick Wolf and Marcus Mumford. What is it about comfy SW19 that turns out such plaintive soul searching?
Tom Vek was at Kings too. Erm, I don't have a good answer. Maybe it was all those hymns they made us sing?
Deerhunter
Microcastle
4AD
Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno
Pink Lady Lemonade, You’re From Outer Space
Riot Season
VICE: Your sleeves are always make me feel like I have done a shedload of DMT. Makoto Kawabata (guitars): How do you go about whacking those together?
It varies case by case but usually I come up with the idea for the artwork. For this record our friend Pikachu did the sleeve but there is only ever one important thing: it is striking!
I think I am going bald. You guys all have really long hair. What you do if you started going bald? Long around the sides? Combover?
I have no idea about anything in future let alone hair. Nobody knows if they will be alive even in just the next moment so I don't think about future or the past, only the present.
Where can I get a hold of one of those Hawiian shirts you guys are all wearing on the back of the album?
That photo was taken at a hot spring in Okayama on our last tour of Western Japan in 2007. We were loving that kind of stupid fake atmosphere. I do not know where they came from though.
Religious Kinives
The Door
Ecstatic Peace
VICE: There are loads more of you in the band now. What happened. Were you getting lonely?
Chris (guitars & vocals): It’s hard to have a rock band without a bass player so we went and got one of those. One group I can think of did it just fine, and they're the one we get most compared to now.
Who’s that?
Guess.
I give up. What would constitute a knife making the jump to being religious as opposed to just a plain old knife?
I suppose Abraham's knife would have been rather religious. The name isn't as imaginative as your question, I am afraid. It's just something I saw on the list of items the FAA doesn't want Americans to bring onto airplanes.
Vivian Girls
Vivian Girls
In The Red
Vice: What’s with the Drager reference in your band name. Hasn’t that ben done to death? Fucked up did a Vivain Girls song on their last LP like a year ago. Get with the program.
Cassie Ramone (guitars & vocals): Frankie, our ex-drummer thought of it. Katy and I had never even heard of Henry Darger until then. It was the only name we came up with that didn’t sound dumb.
Would you have still called gone for same name if you had been three boys?
Kickball Katy (bass & vocals): But then we would be boys. Gross.
Through all the fuzz you guys have some real girl group harmonies going on. Which girl groups float your boats?
Cassie: My favorite girl group is the Shangri-Las. I know everyone says that but I listen to them all the time. So yeah. Them
Katy: My favorite is The Shirelles beacuse New Jersey rules.
Racebannon
Acid Or Blood
Southern
Vice: What the hell is a 'Racebannon'? It sounds like a bucking bronco or a muscle car or something.
James Baumen (guitars): Ohh, I like that. I wish it was a muscle car. Chrome and black with red pinstripes and a screaming small block engine. Yeah, that might be more fun. We're from Indiana and we like fast cars there. Actually, it's a raging force of fire and blood determined to deliver the rock to any soul willing to accept it. It was born 12 years ago and refuses to be brought down.
What is with all the fear, sexual diseases and terrifying song titles? They all have names like “Candida & Parasites”. I wouldn’t want to take “Candida & Parasites” home to my mum.
We are disturbed individuals and I guess we don't mind letting people know that. I’ve always wanted the band to be like when you’re watching a scary movie and you have to cover your eyes during a really disgusting bit but you can't help but peek through yourr hand so you don't actually miss anything.
Death Sentence: Panda!
Insects Awaken
Upset The Rhythm
You guys use a clarinet in a rock band. What are you? Coconuts?
Chris (drums): The clarinet is a symbol of juxtaposition. On one hand, it is small, light weight
and seemingly poses no major threat. But, when book-ended by the human spirit and a chain of vicious analog and digital agents: triumph!
Why would you ever want to give a Panda a death sentence?
The context of the name is not to imply the delivery of a death sentence to
a panda. That's ridiculous, who would ever do that and why? The panda IS, in fact, the death sentence. As in: "when that panda gets it's hands on you, you're going to die". Street justice.
Christina Carter
Original Darkness
Kranky
Your lyrics are pretty off the wall. What the hell are you going on about on this record?
