Can’t Resistor

1. Morning Sickness
2. The Price of Gasoline
3. Brass Bones
4. Diet of Worms
5. Pillar of Salt
6. The Ghost Hand
7. Harvest
8. Letter of Resignation
9. Celluloid Rats
10. Irreversible
11. Teratogen

Hardly anything says “We’re out here in the woods because this where our fans live! We play as loud as we want! (That is as loud as possible!) If you don’t like it, piss off and go home!” better or more succinctly than Ruined Lives’s album art: a lonely but ferocious full stack stranded in a snowy forest. Heck-a-doodle, neighboroonie, it took me this whole paragraph to say it with words.

Stephen Colbert might not approve of them palling around out there with the grizzly animals on his Threat Down! list, but the woodsy connotation truly fits this band. They’re clearly meat-eaters, or at the very least, their music probably grinds up bones in place of toothpaste. At the same time, Ruined Lives’s splatterpunk sonics at times sound like a desperate escape attempt: the sounds in a hermit’s brain as he fishtails into madness inside his cabin’s four walls.

“My apathy and I get along just fine,” they drone on the “The Ghost Hand,” a brief timeout from the assaultive, yet catchy riffage of the record thus far. The tune’s honey-drip pace, seasick blues slide work, plinks of haunting piano, and Slint by way of the Pixies vocal treatment set it a world apart from the rest of Ruined Lives, and most screamo bands in general. Of course, with former members of Orchid and Wolves rounding out TT’s lineup, it’s no surprise that these punks can’t spell “nihilism” without “artsy.”

Opener “Morning Sickness” hits like a rusty iron pipe to the back of the head. Imagine Thursday or other hardcore screamers, but with a more tolerable vocalist. “Morning Sickness” subsides into a few spare, pristine pricks of solo guitar toward the end, before slamming on the gas again for an eyes-popping-from-skull metallic breakdown. “Diet of Worms” plays like a slightly more upbeat Refused outtake from The Shape of Punk to Come. Drony “Harvest”? Perhaps an orphaned child of Jesu, aurally punching My Bloody Valentine in the face.

All well and good. Infinitely more listenable than a lot of screamo records—mostly ones where the lead screamadeer can’t shut the fuck up for more than two seconds—and packed full of twists and turns, dynamic shifts, staccato mosh fuel, and cynical, spoken word elegy, Ruined Lives is a prime example of how to make a screamo record great. Of course, nothing here exactly stands out as new, exactly—just extremely well done.

Is that a bad thing? If you demand “originality” from everything, yes. If you just want a fucking top notch forty minutes of headbang, hell no.

Links

Download [My Endless Minutes] (support the band, buy it if you like it)
Myspace

NOStalgia (emphasis on the NOS)

1. Intro
2. Music
3. Supersonic
4. Memories
5. Chiptek
6. Intermission
7. Kicks
8. 1997

There’s a special place in every geek’s heart where he keeps all his (or her) memories of video gaming as a kid. When you’re six, nothing matters except getting to that next level in Sonic when you get home from school.

For musically-inclined geeks, the sounds coming from the nearest console are indelibly etched into our memories. Everyone can hum the Super Mario theme from memory. Or the “Boss” themes from any number of platformers starring a certain blue hedgehog. These are memories with connotations of childhood innocence attached, and their soundtracks were composed on and performed by 8- and 16-bit consoles.

Chiptek emits nostalgia like a radiation. Not entirely unexpected, since it’s a sonic mind meld of old school Sega, Nintendo and MSX with the capabilities of a modern computer. Even if you were deprived as a child and never had the chance to play video games, nothing sounds like 8-bit.

Composition-wise, Chiptek falls somewhere between Pioneer and Coloris. The former’s retro soundscapes are, of course, front and center, but mixed with some of the dance/funk tone of Coloris, making for some head-turning, “gotcha” moments, indeed. Like Coloris, Chiptek features sprays of mangled vocal sampling. The pointedly-titled “Memories” uses a distinctive sample for the bass line which will instantly put Sega fanatics in the Marble Hill Zone… but with realer-sounding percussion and pop song format.

The title track? Possible soundtrack to a hacker’s wet dream. Laser-lit bullets of synthesizer; vocoder-in-the-woodchipper madness; raved-up, seesaw channel panning; 8 bits of massive pad swell goodness. “Intermission” is perhaps the signature she track of the album, though: self-referential melody ties together this brief (1:02) square-wave distortion cocktail. It packs a punch.

The effortless, childlike nostalgia of Pioneer, combined with its obvious flair for sound manipulation and composition, made it one of the greatest chiptune/bitpop concoctions of recent memory. Chiptek is like that. Eighteen months or so on, she has been updated for Moore’s Law. Pjat Lain’s music has evolved in that timeframe, and thus, this mini-album is like the alpha mixed with the latest omega: more of a dance feel in spots, more vocals, all the same skill.

