Dead C - 'Eusa Kills' (Flying Nun/Xpressway)

I didn't toss any of my Dead C CDs when I got the vinyl upgrades so we're gonna have a lot of overlap. Eusa is the one I could definitely let go of since there's nothing unique about the CD, except that it's smaller and sounds worse. I guess it's easier to loan to people, always trying to make a convert. This is actually the perfect hungover Sunday afternoon thing to listen to right now, as 'Now I Fall' is simultaneously drilling into my headache and also teaching me a lesson - the pain that feels so good, so good. Tom Lax's liner notes are pretty fun, as they compare this era of Dead C to early Pere Ubu (I'll buy that comparison) and then says that Eusa, while the 'pop' album, doesn't compare to the live one. By which I guess he means Clyma est mort which we'll get to, also twice, but both times on vinyl! Yeah, I should probably filter out all of this clutter - can you imagine the Underbite lair, a dark, cavernous pile of multiple copies of Dead C albums? But the music, redux. How many times can one band milk the same riff? (Referring to the appearance of 'Max Harris' in the background of 'I was Here'). It's those middle tracks that really draw out the best in me - 'Phantom Power' can lead to decades of investigation, while 'Children' and 'Scarey Nest' are just songs I play when I'm DJing. But awesome songs. The songs really are the key here, the core, the root, and the ether. I wanted to be a child of some revolution, which I never found, but this was close enough.

Can - 'Monster Movie' (Spoon)

It just so happens that 'Father cannot yell' was the first Can song I ever heard, because it's also track 1 on the Cannibalism compilation CD which my university library loaned me during my freshman year. When that rapid, oscillating keyboard started and then another rapid, oscillating drum and bass lick came in to support it, things were never quite the same for me. Monster Movie is a curious one to review now because while all four songs have their strengths, I actually very rarely bother listening to it anymore. There's a lot of ideas here, and most importantly a rudimentary/primitive edge that sort of disappears gradually over the next few albums (is this in any way identifiable as the same band of Future Days?). One can't deny the blues/garage edge, but then Michael Karoli's guitar lines usually sound like hot, pointy daggers. There's a missing rhythm guitarist here, not that Czukay et al lacks the rhythmic skills -- but with the chug-chug chunkiness taken away, they've already found some sort of inner space. Monster Movie has the feel of being recorded in one take, with less focus on studio techniques than we'd later associate with this band. 'Mary, Mary so contrary' is the ballad, or at least a place for Malcolm Mooney to try to inject his warped bleatings with some passion. It has a lumbering movement that sounds like it evolved from some of the middle tracks on Delay 1968, but a bit more precise. 'Outside my door' is the shortest track and one that I like to play when DJing. It has a rambling electric blues feel, and a driving harmonic/violin/keyboard riff (what exactly is it?), and it's probably one of the more 'punk' tracks in the Can oeuvre. But really, the monolithic beast of Monster Movie is 'Yoo Doo Right', which is a sideways inversion of rock arrangement, complete with random/modular vocals. It's such a cliché by this point and I realised after about 9 minutes in -- I haven't actually listened to this song in years. Usually when I put on Monster Movie (which is not that often, sadly) I don't invest myself in the full 20:14 needed to get through 'Yoo Doo Right'. Which is a shame, because I think it's a remarkable track, even if you feel that it's overplayed by the end of it. This is really the earliest use of spacey jazzmopherics in Can's discography, and you can see how it signals ahead to 'Mother Sky'. I guess that's why it has the distinction of being covered by both the Geraldine Fibbers AND Hieronymous Firebrain. Parts drop in and out, but it never stops pulsing, and at times it's hard to distinguish Holger's bass guitar from Jaki's bass drum and/or toms. There's a dark sibilence on everything, and, well, Malcolm Mooney sounds like he's about 79 years old here. He croaks and rasps and there's really no one else who could have carried this song, even though he's seen as the "lesser" Can vocalist. 'Yoo Doo Right' was also on Cannibalism, bookending the collection with 'Father Cannot Yell' beginning it, so I went straight to Monster Movie as my starting point. Its legacy may merely be the first album of a legendary band, but not a legendary album in its own, but it still explodes in its own way.