I was thinking a lot about spies, double agents, government agents, corporate executives, assassins, mafia men, and the women who love and support them as well as moral double standards and a girl from my grade school and politicians. I put myself through all of these people or all of these people through myself.
Have you ever been mugged? I got mugged yesterday. It sucked.
I was once in Galveston, Texas with Tom Carter, Shawn McMillen and Heather Murray. We were walking late at night back from the beach to their new apartment past a big, dark old Victorian house and we heard this weird noise. We lingered for a moment trying to figure out what it was when two guys jumped from out of nowhere with ski masks on and some kind of weapon glinting in the moonlight. One of them said "what's up bitch?" and started lunging at us. We ran and started screaming thinking all the time they would grab one of us as we ran frantically losing shoes and getting feet cut down the street. When we finally made it in to safety we immediately got in the car and drove to Houston. That certainly crosses my mind often when walking around late at night.
Lovvers
Think
Witchita
VICE: This whole record is only 13 minutes long. Come on, you did that on purpose right?
Shaun Hencher (vocals): Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. It is very real. The majority of appartement blocks in Manhattan are built without a 13th floor. In Sikhism the number 13 is considered a special number as “Tera” in Punjabi means “yours” as in “I am ours, O Lord”.
Right…is it true that your guitar player is proficient in yogic flying?
Yes. Yogic flying was practiced in a golden dome in the centre of the council estate Henry grew up in but in order to lear how to fly you had to take a course at a stately home in Kent with a bunch of Indian Siddahs.
El Guincho
Alegranza
Young Turks
Vice: You make all of your music and play every night on your own. Don’t you ever get lonely?
Pablo Diaz-Reixa: Yes. It is horrible. It makes me sad. I have a friend who will be playing the bass guitar but on a computer on stage with me now though so it will all be ok soon I think.
Your record sounds like it’s the soundtrack to a carnival in a rainforest on Jupiter. It’s pretty intense. Do you ever intend to make a less excited record? I dunno, like a Café Del Mar chillout thing or something.
Maybe yes, I like all that Baleric sounding stuff so it might be fun. Just for home though. It would be too boring live.
What’s an El Guincho when it’s at home?
It is a rare an endangered bird that you find on the Canary Islands. They can be quite vicious. There aren’t many left but the ones that are still around can peck out your eyes. They are tough birds.
The End Blog Piece
The End is closing in January 2009. This represents a sad day for me on a personal level because it is a club that has fostered many stages of my musical growth and experience. From early days at Ram, Renegade Hardware and Swerve nights to latter period fun at Trash and Rinse parties via dalliances with nights like Bugged Out and Durr, The End has always been there.
It will be a sad loss for London's nightlife when those big old doors on Central St finally close for the last time.
Anyway, I got asked to write about some bands with my Vice hat on so here it is.
I am a little choked right now.
Goodbye The End.
The End Blog Piece
OK here’s the thing. Vice is not a music magazine. Music magazines are, on the whole, blinkered, self righteous forums for balding old guys to weep bitter words of underachievement or hollow platitudes to nothingness. They also suffer from being rigid single purpose outlets blind to the wider significance of music’s little place in the big scheme of everything the fuck else. The magazines we like are things like the Private Eye, MRR, Big Brother, The New Yorker, The Economist, The National Geographic and Colours. Magazines that are versatile, swift to adapt, astute and cover a broad range of topics well. Usually with a sense of humour. That always helps.
Now don’t get us wrong, we really like music. Lots. Some of us even still by real records instead of stealing them off of the internet and have the bands that we like tatooed on our bodies forever. You know, that kind of stuff.
We are wary about the majority music for the same reason that we are wary about the majority of everything: 99% of it sucks. Really bad. Not your average sucking either. Titanically, apocalypticly, soul rapingly massively sucking.
Seriously, if we made you sit and listen to the metric tone of recorded stuff and read the acres of press releases so bad they make you want to ram your head straight through your screen that we get sent on any given day you’d probably come to a pretty similar conclusion. I promise.
