Sneer

Yeah im only a fan of Icky Mettle and Vee Vee really, and i think therein lies the problem. Bands like Modest Mouse, Built To Spill, GBV and Pavement have consistently released good albums, i can name at least 3 great albums from each band, and i think thats why they've had more of an enduring appeal, because of their greater body of work. Shame because IM and VV really are great.

And i will be checking that album out, possibly tonight, i'll get back to you.

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TheBig3

So I checked out this album and while it isn't my favorite flavor its still fairly amazing. I don't know if I'd buy it, but I'd play it.

Ups?

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Sneer

Two years. 730 days. Roughly the timescale it took for me to first grow a beard of any real distinction. For Male Bonding; three men hailing from Dalston, however, that is approximately the length of time it takes to play your first show, release a slew of splits, get signed to one of the most reputable Indie labels this side of the Nile and release a full length debut. The hair follicles in my face have a lot to answer for.

Having released a plethora of cassette, 7” and 12” splits with the likes of Pens, Graffiti Island, Best Coast, Dum Dum Girls and Cold Puma on their own Paradise Vendors label, debut album Nothing Hurts signals the ascent into new annals of productivity – innumerable rungs up from the DIY basement operation of previous as Sub Pop take the reigns of this unrepentantly vociferous beast of a trio. And what, pray tell, have they bestowed upon us for a first offering? Why, thirty minutes of nihilistic noise pop both fast and loud enough to make your brain spit, of course.

Replete with enough hooks to suspend Jo Brand, Nothing Hurts hurtles along upon a current bubbling and foaming with an exuberant, overpowering zest. Much akin to peers such as Waaves and Abe Vigoda, the band blends a lo-fi punk aesthetic with at times exotic, tropical/surf influences to achieve a sound brimming with both aggression and zeal; power and imagination. With the majority of songs clocking in at under two minutes, what we are greeted with is a succession of little bubbles of energy – ready to burst at any given moment as the distorted, fuzzy riffs battle with bouncing bass lines and robust drum beats to maintain a semblance of order amidst the aural chaos. There just isn’t any time to become bored as song after song deals a heavy, snarling slap to the cheeks.

This isn’t to say Male Bonding are a one trick pony. Hazy, ambling odes to Shoegaze luminaries such as My Bloody Valentine and Ride effectively punctuate the ferocity of the album, as is evident with tracks such as “Franklin” and “Worse to come” – providing the listener with a respite from the relentless barrage of choppy, ebullient licks the rest of the album has to offer. There is something of a slapdash, cut-and-paste element to the way it is all put together. Yet, interestingly this only emphasizes the urgency the band is evidently striving for – like a canvas ripped to shreds and crudely pieced back together it nonetheless carries the artistic message.

Nothing Hurts certainly isn’t groundbreaking. The recent rise of ‘****gaze’ (who freaking coins these terms, seriously?) gives credence to that, whilst bands like Wire and The Buzz****s have been churning out similar, scuzzy pop snippets for years. Yet what it is in essence is a fun, adrenaline fuelled half an hour that is sure to maintain the momentum Male Bonding have been gathering over the last couple of years. Having supported the likes of Metronomy, ****ed Up, Health, No Age and Crystal Castles in recent past, now may be the time for Male Bonding to inhabit a stage all of their own. In an age bereft of the rush music once threw at us, this is an album that will give your day the kick up the arse it’s crying out for.

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Sneer

Formed in 1983, Burning Image brought teased bangs, heavy eyeliner and lipstick-smeared lips into the punk arena. While other bands were happily dishing out speedy hardcore, Burning Image slowed it down, kept the effusive guitar intact, and added a more melodic foundation to the music, effectively fusing the British Batcave sound with South California's '80s-era death rock.

Curtain raiser "Time is Running Out" begins with the tribal pounding of tom drums, creeping into the unveiling of a dissonant cacophony of atonal vocals and stressed guitar. It's like a sped-up version of early Birthday Party. "Hives" alternates between throbbing rhythms and squirming breakdowns, while the haunting "Love Mask" sounds like a band of ghouls chanting in unison over gloomy guitar and the dull thud of low bass notes.

Whilst bands such Siouxsie & The Banshees, Christian Death and Specimen enjoyed a greater level of reverence within the Goth subgenre, Burning Image's influence on the bands that followed cannot be overlooked.

