Dimalia: A Self Titled Tragedy

This is really quite ridiculous. Lyrics that are pretentious are fine – and on occasion, even welcome if they’re able to be related in a unique manner. But I’m pretty sure these guys – the folks in Dimalia - take themselves a bit too seriously. That’s a pretty common problem in most heavy musics – or music in general. Just watch any video interview of an up and coming band while wondering who the cohort is acting for. And if it’s not for somebody, it’s more likely than not in order to craft some public image. How ‘bout the music?

The tempo changes all over this self titled effort, issued by Life is Abuse almost six years ago, at least exhibit the fact that Dimalia wants to exert some effort towards being perceived as a competent band. However, some of the slowed down sections (“Exit to Light” specifically) are plainly a bore. The problem here is something common for folks working in genres most perceive to be trite, but actually require a modicum of talent.

At least the rhythm section gets a work out through the entire album.  If one is not paying attention, the album flows effortlessly from track to track, utilizing the tempo changes as bridges it seems.  The two tempos though, do get a bit wearisome over the course of eight tracks.  Each breakdown easily can be mistaken for the previous track.  So the production and the planning of the album are either superb or trite and redundant.  “Goodnight Sweet Ghost” is probably the most unique track outta the bunch, but not for any good reasons.  There are some awful female vox on this one accompanied by some slow rock muzak. 

There are a few instances of interesting guitar figures (“Closer,” “Night Covers Massacre”), but nothing sustainable. When an interesting statement is posited by the band and repeated, they move on, never to return again to the promise of the previous section.  Perhaps the changes and refusal to create a groove points to the problem of over ambition that seems to permeate all of hardcore as well as punk today.  There is a formula and if you deviate from that formula you cease to be part of that genre. You can expand it or create something completely new (that’s good by the way).  The folks that make up Dimalia would be a damned good “experimental rock band” if they weren’t a below average HC group with metal inclinations on the vocal side of things.

Dogs in Space: An Aussie Punk House with INXS?

This fellow over here – David Nichols, a smart guy judging from his scribblings – places Dogs in Space within a proper context.

Anyone even remotely familiar with the machinations of a punk house, or any scene within a small community of people, should have understood what was going on in the movie. It should be noted that while the above writer decries the films characterization as plotless (kinda), there isn’t really anything that goes on. It’s just the viewer getting to watch the disintegration of a cohort.

The film, directed by Richard Lowenstein and starring his buddy Michael Hutchence from INXS, begins with an outdoor scene detailing random folks hanging around waiting for a chance to buy tickets to a David Bowie show in the late seventies. With the film’s narrative being vague at best, its conclusion can’t exactly be pin pointed in time, but everyone the viewer encounters in this first scene and a few subsequent ones, goes through some sort of transformation – no matter how small. There’s a guy that doesn’t seem to do too much other than study, which isn’t all bad, natch.

What David Nichols tends to accidentally glorify, since he apparently lived what’s portrayed here, is the life of the artist. That’s all this basically is. Various scenes of drinking, drugging, acting cool, semi-anonymous, but totally meaningless sex strung together in an attempt to create a narrative. There is certainly a beginning and end. And maybe the police showing up during a party during the middle of the film counts as where the narrative breaks, only going downhill after wards. But even if that’s the case, extolling the virtues of acting like a fool (read: a cool rock dude, living in squalor, pretending to be important) is a kind of self gratification.

Sure, for these folks to reminisce about doing all this nonsense is entertaining for people who can respond to vacuous meanderings. But then the film functions in the same way that its characters lived. There isn’t a point. And there well may not be a point to being an ‘artist’ even if thousands of people run around on a daily basis telling whomever they meet about being a writer, filmmaker, musician, insert some other perverse swill here.

Concluding the film – as one might guess – is some drug related tragedy. It might be the story’s moral. Maybe not. If it is, though, the end to Dogs in Space doesn’t seem like too much of a downer with that group picture and Hutchence crooning.

Meat Puppets: The First One Wasn't Just Hardcore

Yeah, the second Meat Puppets album is on par with just about any other record released in the eighties. The musicianship is shockingly adept and while most of the songs wouldn’t pass as songs to most folks, the way it’s all soldered together is pretty interesting. More over, for a trio to rave up such a huge racket’s pretty impressive.

The group, though, existed for something like four years prior to that 1984 album. There’s even a self titled disc, released in 1982, to prove it. Most discussions of the album, though, wind up going something like, “It’s pretty good. But it’s just a hardcore album apart from those two country covers.” And while human beings really enjoy categorizing everything, music especially, there’re easily more songs on the self titled disc that don’t fit into the hardcore genre than those that do.