Don’t let the atrocious album art scare you. Dive in. Geronimo!

Links

Official site / Download [FREE] (along with 7 other she releases)
Myspace

Distort Into she

1. Coloris
2. Circuit Lover
3. Orbit
4. Gum
5. Tokyo Nights
6. Monochrome
7. Fuse
8. Autumn In Space
9. In Time
10. Destination Luna4
11. Together
12. Touch And Go
13. Reality
14. Distort Into Me

Quick! Someone bust out a case of Bawls! After several more laid-back, contemplative forays into the more low-key side of electronica from she, Coloris marks a return to the anthemic immediacy of Pioneer. While the bitpop of she’s debut, a seamless fusion of Gameboy and laptop, is of a decidedly different tone, Coloris kicks the energy level back up to spec with tidal waves of bass-heavy, caffeinated dance-funk.

“she music gonna make you go faster,” she promises on “Fuse”—yeah, you read it right, Coloris has got vocals. Or rather, extensive (and sometimes irritating) vocal sampling. On the bright side, if you’re already into the whole stylized, chiaroscuro manga girl promo art for Coloris and other she releases, chances are you won’t mind the vocals much.

“Coloris” is the she song the ThinkGeek crowd has really been waiting to hear. A much-needed dose of funked-up, booty-shaking headbanging, it gets the record off to a fabulous, rollicking start. Unfortunately, nothing else quite approaches the title track’s energy level.

Phat synth bass and more conventionally cringeworthy DJ vox sampling win “Circuit Lover” the “Most Likely To Be Heard In a Dance Club” award. Leaning more toward the “lo-fi” (and by extension, bitpop) end of the spectrum, “Autumn in Space” sputters like an arcade game starting up, but eventually tries on some earthy slap bass. If you know that “S3M” isn’t the Year 3000 Bug, don’t miss its retro sawtooth solo.

she molds and melds sounds together without a trace of the gauche “mash-up” feel employed by many modern electronic artists. The kaleidoscopic “Gum” slip-slides on a slick, fat low end rife with splintered vocal and synth samples, before settling into a comfortable, but dizzying Doppler-effected groove sprinkled with pretty keyboard work. “Orbit” and “Monochrome” are chilled-out chunks of slow dance, basted with synth and boasting some of the prettier vocalizing of the album.

Coloris is a faster-paced turn for she. Pioneer is still the clear winner from the back catalog as far as rocking out with your Sega out goes (and still this reviewer’s personal favorite), but Coloris will satisfy the electro listeners happily residing in 2008. It might even make a couple people dance. Get your camera phones ready.

Links

Official site / Download [FREE] (along with 7 other she releases)
Myspace
iTunes

A new place for a new begining

http://TheSirensSound.com

Thanks for all the support Luke.

Measured Once, Cut To Ribbons

1. Worn Path
2. Careful Subliminal
3. Trilogy 1 (Sick Cities)
4. Trilogy 2 (Planar Analysis)
5. Trilogy 3 (Fall Days)
6. Armor
7. Bridges
8. David Fung
9. Script
10. Last City

Screamo’s likely to be a dirty word for most music listeners. The new kind, anyway, co-opted by mainstream journalism to include bands more aptly described as alternative rockers that howl a lot. To an uninitiated parent, especially, the term itself even sounds scary. Hey, who wouldn’t be afraid of a guy named Bert vomiting on their child during a concert?

But what about what screamo used to mean? Don’t lose those earplugs, Mom and Dad—there’s a lot scarier stuff out there. Loma Prieta, a San Francisco born screamo troupe, stylistically abrade elbows with erupting volcanoes, and, at times, excellent Italian screamo torchbearers Raein.

Loma Prieta’s tone tends to be much more corrosive and noisy, unfortunately. While there are spare moments of reprieve (whoa, some singing at the beginning of “Last City”?), much of the album is an exercise in trying to drown out any nearby jet engines with tenor vocal cords alone. This fits the genre label in a literal way, at least, but ultimately, it’s disappointing. The screams themselves aren’t particularly unique, especially when held up against the likes of The Blood Brothers, for instance. The lyrics, literary and poetic or not, are entirely indiscipherable. The interesting instrumental moments, colored by shades of prog-rock at times, are overshadowed by dire, neverending howls. It’s like trying to listen to Dark Side of the Moon with someone performing Castaway self-dentistry the next room over.