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Sneer

Before calling it quits in 2008, Iowa natives Raccoo-oo-oon managed to squeeze out five albums of experimental noise rock in a recording career spanning 5 years. Their 2004 debut; Is Night People, represents the band at its most free-spirited, resulting in 35 minutes of cavernous, smouldering psych-freakouts driven by a lo-fi, tribal primitivism.

There's something esoteric about this album, a distance to the sounds that manifests itself in the shrieking, rattling, wheezing compositions. It evokes visions intangible yet real, always drenched in a smoky darkness. Ever listened to the Medusa Cyclone S/T? Well, if you have, you may understand what I'm trying, very poorly, to articulate.

Raccoo-oo-oon disbanded with two of the four members going on to form the more polished and disciplined yet still wilfully experimental Wet Hair, but their souls were sold to this oddity of an album long ago.

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Sneer

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Sneer

I'm negligent, to say the least, with my input on this... But yeah, I wrote a feature on the history of Krautrock recently. I know it has a relatively small but enthusiastic following on here, so maybe some of you know everything I've written already. If not, hope you find it vaguely interesting...



Germany, wincing its way through the late 1940s and into the 1950s, was a country suffocating amid the debris left behind following World War II. A nation razed to the ground, its slate had effectively been wiped clean.

With an injection of US dollars, slowly the fallen powerhouse began to sift its way through the rubble, mobilizing efforts to rebuild a fallen society. Yet, far from signaling the dawning of a new, exciting future, a tangible sense of stagnancy crackled and hissed beneath the façade of progress.

The new civic stratum of lawyers, doctors, politicians and teachers; assigned the task of driving forward this new Germany, had only a few years previously composed the ranks of those who had been ardent followers of Hitler’s Nazi regime. Seemingly devoid of any remorse for the past crimes committed by them or in their name, they shuttled towards the 1960s adorned with power, the Third Reich being gradually swallowed by a cloud of dulled, frozen apathy.

For the generation of German nationals entering adulthood during the onset of the 60s, the stench oozing from the rotting resin that clasped Germany’s past to its present was hard to stomach. Born after the war and thus unaffected by Nazi ideology, they looked back upon their country’s immediate past with repugnance. To them, the people teaching, treating and governing the masses were quietly complicit in the atrocities that had tarinshed their nation – change was needed.

Galvanized by the burgeoning wave of radicalism sweeping through America and Europe during the mid to late 60s, the German youth were becoming increasingly politicized. Absorbing the ideologies filtered through countercultural dissent and the arts, a young and angry movement began to surface throughout the country – its modus operandi being to forge a new cultural identity, independent of the past. For scores of youths, Germany found itself at year zero, the future being its blank canvas.

A byproduct of the student revolution careering through mainland Europe was the dispersion of Anglo-American culture. Bands such as The Mothers of Invention, Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, The Velvet Underground and MC5 were lighting fires in the minds of students disenchanted with life in post-war Germany. To these youths, the exotic sounds of psychedelia and the avant-garde represented the precipice beyond which lay a kaleidoscopic world of freedom and endless possibility.

However, for this new Germany, simply imitating the countercultural exports of countries whose troops still occupied their towns and cities would not suffice. Influenced by the pioneering sonic explorations of electronic composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, a generation stung by the profound sense of a shattered self-identity would abscond the constraints of convention, and pursue new, unexplored paths of musical terrain.

Amidst a highly politicized social landscape, bands began to form in communes and art labs detached from mass culture. Bundling together fragments from the past and present, acts such as Amon Duul (later to become Amon Duul II) and Guru Guru surfaced from radical student groups, playing a brand psychedelic rock that expressed the retrofitted utopianism prevalent throughout the communities of alienated intellectuals and stoned outcasts composing their audience.

Germany was awash with the esoteric, beguiling sounds of a new Avant Garde. Can, with their introspective, mystically-tinged sonic explorations into the deepest, darkest realms of innerspace, drank on the spirit of transgression brewed by their mentor, Stockhausen, whilst NEU! and their Motorik beat began challenging the very concept of music with relentless hammer-blows of rhythmical repetition. Concurrently, the likes of Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel were creating ambient drone soundscapes, pieces of music that summoned images of a distant, ethereal universe.

Latched onto by the British music press, this Kosmische Musik was given the condescending tag of Krautrock. Germany? That vanquished nation? The hub for a new, revolutionary movement of experimental music? It just would not wash with the press, which was gorging itself on a diet of bands such as Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Genesis. Betrothed to a sense of xenophobia, Krautrock was cast aside as a novelty.