Granted “Love Offering,” the album’s second track, could probably have worked if tossed onto the Blasting Concept. Pretty much the same could be said for “Blue-Green God,” even if that guitar figure has more to do with wacked out hard rock than anything else. But the quick step drumming clocking in at too fast a tempo for most long hairs of the time might make it an easy target for the hardcore tag.

“Melon Rising,” at fifty-two seconds, is probably the most reductive hardcore thing the Puppets ever recorded. And considering the sessions for this album were done under the guidance of LSD, it’s all miraculous – hardcore or not.

A few songs on, when listeners arrive at “Our Friends,” there’s no good way to understand this as a hardcore album. Even prior, introductions and such possessed a similar feel. That feeling? It’s all tripped out rock and roll. It’s what the Flaming Lips would have sounded like eventually if that group wasn’t just boring (good job on fooling the masses, though).

Sticking with “Our Friends,” what disallows this album from being categorized as a hardcore disc is the tremendous amount of space that’s simply left open to chance. There’re underlying structures here, but each only serves as a jumping off point. And surely that sounds like a way in which to describe jazz. And while the Puppets wouldn’t characterize their music in that way (or in the following way), it’s kind of a punk jam band. Think Saccharine Trust, but better. The progressions are always as willfully odd, but the improvisations are in a place no other SST band could muster.

Primitive Calculators: Aussie Synth Punk in a Vacuum

Placing a group into some international context usually yields a grand insight into how things were working at the time. Of course, a more locally focused understanding of a band’s impetus is bound to result in a more specific and personalized perception.

The Primitive Calculators were from Australia, beginning in Springvale, a town not too far outside of Melbourne. Considering the band never moved to the large city, though, should lend a view of the group as an assemblage of weirdo outsiders. And you haven’t even heard the music yet.

Apparently, the Calculators rubbed shoulders with a pre-Birthday Party group Nick Cave did time in. And if one musters enough memory to summon a few other groups from the land down under which had nothing to do with Men in Hats, there’s still not a corollary in the country readily springing to mind.

There’s no escaping the fact that the band was taken with technology, dispatching the drummers seat to replace it with a machine to keep time and liberally focusing on synthesizers and keyboards for what might be understood as melodic instruments. All of that works to sit the Calculators in the same arena as the Screamers – but not Dow Jones and the Industrials seeing as those Midwesterners still enjoyed guitars a bit too much.

And if the Screamers are the closest, analogous group that becomes problematic considering the two bands don’t sound similar to anyone spending more than a few minutes with each amassed catalog.

While that Los Angeles based group surely had a dark tinge to its music, the Calculators come off as something far more sinister. Oddly, though both the Aussie group and the Californians covered “The Beat Goes On.” From a quick listen to each version, the Calculators easy present themselves as more dramatically detached from anything approaching pop song structure.

Even in the group’s moments of stringent adherence to structure, as with “Glitter Kids,” there’s so little going on (in a good way) as to make it song sound as if it isn’t comprised of disparate sections. They’re there, though. And while we might not instantly recognize it, as with “Pumping Ugly Muscles’” extraordinarily repetitive middle section, the band working these sounds up in a more persistent vacuum than its State’s side counterparts speaks to not just the Aussie’s imagination, but the source material it reportedly plundered. After a while, it becomes difficult to give Lou Reed and John Cale all the credit.

The More You Know: MP3 Blogs (An Update)

I wrote this piece up a ways back and figured enough time had passed as to warrant an update.

The interwebs are full of places to find MP3s. And as a service to you, dearest reader, I’ve tracked down a few of most unique spots. There’s no such thing as a site that pleases everyone. But the seven sites listed below should serve most of your (weird) musical tastes. If not, stick around. There’s bound to be another update sooner or later.

As a side, if there’s someplace you feel has been neglected, feel free to drop a URL in the comments section. The innertubes should be a community of people sharing things, not just taking.

Big Head Stevenson: There’s no overall bent or genre specific intent here. It’s just below the radar music ranging from reggae stuff (no Bob Marley, natch) to a few more recent Moondog posts. Experimental to not so much, but usually decent stuff even if the posting is a bit sporadic.

Creep Scanner: New(ish) to old and back again. There’s some hardcore, but also a few pop styled nuggets of the eighties’ variety. Each post is accompanied by at least a bit of explanation even if it frequently winds up being personal in nature.

experimental etc.: Given the name of this site, you wouldn’t expect to find too much digestible stuff. But really, anything’s fair game, even acoustic guitar albums of South American origin - Atahualpa Yupanqui, being a recent favorite

isksp: This is one of the older sites I’ve been following for a while. Consistent posts are always a plus. And while there’s not too much range in content – punk to hardcore a few almost power pop discs and some spiky haired stuff once in a while. Frequently, obscure singles find their way over here. The only problem is that a lot of the bands are relatively obscure and don’t come packaged with a proper description.