To this end we approach music coverage in the same way that we approach all aspects of the magazine. We don’t cover anything for the sake of covering it or because it is promoting a certain thing at the right time or because someone from some press agency took us to Bungalow 8 for the evening. The things that we choose to cover stand and fall on their own merit. So when we do come to feature a band or musician (we usually only do four a month max, please stop hassling us) the things that make the cut will generally be things that we know we will be able to look back on in a years time with a warm glow of fuzzy fondness. Because they didn’t turn out to be a piece of shit. Because they were actually great.
Anyway, here are five bands that we currently think are actually great. In fact some of them are so great that we decided to put their records out ourselves.
The Black Lips
The Black Lips are four kids from Atlanta, Georgia. They play garage punk brimming with so many hooks you can’t fail to fall in love with them instantly. It’s like they swallowed the entire Nuggets box set, watched The Decline Of Western Civilzation and decided to form the best band we’ve heard in yonks. They are also a gang of total babes who love to party for days on end and somehow manage to play all the better for it. Albeit often naked, bloody and drenched in their own puke. We love them so much that we put out their record and let them stay at our houses and lend them fivers and stuff whenever they are over. Ian, Jared, Cole, Joe: we love you.
http://www.myspace.com/theblacklips
King Khan & The Shrines
King Khan came to our attention via The Black Lips. Like the Lips kids Khan and his Shrines are from Georgia and ply a mean line in note perfect psyche-garage. There must be some magic garage greatness juice in that Atlanta water ‘cos the first time we heard these guys we knew we had to have ‘em for ourselves. Live they look and sound like they should be the house band for that scene in Easy Rider where they take all the acid at Mardi Gras and it all goes a little left of the dial. In other words: pretty amazing. They also all have great stage names like Gogo Queen Of The Underworld, Johnny Boy Adonis and Big Fred Roller. They will be over in the UK for the first time soon. Don’t sleep.
http://www.myspace.com/kingkhantheshrines
Heartbreak
While London’s recent italo resurgence has been lead by DJ’s playing out classic sides at nights like Cocadisco (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17834115290&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fn%3D-1%26k%3D200000010%26init%3Ds%253Agroup%26q%3Dcocadisco), Horsemeat Disco (http://www.myspace.com/horsemeatdiscolondon) and Disco Bloodbath (http://www.myspace.com/discobloodbathdisco) the whole thing has lacked an act that can convey the live element that helped define italo’s absurdity (seriously just YouTube ‘Another Life’ by Kano). Heartbreak are that missing piece in the sexy, synthy jigsaw. An Argentian and a Londoner who think they are in a stadium metal band playing stuff that sounds like magical coke dust wafting out of some forgotten Rimini hideaway club in 1985. We can’t recommend them enough.
http://www.myspace.com/heartbreak1
Sian Alice Group
Sian Alice Group are a cute gang of friends from all over Britain who naturally gravitated to London because it’s a safe haven for weirdos. Mentored by Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and including Jesus and Mary Chain founding member Douglas Hart on bass, SAG sound like the spooky laughter of a thousand big fluffy rain clouds made of angel tears. Yup, that is EXACTLY what they sound like. They’re about to tour America for the first time to promote their new album, 59:59, so we thought we would introduce you to them, one by one, because they’re our new favorite British band. Get to know ’em!
http://www.myspace.com/sianalicegroup
Mike Bones
Mike Bones is the favorite guitarist of every musician that you like in New York. He’s the New York music-geek world’s secret weapon, having played in the (and we don’t say this lightly) downtown supergroup Soldiers of Fortune. Everybody who saw them during their extraordinary run of shows last year was knocked flat on their asses. They sounded like Crazy Horse. Seriously, it was like seeing Crazy Horse in a tiny little room, playing at full tilt. Mike and Pat from the band Oakley Hall were the two guitarists, and they traded lines and solos back and forth in a manner that made you unashamed to say things like “Nice licks!” If you can find a bootleg of their album, Shred It Be, you are a lucky little music enthusiast. Mike has been doing stuff like Soldiers for a while now though—he’ll just pop out with a group of musicians, or back up someone like Cass McCombs live, chop everyone’s head off, and go home.
http://www.myspace.com/littlemikebones
It will be a sad loss for London's nightlife when those big old doors on Central St finally close for the last time.