The original ‘scene’ was relatively short lived, spanning from only the late 60s to the mid-70s. Yet, as the years have trickled into decades, its legacy has gradually grown. Its influence reverberates through the recordings of Post Punk acts such Public Image Ltd, Swell Maps and The Fall, whilst today, bands such as Animal Collective, Battles, Stereolab and Yo La Tengo continue to create music with the same, willfully experimental verve that underpinned the works of Faust, Limbus and Agitation Free.

Brian Eno, with his effusive praise and collaborations with electronic boundary-busters such as Cluster and Harmonia, as well as the success of David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, have proliferated its popularity further, with Kraftwerk, perhaps the most known of all Krautrock bands, enjoying considerable chart success on both sides of the Atlantic.

Meander away from the centre and you’ll find a plethora of bands feeding off the sonic explorations of these German pioneers. Krautrock reset the rhythms, enhanced the palette, and tore gaping holes through the smothering sheet of contemporary musical convention. For this, it deserves a great deal of respect.

Five essential Krautrock albums:

Can – Tago Mago
Amon Duul II – Yeti
Neu! – Neu!
Tangerine Dream – Zeit
Faust – Faust IV

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Forming from within the effervescent confines of the Rhode Island noise scene in 2002, Urdog held things together long enough to release two albums, before imploding in the late 00's.

2004's Garden of Bones is a 45-minute exhibition in dissonant chords and astral sound collages, replete with gothic Farfisa organ and cavernous echoes. The music is ostensibly haunting, carrying a swirl of discordant sound flailing maniacally in tone and pitch. It's all driven by a foreboding angularity in tempo and dynamics, a contortion of form that, if it weren't for the droplets of melody and nimble hooks subtly running through the layers of rhythm and texture, could possibly induce insanity. The band screams, hisses and cackles out of the speakers, wide-eyed in its prog-psych witchery.

There is a clear ode to Amon Duul II imbued in the songs, whilst Popol Vuh's cosmic ragas also claim influence. There's even a whiff of The Velvet Underground at their most experimental, think Sister Ray as it descends into complete chaos. Urdog clasp onto these influences tight, stretching and tearing them into something almost unidentifiable.

Garden of Bones is an album that demands active listening, if you allow it to recede into background noise it will simply irritate the hell out of you. Whack on a pair of headphones, turn that volume wheel sideways, and wait for the magic to happen.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I extend to you a slightly haphazard review of my album of the year, thus far.

There have been some sterling releases ushered into public conscious during 2011; Julianna Barwick’s The Magic Place, Josh T Pearson’s Last of the Country Gentlemen and Plays High Gospel by the mighty Efrim Mehnuk spring to mind. Yet, what all of these albums have in common is, in some way, they all tread paths sullied by the steps of past endeavour. Forever Dolphin Love, on the other hand, floats nonchalantly above various influences; such as Syd Barrett, The Chills and Black Moth Super Rainbow, plucking tiny fragments from its travels and clumsily meshing them into something entirely new.

Mockasin, a native of New Zealand and former frontman of, well, Connan & the Mockasins, has with this debut solo release created what is, at the most basic level, a pop album. However, what he does with the inherently formulaic structure is twist and squeeze it into a gnarled, battered mass. Suddenly guitar hooks that should be immediate, melodies that should flow linear and tunings crisp in their arrangement become warped and bent. They meander off route, falling through cracks and plummeting down into a psychedelic rabbit hole.

Mockasin seemingly revels in putting one over on the listener. Just when you think you’ve sussed it all out, he wipes the smugness out of your chops, veering off wildly into a new sphere of swirling, hypnotic pop pastiche. The guy simply doesn’t allow for respite as he careers from mood to mood, tone to tone. Yet, and here’s where Mockasin ensures this album enters the higher echelons of quality, it all melts into one beguilingly serene whole, a kaleidoscopic cloud, due in no small part to the sophistication in the album’s arrangement.

Forever Dolphin Love is an album bursting with woozy hooks and slurring melodies, primed for snaring the attention of would-be advocates. In that sense, it is a good pop album. It is the unorthodox furnishings that truly stir the senses however, with a lo-fi production aesthetic that suggests there is room for progression should ol’ Connan wish to explore it. On this evidence though, I wouldn’t begrudge him keeping things exactly as they are.

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Dr_Rez

Stu have I ever told you that I love you. Your reviews are great. I am sorry it took you 2 years to grow a beard though! The more you shave the thicker it grows back!

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