Record Fiend: There are three folks who post albums over here. There’s a pretty strong acoustic blues tinge to it all, but also some really incredible albums from Eastern players. Making Record Fiend a staple of interweb surfing, though, are the extensive commentaries accompanying each post. The writing’s usually solid enough to appear in a print rag. No joke.

Spacerockmountain: Any site that posts Index should get added to your Google Reader right now. That being said, a good amount of time might pass between posts – and some of what shows up isn’t that engaging. But the gems are truly worth waiting for.

The Transplants Should Settle on a Suicide Pact

It’s always interesting finding out what punkers do when they’re all grown up. On occasion, it’s pretty said. Day labor and menial jobs aren’t fun for anyone, but when your earliest years were filled with beer and gigging around the States, the stasis levied upon oneself by a nine to five has to be something just sort of unbearable.

More than a few folks make it and somehow wade through the music industry in whatever role – sometimes folks even wind up heading a major label or work as a talent agent of sorts. Even as both of those posts seem distasteful, it’s probably better than serving fries.

Some folks remain engaged with a scene for the entirety of their lives – and while scenes are a gross and awful thing most times, being included in one might be a decent thing to experience, at least that’s what I can surmise.

This last road is apparently what Jordan Kratz wound up doing. And even though his roots in the Transplants place him firmly in an East Coast punker tradition, his move to Portland hasn’t distanced him from the music he loved during the formative years of his upbringing.

Back in the seventies, around Boston, the same story plays in as in whatever town you might be reading this from. Everyone’s tired of overblown rock stuff, someone stumbles on those Detroit bands, eventually gets a whiff of NYC, Cleveland and whatever other groups are kicking around and starts their own band. Kratz’s story is roughly the same. He just happened to start the Transplants, which eventually counted La Peste’s drummer Roger Tripp.

Of course, if his rhythm section were the most notable thing about the entire endeavor, this wouldn’t be worth writing – or reading. Instead, the Transplants solidified a set of original tunes and a few choice covers while briefly playing the Northeast.

Tracks like “Police State” and “Suicidal Tendencies” truck in traditional punk topics while the music is somewhere between hard-rock stuffs and the Dictators, making a less garagey DMZ an easy reference point.

What’s telling, though, are the few covers tossed in on Police State, a collection of studio and live work, from the band’s short career. Included is the Sonics’ “Strychnine” as well as the Eleveators “Levitation.” What’s interesting, though, is the fact that both covers wind up sounding like a combinations of the source material. Moreover, Kratz had some chops – more so than a great man other players recording at the time.

It’d be difficult to say that folks outside of the Boston milieu are going to find the Transplants to be an indispensible group. But it’s probably better than a significant portion of what was going on in your hometown around ’76.

 

The Golden Palominos: Cleveland x NYC

My defining Cleveland’s underground music of the seventies as some of the most important works from the era is generally met with consternation. Most folks don’t know or care about the things I preach. And it’s pretty difficult to rationalize them by saying record store clerks the world over agree. That doesn’t carry too much cache. But in attempting to bolster the legacy of some pretty important music, Anton Fier might serve as proper proof that there’s something to it all.

Of course, Fier’s name isn’t the most immediately recognizable. And he’s a drummer, a much ignored position in most of music history. But the spate of albums Fier was involved with the people he continues to work along side should easily assuage folks decrying my lionization of the North Eastern Ohio thing.

Kicking around Cleveland during it’s (out) music hey day, Fier and a huge contingent of players wound up in New York around the time punk had lent no wave and what would eventually be termed indie rock a basis from which to work. His first recording, though, relatively ignored until a recent reissue, with the Feelies on its Crazy Rhythm. And if that’s the beginning point of a career, lord knows what’s next.

Over time, the drummer’s sat down with Herbie Hancock (on the disc that gave the world “Rockit”), Buckethead, the Contorions, Bob Mould and of course Pere Ubu and the Styrenes. It’s odd that with such a back log of work, Fier remains a figure off in the shadows for most.

Even founding the Golden Palominos, which sounds as if it should have been a country rock band, hasn’t done much for Fier’s renown outside of weirdo music circles. But if one takes a look at the help he enlisted for that first self titled disc dating to 1983 – Bill Laswell, Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay and John Zorn – it’s apparent that the group and this recording served as some combination of punk, downtown sounds and weird experiments in the manipulation of one’s instruments. And that’s what it is.