Anyway, I got asked to write about some bands with my Vice hat on so here it is.
I am a little choked right now.
Goodbye The End.
The End Blog Piece
OK here’s the thing. Vice is not a music magazine. Music magazines are, on the whole, blinkered, self righteous forums for balding old guys to weep bitter words of underachievement or hollow platitudes to nothingness. They also suffer from being rigid single purpose outlets blind to the wider significance of music’s little place in the big scheme of everything the fuck else. The magazines we like are things like the Private Eye, MRR, Big Brother, The New Yorker, The Economist, The National Geographic and Colours. Magazines that are versatile, swift to adapt, astute and cover a broad range of topics well. Usually with a sense of humour. That always helps.
Now don’t get us wrong, we really like music. Lots. Some of us even still by real records instead of stealing them off of the internet and have the bands that we like tatooed on our bodies forever. You know, that kind of stuff.
We are wary about the majority music for the same reason that we are wary about the majority of everything: 99% of it sucks. Really bad. Not your average sucking either. Titanically, apocalypticly, soul rapingly massively sucking.
Seriously, if we made you sit and listen to the metric tone of recorded stuff and read the acres of press releases so bad they make you want to ram your head straight through your screen that we get sent on any given day you’d probably come to a pretty similar conclusion. I promise.
To this end we approach music coverage in the same way that we approach all aspects of the magazine. We don’t cover anything for the sake of covering it or because it is promoting a certain thing at the right time or because someone from some press agency took us to Bungalow 8 for the evening. The things that we choose to cover stand and fall on their own merit. So when we do come to feature a band or musician (we usually only do four a month max, please stop hassling us) the things that make the cut will generally be things that we know we will be able to look back on in a years time with a warm glow of fuzzy fondness. Because they didn’t turn out to be a piece of shit. Because they were actually great.
Anyway, here are five bands that we currently think are actually great. In fact some of them are so great that we decided to put their records out ourselves.
The Black Lips
The Black Lips are four kids from Atlanta, Georgia. They play garage punk brimming with so many hooks you can’t fail to fall in love with them instantly. It’s like they swallowed the entire Nuggets box set, watched The Decline Of Western Civilzation and decided to form the best band we’ve heard in yonks. They are also a gang of total babes who love to party for days on end and somehow manage to play all the better for it. Albeit often naked, bloody and drenched in their own puke. We love them so much that we put out their record and let them stay at our houses and lend them fivers and stuff whenever they are over. Ian, Jared, Cole, Joe: we love you.
http://www.myspace.com/theblacklips
King Khan & The Shrines
King Khan came to our attention via The Black Lips. Like the Lips kids Khan and his Shrines are from Georgia and ply a mean line in note perfect psyche-garage. There must be some magic garage greatness juice in that Atlanta water ‘cos the first time we heard these guys we knew we had to have ‘em for ourselves. Live they look and sound like they should be the house band for that scene in Easy Rider where they take all the acid at Mardi Gras and it all goes a little left of the dial. In other words: pretty amazing. They also all have great stage names like Gogo Queen Of The Underworld, Johnny Boy Adonis and Big Fred Roller. They will be over in the UK for the first time soon. Don’t sleep.
http://www.myspace.com/kingkhantheshrines
Heartbreak
While London’s recent italo resurgence has been lead by DJ’s playing out classic sides at nights like Cocadisco (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17834115290&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fn%3D-1%26k%3D200000010%26init%3Ds%253Agroup%26q%3Dcocadisco), Horsemeat Disco (http://www.myspace.com/horsemeatdiscolondon) and Disco Bloodbath (http://www.myspace.com/discobloodbathdisco) the whole thing has lacked an act that can convey the live element that helped define italo’s absurdity (seriously just YouTube ‘Another Life’ by Kano). Heartbreak are that missing piece in the sexy, synthy jigsaw. An Argentian and a Londoner who think they are in a stadium metal band playing stuff that sounds like magical coke dust wafting out of some forgotten Rimini hideaway club in 1985. We can’t recommend them enough.
