ARTICLES
FILM REVIEW: Piranha 3D
It is pointless to criticize a movie like Piranha 3D. Kitschy, hyper-violent creature features like this are meant to be comedies more than horror films. The filmmaking team clearly had set goals in mind: Have plenty of bloody violence, show a lot of breasts, pack in some funny cameo appearances from some old stars, and make as ridiculous a film as possible. They succeed on every point of the list. If you do not want to see the things on the list, or if you want anything else besides what is on the list, do not see this film.
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SHOW REVIEW: Screaming Females, The Two Funerals, Body Cop, Little Master
Screaming Females, The Two Funerals, Body Cop and Little Master
August 16 at Gallery 5
Monday evening at Gallery 5 felt like a celebration. All the bands on the bill were wonderful. It’s a great feeling to have a new favorite song embedded in your head and a new sense of rediscovered inspiration in your step. After the show was done, I couldn’t stop talking about all of the bands that played. One thought that came to mind was the role of women in rock bands and the progression made over the years. Each band that played last night featured a female musician that had an integral role in the band beyond vocal duties. Whether it was Leah Clancy playing bass for Little Master or the front-women of DC’s Body Cop, The Two Funerals and Screaming Females, there is a changing dynamic at play here.
DAILY RECORD: Prisoners
Prisoners - Back In The USSA (Smog Veil)
My first listen to the debut album from Ohio’s Prisoners left me without an opinion. A second listen helped to highlight the strong influences of bands like the Replacements and the White Stripes in the band’s songwriting. With twangy, grungy guitars and gruff, crackling adolescent vocals, Prisoners do an excellent job of emulating the bluesy style of both of those bands. The problem I have with this album is that it never goes beyond mere emulation.
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HIP-HOP REVIEW: Outasight
OUTASIGHT – Never Say Never mixtape (LRG)
ZERO STARS OUT OF FIVE
Over the course of this bloated, wildly unnecessary piece of hip-hop-clothing-line-sponsored promotional ephemera, Outasight manages, against all odds, to shit out one magical golden egg of inadvertent retard-savant wisdom: there are some people in the world who are simply not worth wasting your breath on. They are such privileged, deluded, highly moneyed, ego-drenched cocksuckers that they will never, ever listen to what you have to say, even if it is true, no matter how you put it. The only solution to dealing with these people is to ignore them--allow them to continue to “do them” as you continue to “do you.” This singular tenet is clearly what has defined Outasight’s existence; there’s no other plausible explanation that could possibly be given for this dude managing to cut open the pants pocket of somebody in the record industry (debut album coming from Warner/Asylum in 2011!) and steal a bunch of their money.
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DAILY RECORDS: Just Plain Ant, Netherfriends
Just Plain Ant - Rumble, Young Man, Rumble (justplainant.bandcamp.com)
Just Plain Sounds’ prolific beat making impresario, Just Plain Ant, returns with a vengeance on his latest guest laden full length release. Ant’s signature style of jazz infused hip hop is strongly on display and more eclectic than ever as each track is taken in a new direction by a cast of some of the area’s best MCs. The album’s bass-heavy jazz sampling hearkens back to the early 90’s positivists hip hop movement, fronted by acts like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, while also sounding entirely contemporary and progressive in its embrace of grander melodic progressions and themes in the songs themselves. The early album track, “No Title For It (feat. Ohbliv and Gordy Michael),” is an anthem to musical nonconformity that rises to inspiring heights. Funky organ samples give way to a sea of rising and swooning strings that swell under a distorted chorus, sounding like a hip-hop-militant protesting the record industry, standing with a megaphone atop a burnt out car. The sheer multitude of local talent on this release is staggering, perhaps even more impressive considering the fact the each MC does one of the most difficult tasks imaginable in hip hop--sounding like they belong on a record with Chuck D. The Public Enemy legend makes his mind boggling guest spot on the album’s eighth track, “Way Back When (feat Chuck. D)”, a disco-infused Michael Jackson-sampling boogie that finds the acclaimed MC taking us back in the day to the music of the early 80’s, when life was about house parties, roller skating, and above all getting down. With guest spots from the likes of Joey Ripps, Black Liquid, Draztiq, and Sleaze, among many others, the album is a nonstop best of Richmond’s hip hop underground.
