Friday, January 22, 2010  12:01 am 

Totally Wierd

Automatic II hits with Ian Curtis pronouncements from out of the fresh dusty rubble: the lazy work of laser equipped, nihilistic shock troop.  Marching marching ever on through the ruinous concrete follies of Superpowers.  Empty shells, empty windows, illuminated by the lattice of those oscillating death rays.  Automatic.

Automatic II hits with simple synthetic melodies running up and down the creaking wooden stairs of a 19th century tenement.  Anti-aircraft fire cracking in the background.  Impotently fending off the stratospheric enemy.  The invisible death from above, hidden behind veils of clouds, hanging, waiting.  So much sound and fury in defence of the cold naked bodies below.

Absolute Body control – Automatic II

Automatic II was the last track on side 2 of Absolute Body Control’s 1983 cassette Figures.  Absolute Body Control were a Belgian Cold-Wave band who kick things off on Angular Records’ new compilation Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics Vol.1.  That compilation was curated by Joe Daniel (from Angular) and Pieter Schoolwerth.  Pieter runs a club in NYC called Wierd Club.  From the club came Wierd Records and from Wierd Records came this…

Fading in over the synthetic hum of a Giallo title sequence the drums rush through grabbing you gently by the hair and, flashing a seductive blank stare, beckon on.  The souls of the Cold-Wave, briefly forced into the service of indie-pop rebelled, escaped their twee bodies and floated off to the celestial dive bar.  Hair released you sit down.  The band plays, blue light fills the air like you’re Julie Cruise.  The beat lets go, its work done.

Delicate anthems for idealistic futurist corporations play in your head.  The beat’s making a fool of itself at the bar, hyperactive and relentless.  You focus on the singers, captivated, their words floating over each other with glistening efficiency, conspiratorial and filled with the restless souls of unloved Cold-Wave bands.

Xeno & Oaklander – Shadow World

Xeno & Oaklander are awesome.  They first popped up on 20JFG late in 2008 and have remained awesome since then (and well before I’d imagine).  Their LP Sentinelle came out on Wierd Records at the end of last year and we would advise purchasing it at the soonest opportunity (see below).

Born out of an oscillating bass note this child skips along to the mechanised infantry’s beat.  Double time.  This is the marching music for the impeccably styled skinwalkers, crawling out of the night and looking immaculate.  The child dances along in their shadows, head nodding with the infectious, pure riff that riffles through the throng and forms its soul.  Her monsters are brief and beyond touch but they fill her with aeon-toughened joy.

Like Wim Wenders remake of Bladrunner, this is cyber-punk in hermetically sealed rooms used to study the ‘kids’ from Akira.  Mutant Oi-Punk ripped from some gob splattered futurist’s utopian dreams.  Led Er Est also reside in the wonderful  world of Wierd Records.  This is from their album Dust on Common which amazingly came out three days after Xeno & Oaklanders’ Sentinelle.  Both are ‘modern’ classics, both can be brought from Weird Records here.

Led Er Est – Laredo

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Three of your humble scribes will be playing records in London this Saturday in a rare concentration of the 20JFG cabal.

labels >> Absolute Body Control, Led Er Est, Xeno & Oaklander

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Thursday, January 21, 2010  12:05 am 

Peace Reenactments

What is the future without the past? Give me a simple answer to the question, “What is time?” Lovely all these nonsense shapes that words can form, isn’t it? Let’s slow it down a bit then. Focus. A bunch of “stuff” happened in the past. Some of that stuff is music. After letting that music marinate for a decade or so, we discovered that some of it is eternal. There was no way to tell at the time. The past had to be informed by our present aka it’s future.  Oh, but what of the excitement of The New? The daring that dares and does what no one has done before and is great because we haven’t had a chance to meditate on it yet. That is so wonderful too. Is there a way that both the time tested old and the no-one-can-put-a-finger-on-it new could be one ulta megazord? Thats where VNC steps in from beyond the landscape, crushing your cities with a giant metal toe.