http://www.myspace.com/heartbreak1
Sian Alice Group
Sian Alice Group are a cute gang of friends from all over Britain who naturally gravitated to London because it’s a safe haven for weirdos. Mentored by Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and including Jesus and Mary Chain founding member Douglas Hart on bass, SAG sound like the spooky laughter of a thousand big fluffy rain clouds made of angel tears. Yup, that is EXACTLY what they sound like. They’re about to tour America for the first time to promote their new album, 59:59, so we thought we would introduce you to them, one by one, because they’re our new favorite British band. Get to know ’em!
http://www.myspace.com/sianalicegroup
Mike Bones
Mike Bones is the favorite guitarist of every musician that you like in New York. He’s the New York music-geek world’s secret weapon, having played in the (and we don’t say this lightly) downtown supergroup Soldiers of Fortune. Everybody who saw them during their extraordinary run of shows last year was knocked flat on their asses. They sounded like Crazy Horse. Seriously, it was like seeing Crazy Horse in a tiny little room, playing at full tilt. Mike and Pat from the band Oakley Hall were the two guitarists, and they traded lines and solos back and forth in a manner that made you unashamed to say things like “Nice licks!” If you can find a bootleg of their album, Shred It Be, you are a lucky little music enthusiast. Mike has been doing stuff like Soldiers for a while now though—he’ll just pop out with a group of musicians, or back up someone like Cass McCombs live, chop everyone’s head off, and go home.
http://www.myspace.com/littlemikebones
Saturday, 2 August 2008
Young Turks Blog Piece: Lift To Experience
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX2Xzl6bylc
Last night I went to see Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man debut the first part in a trilogy of EP’s, which represents one of the few truly exciting and innovative ventures in an embarrassingly arid UK 'indie' scene. The show was at the lovely Luminaire and if you weren't there you missed out.
Anyway, watching Fred command the stage with an authoritative vocal performance that anchored a band playing music that ably and dexterously encapsulated mini opuses of a great scope I found myself thinking only of one other band.
While sonically, vocally and lyrically Lift To Experience are not immediately comparable to Ox.Eagle. it is in their shared sense of a grand vision and a grasp of insight into the ability of voice, guitar, bass and drum to be so much more than a mere sum of parts that unites the two acts.
Lift To Experience are sadly no more and while the bands singer/guitarist, Josh T Pearson, still plays solo the fire and brimstone obsession that drove him and Lift To Experience to be "the best band in the whole damn land" sadly seems destined never to be replicated.
The band released a single, double disc, concept album entitled 'The Texas/Jerusalem Crossroads'. I cannot even begin to touch the scope of the albums lyrical and aural ambition but you should all go out and buy it now. Right now. Then listen to in one big gluttonous helping. And then listen to it again and again and again and kick yourself for not ever having heard it before.
I feel blessed to have seen Lift To Experience play what I believe was one of their only UK shows at the Garage opening for a young(er) Cat Power many many years ago (well 2001). They were beyond almost anything I have ever seen live and to think of the show even now resuscitates shivers.
Hopefully the video below will give you some idea of their raging majesty.
Long may Lift To Experience’s memory endure and best of luck to Ox.Eagle. In the maintenance of ambition you may see the angles can fall from the sky yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmCPEYnsumY&feature=related
Last night I went to see Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man debut the first part in a trilogy of EP’s, which represents one of the few truly exciting and innovative ventures in an embarrassingly arid UK 'indie' scene. The show was at the lovely Luminaire and if you weren't there you missed out.
Anyway, watching Fred command the stage with an authoritative vocal performance that anchored a band playing music that ably and dexterously encapsulated mini opuses of a great scope I found myself thinking only of one other band.
While sonically, vocally and lyrically Lift To Experience are not immediately comparable to Ox.Eagle. it is in their shared sense of a grand vision and a grasp of insight into the ability of voice, guitar, bass and drum to be so much more than a mere sum of parts that unites the two acts.