Netherfriends - Barry And Sherry (netherfriends.bandcamp.com)
The music of Chicago’s Shawn Rosenblatt, the one man touring machine known as Netherfriends, is a sonic dedication and celebration of all things indie pop. Berry and Sherry, the artist’s most recent release, is a deftly orchestrated album of reverb drenched pop songs, beginning with the opening track, “Bret Easton Ellis Novel." The song’s ambulation from its strident click-clack rhythms into a wall of explosive distortion and echo sets the tone for the majority of the album. “More Than Friends Who Like Good Music,” the album's brightest and happiest moment, starts as a Burt Bacharach light-jazz swing, flourishing into a sentimentalist’s rant about backyard delights and frugal wisdom. Rosenblatt’s lyrical stylings are best described in the line “I’m gonna start singing like the way I talk," from the album’s second cut “I’m Gonna Start." It’s a style that serves him well, especially on the grand and haunting piano centered ballad, “Lead You Through the Misty Fog of Milwaukee Ave.” Berry and Sherry is an album about the life of someone unsure if they are going to reach the finish line they’ve set in front of themselves. The entire album is an outstanding summation of youthful desires, fears and uncertainty, in a world that puts obstacles in the way of your dreams.
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"We Don't Go For Big, We Go For Ridiculous": Best Friends Day 2010
In less than 48 hours, the Ninth Annual Best Friends Day Weekend will begin, kicking off with a Thursday night show at the Bike Lot. Over the course of a long three-day weekend, the festival will encompass at least 6 more events, featuring live performances by Andrew W.K., Propagandhi, and reunited hardcore legends Negative Approach, among many others. It's come quite a long way from its origin as a one-day get-together at which all of the attendees were actually best friends. But co-founder Tony Foresta believes that the spirit of that original event still lives within the current incarnation of Best Friends Day.
Old Skool Meets Old Skool, Graffiti In Motion
The decade old animated .gif continues to evolve as the fashion driven designer Insa and street artist Inkie bring a fresh take on an old favorite. Can you see this in an ad somewhere soon?
Godflesh "Streetcleaner" Receives Deluxe Double-Disc Reissue
Twenty-one years after its original release, Godflesh's first full-length album, Streetcleaner, has been reissued in a deluxe two-disc edition that features both a remastered version of the original album and plenty of extras for fans to sink their teeth into. Rehearsal demos, live tracks, and early mixes fill the second disc and showcase the creative process that led Godflesh to the groundbreaking sound they created on Streetcleaner, a sound that has been a direct influence on everything from the metal/industrial hybrid bands of the early 90s (Pigface, Ministry) to the modern wave of ambient post-metal groups (Isis, Mastodon).
When appraising the early years of Earache Records, Godflesh's Streetcleaner seems a much more adult album than the more standard examples of death metal and grindcore released by that label in the late 80s. And indeed, Godflesh founder Justin Broadrick had been playing music professionally for several years before even starting Godflesh. However, this knowledge is deceiving in light of the fact that Broadrick's recording career began in his early teens. When he played guitar on Napalm Death's Scum, he was 16 years old. After leaving that band, he spent a few years playing drums in Head Of David, whose blending of industrial and metal influences pointed Broadrick in the direction he would eventually take with Godflesh. The sound he and Godflesh co-founder G.C. Green created for Streetcleaner was a mature and fully realized version of Broadrick's previous musical explorations, including those undertaken by his previous project with Green, Fall Of Because. And yet, when Justin Broadrick recorded Streetcleaner, he was still only 20 years old.
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Amoeba Men "Worried About Your Wiring?" LP Now Available For Free Download!
Worried About Your Wiring, the second Amoeba Men LP, has been made available for free download by their label, CNP Records. It's an accurate representation of The Amoeba Men's live sound, a spastic off-kilter noise that is equal parts art-damaged punk, chaotic math-rock, and something else entirely, not metal but definitely dark and heavy.
Jason Hodges' vocals sound like the perpetually-surprised holler of a redneck with amnesia, occasionally reflecting the same sort of ironic fascination with lowbrow trash culture that came through in the music of the Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid, who seem like obvious influences on The Amoeba Men, as do The Cows and early Public Image Ltd. It all adds up to something that is strange and unpredictable but very enjoyable, not in spite of but because of its weirdness.
The sound of the Amoeba Men is something that must be experienced to be believed, and what better opportunity to get acquainted with their craziness than this? Worried About Your Wiring? can be downloaded here, but you also have the option of purchasing it on CD from CNP Records--for only $6!--here. Once you hear it, that's an option you'll undoubtedly want to take.
DAILY RECORDS: Eleven Tigers, Ion Dissonance, Kate Nash, etc.
Eleven Tigers - Clouds Are Mountains (Soul Motive)
This album combines the best ideas from the past two decades of electronic music--hyperactive drum n' bass beats, Burial's underwater dubstep, plus dark ambience and the reverberations of post-apocalyptic cityscapes. Adding information-overload samples and surprisingly accessible melodies, Eleven Tigers creates a new high-water mark for electronic music.
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