Supported by terse, nervous cycles of drums and clean guitar, like the repeating motif in the earlier bits of “Worn Path,” the screams go a step beyond merely “coloring” the compositions. They ruin them. Screaming is a hammer—a useful tool when it’s called for, but don’t go swinging it around at everything like a damn fool.

They say a poor workman blames his tools. Loma Prieta aren’t poor workmen; they just haven’t gotten the hang of using their screams professionally. “Worn Path” is worth a listen, but only as a demonstration of the band’s ability, mostly masked on Last City, to compose.

Links

Download (Spreading Neurotoxins) (support the artists—pay the band if you like it)
Myspace

Get Shanked!

1. You Me
2. Dodr
3. Colin Skehan
4. Shunk
5. Mini Rockers
6. Agassi Shank
7. I Answer To Doc
8. Snakehips

I, like many fans/reviewers of indie music, have a medical condition. A handicap. Maybe an infectious brain tumor? When I hear music that truly floors me, words stymie me. Descriptions swirl around in my head, tag teaming exuberance. So many different angles of attack, so many different things that should—nay, need to be said… yet I’m at a loss for words.

Call it what you want—echolalia, verbal diarrhea, don’t-know-when-to-STFU disease. It feels like trying to vomit my brain into a word processor. The words are there, but there’s too many of them to organize.

So I guess Adebisi Shank have the same illness. Their delightfully meta album titles and lack of a vocalist (except for the one hiding behind a robotic talk box/vocoder on the opener “You Me”) both point to a loss of words.

They probably listened to their own record. What kind of fluoride do they put in the water in Ireland? Bass swells, car alarm bleeps, fedback delay pedals, and fractured belches of guitar all compete in here like cats in a sack, adding up to a sound it seems humans couldn’t possibly produce alone. “When I heard this i thought it was fake - it sounds like random and badly placed loops from Garageband. Amazing that it is a real band!” writes one YouTube commenter.

The album art—multi-colored electricity lines clawing their way out of architectural graph paper—is as good a description of their sound as any. Intricately chaotic electric guitar is the unmistakable focus of This Is The Album Of A Band…. The rich, throaty buzz of a low fidelity transistor fuzz burping with fried, sub-octave madness forms the core of the Adebisi Shank sound. Eruptions of two-handed tapping trickle and spurt out the speakers, supported by a corset-tight rhythm section. Their guitarist, Lar Kaye, an obviously effects pedal addicted gearhead, is refreshingly spry on the fretboard—sort of Eddie Van Halen’s even nerdier, spaz-rock cousin: regimented, yet haywire and passionate at the same time.

It’s impossible to pick a favorite, but “DODR” (”daughter” in Robot, mayhap?) exemplifies everything there is to love about Adebisi Shank: rich dynamics that flow seamlessly from drifting clean passages to staccato sludge-fuzz licks, Megadrive guitar tone and riffs that will bring out your inner six-year old to battle the Mini Boss again.

Do not miss this one. Pry yourself away from Melt Banana and the Polysics and get this record now. Or else. I’ll Shank you myself if I have to.

Links

Download (All Time Greatest Hits) (support the artists—pay the band if you like it)
Myspace
CDbaby

Adebisi Shank @ a house party in someone’s living room

“You Me” live in Germany 2007

…And The Devil Is A Cosmonaut

1. Shadows
2. Post Mortem
3. Echoes
4. Snowfall
5. First Day Of Sun
6. No Return
7. Zodiac
8. Remaining Light
9. Shores Of Orion
10. Loss

There’s a bit of a buzz in the air about Irish post-rockers God Is An Astronaut. Rightfully so. Rockers and citizens of the disparate states of Electronica alike will feel completely at home with this one. Fans of the trem-bar blur and cascades of cosmic Velcro fuzz shred that defines My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless will have a pretty decent trip, too.

No singer? Check. Varied instrumentation? Check. Heartbeat quickening build-ups from near silence to towering, minor key walls of sound? Check.

Typically, post-rock first demands long, minimalist passages, cathartic explosions of euphoric noise to follow ten minutes or so later. God Is An Astronaut aren’t afraid to move. They waste little time on warm-ups, and go straight for the six-string + sampler kung fu. Opener “Shadows” begins the album innocently enough, but quickly pitches forward into fevered, towering axe work, passionate piano, and rollicking, half-human/half-machine percussion.

Although the band can slow down (see the reflective, piano-tinged “Remaining Light”), the high fever tempo and mood of God Is An Astronaut are its most striking and unique features. “Echo” rides on stop-start rhythms and grunge/clean dynamic shifts, like a softer, more conventional 65daysofstatic, or a more angular The American Dollar. Splashes of tabla and programmed sitar color the exotic “Zodiac,” while a tribalistic drumbeat forms the core of “Shores of Orion”’s raucous, ‘gazey groove, perhaps the most satisfyingly loud moment of the album. Although clearly there’s nothing approaching Deftones caliber whiplash to be had here, God Is An Astronaut prove that words aren’t required to inspire a good headbang.