Precise ribbons of drum flutter and guitar notes that roll around like Thinking Fellers marbles; sitting in a dark haze of lofi nope-age that serves as a bed for one of the greatest atonal punk chants you’ll ever hear. Time has folded over on itself as every decade presents itself at once.  Enter the Futursaur, your new leader:

VNC – Harm Guitar

There are a few idioms that have sunk in the subconscious substratum of the lingua franca which is Punk Rock. No matter whether you are some wannabe fucked up kid trying to smuggle drinks into an all-ages show, or an old dude who never got rid of the leather jacket, the presence of these idioms in a song will bring to your mind analogous images of abstract fury and teen-age fever. They include the handclap of doom and the agony of distortion, the feral grind and the primeval wall of barbed wire strangulation. They are the secret code of which this culture is made, buboes of the nihilistic plague which instils fear in the hearts of God-fearing citizens. But one thing is clear. You can learn these idioms back to front, but you can’t fake the accent with which they need to be pronunciated.

Nothing People can talk the talk. Enemy with an Invitation, included in a 7” of the same title released in a deluxe package by Permanent Records bristles with the black and white fury of its ancestors- the Cleveland proto-punk diaspora and Chrome’s cybernetic trashing in the Tabernacle of bad vibes. It’s all in there, like the blurry snapshot of a moment of cathartic violence. We keep on believing.

Nothing People- Enemy with an Invitation

labels >> Brian Miller, Nothing People, VNC, xxjfg

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010  12:05 am 

Hurricane Batman

When you hear the banshee coming from down the mountain, she is still only a whisper. Surprise surprise (and much to your delight) when you find out that the banshee is always so gentle. How about an added bonus: The banshee loves MC Hammer! Yeah, it doesn’t get much sicher.
So acts like Universal Studios Florida are proving there is love for late-90s electronica already again, just as long as it is post-lofi. Well, here comes a band designed to clean up (hence the name I guess) on that phenom. While the light haze-tech of this music is stellar, its the confident and soft vocals that keep you engaged on Coyote Clean Up’s latest 20 song album on Afternoons Modeling.

Coyote Clean Up – Hammering Time

and if you love that, the entire album is free through the label.

Gentle is a good way to get so many things done. Perhaps you need to sooth a baby away from crying, or clean a nasty scrape. Gentle is good for those things. Miguel Mendez uses gentle a lot of the time. Here he uses it to insult someone. I think that is what they call “soften the blow.” Well, it works for me.  Sometimes the truth is just a pain in the axx, so what are you gonna do? Dress up your goblin words in a fine silks and lace and hope that someone makes out with them at the ball? Seems preposterous, but if anyone can pull it off, it definitely is Mr Madness, erm Mendez. Because he is a master costume maker.

Miguel Mendez – Fat and Ugly

Lost in a mystery, in a misty rain, it has been nearly a year since my desire to share Bermuda Triangles manifested. Somehow the cleansing spirit of 2010 has brought this lost feeling back to the surface. Nice to know that time has not aged this magic at all. Fans of Lucky Dragons or High Places will feel the rhythms here, but this is distinctly funk. So hyped, and well mental. Who knows though, maybe there is so much paracusia surrounding this mp3 that it will enter a twilight zone sub-drive on your computer and you’ll only hear it a year from now when the mp3 itself decides the time is right. AI is not the future, it is the past!

Bermuda Triangles – Riddles In The Sand

Oh, it just seems wrong to say goodbye without sharing this Coyote Clean Up music video:
http://www.vimeo.com/8762049

labels >> Bermuda Triangles, Brian Miller, Coyote Clean Up, Miguel Mendez, xxjfg

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010  12:05 am 

Wiley Peyote

There are magicians in this world, who in their lifetime dip many different toes into the pools of creation, creating ripples that vary in wavelength, yet are similar in signature.

As parched travelers crawling through the desert of popular culture, where ravenous vultures attempt to lead us astray so they may feed off our dry demise, we ecstatically encounter these pools, learning the path to the next through the code contained in our modulating reflections. The code is already a part of us but without performing this rite of passage we shall never be able to hear its pulse, without making this journey we shall be forever lost, eternally at the mercy of devious coyotes, unable to find our kindred civilisation. Going down Halfords and buying a SatNav just isn’t going to cut it.

Secret Circuit – White Wish

May we introduce to you a most cosmic of brethren. Not to be confused with the well known visual artist of the same name, although they may be related in some way, you might already know a certain Mr Eddie Ruscha from other guises, such as the shoegazes of Medicine and Maids of Gravity, the reggea reggea inspired Future Pigeon and Rub n Tug collaboration The Laughing Light Of Plenty. Such hereditarty talents here bring us the psychotropical mastery of Secret Circuit.