Lift To Experience are sadly no more and while the bands singer/guitarist, Josh T Pearson, still plays solo the fire and brimstone obsession that drove him and Lift To Experience to be "the best band in the whole damn land" sadly seems destined never to be replicated.
The band released a single, double disc, concept album entitled 'The Texas/Jerusalem Crossroads'. I cannot even begin to touch the scope of the albums lyrical and aural ambition but you should all go out and buy it now. Right now. Then listen to in one big gluttonous helping. And then listen to it again and again and again and kick yourself for not ever having heard it before.
I feel blessed to have seen Lift To Experience play what I believe was one of their only UK shows at the Garage opening for a young(er) Cat Power many many years ago (well 2001). They were beyond almost anything I have ever seen live and to think of the show even now resuscitates shivers.
Hopefully the video below will give you some idea of their raging majesty.
Long may Lift To Experience’s memory endure and best of luck to Ox.Eagle. In the maintenance of ambition you may see the angles can fall from the sky yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmCPEYnsumY&feature=related
Psychopedia Interview: Jay Reatard
Jay Reatard
No words. More actions.
A lot of people have a lot of things to say about Jay Lindsey. In fact so many people have so many things to say that the inches spent conjecturing on a young guy who, by choice, calls himself Jay Reatard almost outway the mile high stack that comprises his tireless discography. Say what you will about the kid: he doesn’t stand still for a second and he prefers to do and get done than stand around talking about it.
Reatard began his recording career in Memphis at 15 on Eric Freidl (formerly of the Oblivans)’s Goner records. Already restless and wanting to get going Jay cut a record calling his band simply ‘The Reatards’. Except that it wasn’t really a band at all. It was just Jay playing a guitar with as much distortion as possible while he hit an empty bucket to create a beat.
While most of his contemporaries were busy getting on with high school and being ‘teenagers’ Jay had already completed his first European tour with the Reatards and had begun to focus on a synth punk outfit called The Lost Sounds, a band he would later reckon to be “the thing I was most proud of being in”.
Throw in stints with the Angry Angles, Final Solutions, The Bad Times, the brilliantly named black metal outfit Winter Coffin and production credits for everyone from Reigning Sound to Brutal Knights and it’s easy to worry that finally hitting a solo career and a solid label deal might slow Jay down.
Nope. His move to Matador has already seen a slew of 7”s with an album promised in the not too distant future and the summer has seen a furious live schedule. Hot on the heels of the Toronto incident (http://www.spike.com/blog/jay-reatard-punches/63724) that called Reatard’s stage demeanor into question we caught up with the band at ATP in sunny Camber Sands.
Psychopedia: Hi Jay, how are you finding the UK compared to the reactions you have been getting in the US?
Jay Reatard (vocals, guitar): You know, every night is different.
Billy Hayes (drums): We played a pretty furious show at a pub in London the other day. I think someone threw the air conditioner out of the window and it almost landed on someone.
Stephen Hope (bass): We’ve got a house show lined up when we get back to London as well. They are always fun.
Would you not worry in a house show environment that the crowd may get too confined and ruin your gear as has happened recently?
Jay Reatard: That was totally different. That was people being jerks. If people want to come to a show and have a good time, that’s cool. Just don’t come and be a jerk.
How have you found ATP? It is a pretty strange setting: seeing bands in a rundown British holiday camp.
Billy: Yeah it has been weird. But it is sunny and people seem to like staying up late and having a good time and stuff. We pretty much played so that we could just hang out for three days.
Whose chalet has had the best party?
Billy: There seemed to be a lot of people at the Deerhunter kids chalet last night. I dunno.
In comparison to some of your earlier work the more recent singles have quite a pop feel to them. My buddy Ben reckons you sound like Screeching Weasel.
Jay Reatard: Fuck that man. That is just demeaning. We sound like Husker Du with Geddy Lee on vocals.
Would it sound the same if you ditched the flying V’s?
Jay Reatard: I don’t know. Probably.
At this point the interview began to trail off. Jay seemed agitated and pretty unhappy being in a straight q&a situation despite in general conversation being polite, eager to ensure that we could see the show and happily discussing topics that weren’t his own band or his bands music with ease.
