120 Megabytes – Episode 2

brought to you in association with @markbrown and our friends over at Network Awesome

It is a strange world, but not that different from the one we live in , think about it. Mutant kids of the digital age dig ceremoniously in the fertile soil where the corpses of their gaunt ancestors were buried still cradling their steel gueetars and harmonicas. Upon touching these bones, a mass download of crackling messages from another world occurs, and haunted by dreams of vast expanses under the sun, coruscating roads and golden fields, wind-kissed skulls of sacrificial heifers resting in the rich soil, they are inspired to create. Something is won in translation because we still need country epics to soundtrack our struts down avenues of cold concrete, under the gaze of invisible vultures perched from the roofs of the high rises, these are our very own mesas and our dust bowl, this is the sound of our loneliness, our hunger and our longing. Timeless shit, bring it on.

Another glorious forthcoming Woodsist release, this time by Meth Teeth. The album is called ‘Everything went Wrong’, which is the ultimate truth we all take to our graves with the expression of a flustered schoolchild to whom the logic of a simple equation has just been revealed*. It all sounds as full-bodied, rich and alive as ‘I Was Wrong’, weird punk horse being broken in an underground corral. You get kicked in the face. You lick blood from your lips. It’s all good.

Meth Teeth-I Was Wrong

Sic Alps just released on triple vinyl the rather mammoth ‘A Long Way Around to a Shortcut’ on Drag City, which is we believe the right place. This is a compilation of the diverse mutilated limbs and viscera wrapped in yellowed newspaper which our favourite San Francisco zombie cowboys have been lovingly dropping on their lazy pilgrimage across pressing plants, DIY venues and lounge sofas all over the USA. ‘Making Plans’ is an excellent example of what’s in store for those who visit this psychedelic ghost town: doomed stomping and mangled melodies laying waste to sound levels like the charge of the heavy metal brigade, or a love song so creepy it could have been penned by fucking Genesis P-Orridge.

Sic Alps- Making Plans

Ducktails are travelling somewhere different, but Wishes, included in their latest ‘Landscape’ album in Olde English Speeling Bee comes from the same place. It sounds like one of those electronic experiments that you can find hidden at the back of a Byrds’ re-issue, you know, an unfinished ode of reverb and painful reverie crafted with memories of misdeeds and muisunderstandings, over which a sweet guitar melody glides hopeful like that little red bird in the Lisa Marr Experiment song. So beautiful in its unfinishedness.

Ducktails- Wishes

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* David Simon came up with that one.

Subway’s album ii is the definitive soundtrack for that epic summer which knocks at our door, luminescent sounds squeezed from the chlorophyll pumped leaves of centenary trees which feed on the rays of a sun which smiles benevolent from its fiery & pock marked face, that vibe of absolute and astounding wonder which is so difficult to find anywhere graces the beginning of each single song in ii like white doves of pure synthetic glory taking flight over the pumping pistons of Kraftwerk’s perpetual motion machine, or perhaps Dr. Manhattan’s Martian Acid House Palace, this is a gift from an utopia of silver marvels and ravishing tonal sirens, enjoy every second of it because it’s a thing of absolute Amaze. With those majestic crescendos it should go down a treat dans le club too.

Subway-Xam

In their S/T album, Ducktails rock the positive drone surf geometrical wave under Jesus’ approving gaze, terse sheets of tye died sounds left to dry in the smooth sands of a beach obvious metaphor for the snake biting its own tails of spiritual well-being, the eternal cycle of life and all that shit,  after a hunt across coralline formations of ultravivid colour where we find our true selves and acknowledge them wise and content, slow-mo grinding down the perfect spirals of an altitude map of Emerson Lake and Palmer’s glossy manes, this is enlightened dead head dub for the gentle kids to strum to, check out how we roll dum-durum-dum-dum.

Ducktails- Gem