Secret Circuit – Roll

Bringing with it the most dubbed out ukelele ever heard, roll packs the suitcase for our psychedelic travel writing excursion. Slipping some mescalin into Alex Garland’s morning coffee on the way, our arrival on the island is greeted by a laser calypso refrain, the shimmering of the sea joining in with the ritual of summoning musicians from another dimension, rocks and shells swirling in mid-air, as they materialise before us.

Listening sweetly, we pen our novel inspired by this place, an ironic comment on the cancer of tourism and human selfishness, which we will turn into a multi-million dollar movie, which will in turn inspire thousands to visit this place, undermining our original point entirely. All Saints this ain’t.

Not content with the many projects above, Eddie also brings us the awesomeness of Dada Munchamonkey.

Dada Munchamonkey – See Thru Love

Coming like a Casiotone for the Joyously Stoned, See Thru Love is a low fidelity space jam of the highest order. A cerebral R&B ballad in reverse where typically insincere, mournful vocals about lost love are replaced with an exploratory synth line, philosophising about our most powerful of emotions, whilst forgotten, dusty circuits come to terms with their new found voltaic being. We are very pleased they are no longer a secret.

Astonishingly, this track is a decade old and taken from a self titled album released on the Exist Dance label, which we wholeheartedly recommend tracking down. Additionally, Lovefingers offer us a Secret Circuit mixtape.

labels >> dada munchamonkey, secret circuit, xxjfg

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Monday, January 18, 2010  12:05 am 

Standing in the shoulders of Demons

oOoOO are one of the not-so-best-kept secret soundtracks of much treading across mountains of madness in the white fields of the 20jazzfunkgreats confabulation. They were extensively featured in Salem’s Wemakeitgood mixtape, and in our own little special send-off to 2009. Every other blog is writing about them. They are so hot right now. Not hard to figure out why.

Because as you step into the secret parish where dark pacts are forged somewhere in the no man’s land between El Adobe and Santa Teresa, you will walk past a beautiful mural of the Virgin Mary illuminated in a position of ecstasy, perfect face framed in a shroud of ruby fabric. Examine her features more closely when the beacon of evil omen standing at the altar which is your destination sends its stroboscopic pulse of codeine light down the tunnel. Because there is something subtly wrong with this portrait.

As the drone of blood pumping across your arteries raises in pitch, you realise aghast that she is blinking an eye at you in wicked anticipation, mother of pearl teeth shine liquid in an enigmatic smile which means murder as much as it means salvation.

Like the Knife, Salem or Glass Candy, oOoOO stand at the strange crossroads between sanctity and sex. We can’t wait to see where they go next.

oOoOO- Sedsumting

oOoOO are making us a mixtape one of these days. Get ready.

And we are loving Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 by the way.

Picture our Lotek hero, archetypical figure of existential daring best exemplified by the Warrior on the edge of time in the glorious front-cover of Hawkwind’s selfsame album. Picture him preparing for his long trip from Vigrid to Paradise Island, down the scorched highways of Route 666. In his path stand vigilant and at the ready Archons that brandish trumpets of angelic metal encrusted with diamonds, colossal cherubs armed with battle hammers, and a golem which reconfigures itself into a myriad beasts like a zealous version of Demon’s Seed Proteus.

Cue the classic scene where our Lotek hero arranges his psychedelic weaponry like John Matrix before dropping down with numb fury into an emerald island infested with moustached mercenaries.

No AK-47 in his bag, and if it were, it would be loaded not with cruel looking bullet of 7.62mm, but with vicious spells of Umbran magic.

No fragmentation grenades hanging from his chest, and if they did, they would explode not with a shocking burst of incandescent shrapnel, but into magenta fields of bewitching glamour.

But we can’t tell you about the secret of his kosmische weapons, because if we did we would have to kill you. The only thing we can say is that a tie-dyed headband is tightly wrapped around his forehead, and that Kid Wizard are blasting from his walkman.

Kid Wizard- Infinite Planes Radiating Outward from the Brilliant Inner Orb

You can listen to some more Kid Wizard stuff at the Hidden Fortress Tapes Blog.

And we are loving Bayonetta, by the way.

labels >> Kid Wizard, oOoOO

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