Later that day we witnessed Jay and his band whip an apathetic, sunburned, early afternoon audience from near-snoozing to a whirling, thriving throng thirsty and baying for more when the twin flying V’s were finally put down.
Who really needs words when your raw, garage punk is one of the most crucial noises that you can currently pay to hear pour out of vinyl or sweating and bleeding on a stage in front of you?
No words. More actions.
A lot of people have a lot of things to say about Jay Lindsey. In fact so many people have so many things to say that the inches spent conjecturing on a young guy who, by choice, calls himself Jay Reatard almost outway the mile high stack that comprises his tireless discography. Say what you will about the kid: he doesn’t stand still for a second and he prefers to do and get done than stand around talking about it.
Reatard began his recording career in Memphis at 15 on Eric Freidl (formerly of the Oblivans)’s Goner records. Already restless and wanting to get going Jay cut a record calling his band simply ‘The Reatards’. Except that it wasn’t really a band at all. It was just Jay playing a guitar with as much distortion as possible while he hit an empty bucket to create a beat.
While most of his contemporaries were busy getting on with high school and being ‘teenagers’ Jay had already completed his first European tour with the Reatards and had begun to focus on a synth punk outfit called The Lost Sounds, a band he would later reckon to be “the thing I was most proud of being in”.
Throw in stints with the Angry Angles, Final Solutions, The Bad Times, the brilliantly named black metal outfit Winter Coffin and production credits for everyone from Reigning Sound to Brutal Knights and it’s easy to worry that finally hitting a solo career and a solid label deal might slow Jay down.
Nope. His move to Matador has already seen a slew of 7”s with an album promised in the not too distant future and the summer has seen a furious live schedule. Hot on the heels of the Toronto incident (http://www.spike.com/blog/jay-reatard-punches/63724) that called Reatard’s stage demeanor into question we caught up with the band at ATP in sunny Camber Sands.
Psychopedia: Hi Jay, how are you finding the UK compared to the reactions you have been getting in the US?
Jay Reatard (vocals, guitar): You know, every night is different.
Billy Hayes (drums): We played a pretty furious show at a pub in London the other day. I think someone threw the air conditioner out of the window and it almost landed on someone.
Stephen Hope (bass): We’ve got a house show lined up when we get back to London as well. They are always fun.
Would you not worry in a house show environment that the crowd may get too confined and ruin your gear as has happened recently?
Jay Reatard: That was totally different. That was people being jerks. If people want to come to a show and have a good time, that’s cool. Just don’t come and be a jerk.
How have you found ATP? It is a pretty strange setting: seeing bands in a rundown British holiday camp.
Billy: Yeah it has been weird. But it is sunny and people seem to like staying up late and having a good time and stuff. We pretty much played so that we could just hang out for three days.
Whose chalet has had the best party?
Billy: There seemed to be a lot of people at the Deerhunter kids chalet last night. I dunno.
In comparison to some of your earlier work the more recent singles have quite a pop feel to them. My buddy Ben reckons you sound like Screeching Weasel.
Jay Reatard: Fuck that man. That is just demeaning. We sound like Husker Du with Geddy Lee on vocals.
Would it sound the same if you ditched the flying V’s?
Jay Reatard: I don’t know. Probably.
At this point the interview began to trail off. Jay seemed agitated and pretty unhappy being in a straight q&a situation despite in general conversation being polite, eager to ensure that we could see the show and happily discussing topics that weren’t his own band or his bands music with ease.
Later that day we witnessed Jay and his band whip an apathetic, sunburned, early afternoon audience from near-snoozing to a whirling, thriving throng thirsty and baying for more when the twin flying V’s were finally put down.
Who really needs words when your raw, garage punk is one of the most crucial noises that you can currently pay to hear pour out of vinyl or sweating and bleeding on a stage in front of you?
i-D July Reviews
Ponytail
Ice Cream Spiritual
We Are Free
From the angular ashes of Monitor Records, We Are Free is swiftly establishing itself as the vanguard label for Baltimore’s Wham City invigorated new wave. Eight sun drenched, smile inducing blasts of pop spazz vie for attention like ADD 7 year olds on this the native Baltimoreans second full length. You won’t find a more fitting album title all year.