Oddly, though, Golden Palominos doesn’t dove-tail with anything going on at the time. With all those scenes referenced, it doesn’t do to compare the disc with anything else. Even as the album’s closer, “Two Sided Fist,” and it’s space aged funk push towards the seven minute mark, there’s no way any single one of those sidemen would have come up with this on their own.

Sick Things: $30 PPD

Message boards have  basically supplanted the need for proper mail order one might have been acquainted with between the seventies and the nineties. The social aspect to it all’s still intact, but the quick responses one receives – and gives - removes some of the anticipatory glee that was part and parcel with getting a package or a note in the mail.

It’s not better or worse, it’s different. Roughly the same stuff would have been available a decade and change back. And if one heads over to the Terminal Boredom forum, it’s pretty plain to see that everything’s the same, just in digital form.

The one problem that mail order always had, though, was expensive, international shipping costs. And if you’re trying to track down the Sick Things compilation Sounds of Silence, it’ll cost you.

The Sick Things, which would eventually turn into Venom P. Stinger and then the Dirty Three, had more to do with that band in the middle then the latter act. It’s all incomprehensible guitar chords and almost indecipherable yelping. Dugald McKenzie’s strangled vocals where the through line between the Sick Things and VPS. There are aural similarities, but this earlier group trucks less in distinctive rhythms.

On Sounds of Silence, there seems to be some overlap with My Life’s A Mess. But in a collector’s world, it might be worth tracking down both. The title of that other compilation, though, seems way more appropriate. On tracks like “Paranoia,” which is only on SoS, listeners should assume that McKenzie’s yowling on about the vagaries of not trusting anyone or anything – his accent probably obscuring intent for Stateside listeners beyond just the shoddy quality of these thirty year old recordings.

Included here, though is the Commited to Suicide single, initially issued in 1981. It obviously comes a few years after the first wave of punk had subsided. But its release date and sonic proclivities pretty easily explain why the band would go on to cover the Exploited’s “Blown to Bits.” Apart from that thick accent sported by both McKenzie and Wattie, each group’s guitarists seems more taken with the idea of the instrument being shrouded in distortion than granting listeners any sort of understand of what’s going on. That being said, the Sick Things are able to pull the move off a bit better, most likely due to it’s ability to play in a few (but not too many) different tempos.

This stuff isn’t horrible, but it’s certainly not worth thirty bucks ppd. Track down some VPS instead.

CRIME - "Space Face" (Video)

Caught this one over at Victim of Time, I think. Either way, CRIME isn't as big as the hype, but the group was an early marker of the SF scene. Don't bother hunting down any proper releases, you get all you need from this footage, which apparently comes from the Target Video archives. Cool matching outfits?

Black Metal Satanica: It's Cutting, not a Problem

I can’t say that metal is something I dote on. Reign in Blood’s alright. And that first Maiden disc is almost punky, in a Freddie Mercury kinda way. But beyond that – and none of that should have been all that impressive – metal, of any variety isn’t in regular rotation over here.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the culture surrounding the music isn’t fascinating. Granted, the amount of posturing, hair brushing and conscientious dressing in black seems superfluous. But the fact that there’s a universal aesthetic within the black metal community – including the lettering on just about ever record, t-shirt and flyer – is impressive.

Adherence to any set of standards predicated on musical affinity – punk, metal, hip hop, whatever – is nonsense. But the blind allegiance is endearing in a certain way. It doesn’t even necessarily mean folks associated with a movement are dullards, just blind to the fact that in an attempt to define themselves in negation to normalcy, they’ve set up a new, stultifying code to live by.

Black Metal Satanica, since it was produced by Cleopatra Records, isn’t self-aware of all that. But still turns in a moderately entrancing, almost full length documentary. Ten or so minutes short of proper, full length duration isn’t the death knell for a film, but points to a lack of content. And even if that wasn’t the case, the thirty or so minutes during the movie’s core focused on Christianity imposing its values on Nordic culture could have been cut down dramatically. Anyone watching a film like this is going to be sympathetic to the jive these folks are setting down, so having four different interviews focused on the same idea isn’t really necessary.

Prefacing it all, as per any other document chronicling the movement, is a bit about Mayhem, Burzum and murder. Simple stuff. Some of the same court room footage is served up here. And while new comers to the genre will be engaged, the majority of the film rehashes a pretty basic history.

Not being engaged with the community, though, Shining cropping up at the film’s tail was a shock. Of course, it’s supposed to be. But it succeeds.

Taking with the band’s front-man, Niklas Kvarforth, gets on with how awful life is and postulates something like, killing yourself is the best way to go. Of course, his still being alive and telling others to end it seems contradictory. But he wants to spread death’s message. But being a sad sack musician probably pulling in thousands of dollars for every show you do is a contradiction. His bank account probably comforts him while he slashes his arm up for show.

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