Birds of Delay - 'Gateway to Feather' (Alcoholic Narcolepsy)

This is an artifact from the explosion of underground UK noise-drone that peaked around 2006-2007. Birds of Delay are two guys that like feedback, and everything is recorded with the thick soupy drone + feedback layers that characterise their sound, at least at the time. 'Sandcastle Brain' opens it up with 15 minutes of monotony, to the point that the other track, 'Creamed Abandon', sounds lively by comparison. The latter applies bending and twisting tones to create a more psychedelic effect, though since everything (on both tracks) is breaking up through digital distortion, it feels very compressed. Music like this demands space, and there is space here but not much; you can't help but feel claustrophobic, even a bit frightened while listening to this. What this whole scene did is remove the trancelike/hypnotic elements from drone and leave the bad hangovers and nasty backlash. I'm trying to think if there's something distinctly British here, like the taste of a warmed Wetherspoon's pint or scampi fries, or if this might as well be from anywhere. I don't know what actualy would characterise US vs UK vs Korean drone, except that I can say Starving Weirdos sound nothing like this. I guess it's like a Jackson Pollock piece, where you can pick a sound and let your ear wander around on it, except it would be like looking at a Pollock painting in a really poorly lit room. I know that lo-fi is a choice and this aesthetic has its advantages. but you'd have to be deluded to think that a super quality recording wouldn't benefit these blokes. Or maybe you'd just realise how cheap their equipment is, because it sounds like it's all held together with gaffa tape.

Biota - 'Half a True Day' (Recommended)

It's been about a month away, which we can blame on travel + the yuletide season -- but also on the sheer difficulty of reviewing yet another Biota album. This one is only 69 minutes long, but it's also pretty much instrumental, eliminating those beautiful pop songs that occasionally slice through the layers. I'll reiterate that I do like Biota, enough to own three really long CDs despite a "I hate CDs" philosophy; but maybe I have to question my sanity sometimes. This is the most recent, coming out in 2008 I think. The standard tropes are there -- intense studio processing, zany effects, and a melting pot of melodic structures. But this time, the overly affected percussion is gone - we (mostly) hear a drum kit as a drum kit should sound. And drummer Larry Wilson actually has a pretty great style. It's scrappy, and start-stop, and it vibes well with the backwards-processed sounds. Half a True Day is a great title cause it feels like it takes half of a day to listen to it. There are a few moments of true alien beauty - 'Another Name' being one of them. These parts often conform to fairly traditional harmonic pleasure, in terms of instrumentation and atmosphere, but with something slightly off. The adventurous side is pretty impressive, and probably what drew me to Biota in the first place -- 'Silent Grove' gets into a real mudslide of animal skulls, abandoned duffle bags, and curving tunnels. After I got about halfway through this, I think I realised it was my favorite Biota release. I miss the songs, but the voices are still here and it feels more cohesive -- instead of intelligible lyrics, the vocals are part of the group sound, another instrument. Sure, without the obvious songs to break things up, Biota can be a bit more troublesome to take. This is a monolithic album, and I can't let myself sink into it enough to sense any development over the past decade. But it feels focused, which is something I wouldn't say about the other two. I think the CD format dares you to take one track and isolate it and listen to it alone a few times, but we all lack the patience to do this. There are parts where I get sick of the accordion or the xylophone, but there's also parts where it's both astoundingly chaotic and astoundingly controlled, and those instruments help to create the gel. And the artwork is a notch above the last two discs, though still very steeped in digital rendering and pastel pantones. Age and scenario probably means that these guys 'n gals have long-missed their chance for 15 minutes in the spotlight, but that's what make hidden pleasures so pleasureable.