The Telescopes
Infinite Suns
Textile
After twenty years and at least as many lineup changes The Telescopes have settled as founder Stephen Lawrie accompanied by former Vibracathedral Orchestra member Bridget Hayden. This collaboration has borne possibly the outfit’s most visceral and intense album to date. All run-out groove static and screeching drilled pick ups ‘Infinte Suns’ feels closer to being lost inside an endless black hole than being burnt by solar rays. Their last record sold out in under an hour so best move fast on this one.
Ice Cream Spiritual
We Are Free
From the angular ashes of Monitor Records, We Are Free is swiftly establishing itself as the vanguard label for Baltimore’s Wham City invigorated new wave. Eight sun drenched, smile inducing blasts of pop spazz vie for attention like ADD 7 year olds on this the native Baltimoreans second full length. You won’t find a more fitting album title all year.
The Telescopes
Infinite Suns
Textile
After twenty years and at least as many lineup changes The Telescopes have settled as founder Stephen Lawrie accompanied by former Vibracathedral Orchestra member Bridget Hayden. This collaboration has borne possibly the outfit’s most visceral and intense album to date. All run-out groove static and screeching drilled pick ups ‘Infinte Suns’ feels closer to being lost inside an endless black hole than being burnt by solar rays. Their last record sold out in under an hour so best move fast on this one.
NME: Shitty Limits Radar Feature
Below the (ahem) radar and operating far beneath major label deals, Warped Tours and branded New Era caps the thriving UK DIY scene continues to churn out bands so good you’re almost glad that no one has heard them so you can keep them all to yourself.
Coming straight out of erm… Guildford The Shitty Limits comprise ex members of scene stalwarts Crash The Pose and Farewell to Arms. While their former incarnations plied furious hardcore and thrash The Limits manage to channel the chaos into 2 minute bursts of garage flecked punk anchored by vocals so snotty it’s like you are hearing the Dead Kids for the first time all over again.
Having opened for the likes of Jay Reatard and Fucked Up the band’s live show is already approaching legend with sweaty kids regularly limping out venues muttering about having witnessed the best live show of their lives.
Ably combining the confrontational attitude of the Germs, the youthful exuberance of the Angry Samoans and the trebly twang of the Standells into lean blasts that are best heard on the three 7”s the band have released on their own Limits Records and DIY labels Keep Screaming and Dire. While these records are long sold out being proper punks the band wouldn’t want you to go without and their entire discography is available for free download on their MySpace page. They also had no desire to either talk to the NME or appear in these pages but we figure they were too good to keep to ourselves.
With a fourth 7” slated for the summer and shows with like minds Thee Vicars and The Sceptres as well as support slots with sonic granddads the Adolescents lined up you would be foolish to sleep on these Limits.
Coming straight out of erm… Guildford The Shitty Limits comprise ex members of scene stalwarts Crash The Pose and Farewell to Arms. While their former incarnations plied furious hardcore and thrash The Limits manage to channel the chaos into 2 minute bursts of garage flecked punk anchored by vocals so snotty it’s like you are hearing the Dead Kids for the first time all over again.
Having opened for the likes of Jay Reatard and Fucked Up the band’s live show is already approaching legend with sweaty kids regularly limping out venues muttering about having witnessed the best live show of their lives.
Ably combining the confrontational attitude of the Germs, the youthful exuberance of the Angry Samoans and the trebly twang of the Standells into lean blasts that are best heard on the three 7”s the band have released on their own Limits Records and DIY labels Keep Screaming and Dire. While these records are long sold out being proper punks the band wouldn’t want you to go without and their entire discography is available for free download on their MySpace page. They also had no desire to either talk to the NME or appear in these pages but we figure they were too good to keep to ourselves.
With a fourth 7” slated for the summer and shows with like minds Thee Vicars and The Sceptres as well as support slots with sonic granddads the Adolescents lined up you would be foolish to sleep on these Limits.
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