Rocktronica neophytes have a potent gateway drug in God Is An Astronaut. At least in the case of this album, it’s a happy, happy marriage, indeed.

RIYL 65daysofstatic, The American Dollar.

Links

Download (Spreading Neurotoxins) (support the artists—pay the band if you like it)
Myspace

abuaageoifsaklnvfkxik
ijustregisteredthisblogbecause4chantoldmetoimnotactuallygoingtopostanythingpastthisinhere

posted by sirenssound at 5:59 PM on Nov 10, 2008

No word of explanation yet as to why it’s gone. Logic and past experience suggests that they’ve become the latest victim of the anti-P2P/music download agenda, despite a meekly compliant disclaimer:

Recording Labels / Artists: As much one may elaborate about promotional purposes and file sharing however there are still many out there who do not agree to these concepts and that perception is totally understandable and respected.

Thus if there are any of your releases on here and you do not agree to the idea of your work being shared across a particular channel for what so ever reasons. A simple email to SirensSound@gmail.com and that should do.

I have previously received mails from artists/recording labels and I do not usually go to war or against anyone who is not comfortable of their work being published. I will in turn have the link or the post removed accordingly ASAP…

Even if you personally never got anything from them, Sirens Sound was a great place to discover new, upcoming, and often unsigned artists. R.I.P..

UPDATE: Mogwai from Sirens Sound says that a new site is a possibility in the future, but not right now. Until then, cross your fingers and keep the underground going. Show your support for the artists you like, whenever you can.

UPDATE #2: Sirens Sound is back.

The moon is made of cheese

• Song Length: 5:54
• Year of Release: 2008
• Lyrics

“Dorky” is among the first words which come to mind with post-hardcore/”Nintendocore” mash-up mavens Enter Shikari. It’s not necessarily an insult. The romping gallop of “We Can Breathe In Space, They Just Don’t Want Us To Escape” is breathtaking in its own way—and not just because it’s a mouthful to spit out.

They get to the point, and fast. Before there’s time for a gulp of air, tremulous waves of synthesizer dribble out of the speakers in a giddy avalanche of Head Automatica style nerd rock. Add in some bastardized E.L.O. synthesizer breaks (0:44) and a noisy, hardcore breakdown (1:45). Cap it off with an extended trance electronica/space-rock outro heavy on the watery pads and swells, and there you have it. The entire song exudes the same kind of non-self-conscious, “let’s just play what sounds cool” attitude of a tune like Nightwish’s similarly romping “Stargazers.”

The lyrics—mostly shouted, presumably while pumping a fist in the air—recall humbling speeches by Carl Sagan, bringing attention to the vastness of space and the tininess of humanity: “All our empires, our philosophies, our practiced faiths, our revolutions/ Our proud sciences, are but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars [...] We are an infant species/ Crawling into our own premature decline.”

A full length album of something like this is another story, but taken by itself (possibly on repeat, as techno oft petitions) “We Can Breathe In Space…” is pure, off-your-ADHD-medication energetic fun. Assuming a hopefully not too serious listener, the end result of a listen-through will involve you, dancing around like a monkey in your chair.

Music video

A Stranger Stranger

1. Tree Man
2. I’m Fine Today
3. Fear Before Doesn’t Listen To People Who Don’t Like Them
4. Get Your Life Together
5. Jabberwocky
6. Everything’s Not Shitty
7. Tycho
8. Bad Days
9. Stay Weird
10. Review Our Lives (Epic)

Art damaged fretboard arsonists Fear Before the March of Flames have always been an odd beast. Their wild-eyed and bloodthirsty records travel in pairs.

In the mood for screamo? Look up their fame inducing Odd How People Shake. Just don’t expect “On the Brightside, She Could Choke,” that record’s scene kid approved favorite, to be on their live setlist ever again.

If Odd How… isn’t abrasive enough, the raw meat, jet turbine squall of the bordering-on-unlistenable, but appropriately titled Art Damage surely shall be.

For better or worse, Fear Before have never been afraid to piss into the wind, or upon less open-minded fans. 2006 was the year that saw them prove it. A far cry from those early ventures, the everything but the kitchen sink, industrial/electronica experimentation of The Always Open Mouth saw to it that these Colorado natives were henceforth counted among a tiny handful of bands that consistently reinvent themselves for every record.

“There’s nothing stranger than a stranger,” they’re quick to tell us. Lately, their music has metamorphosized from creepy-crawly, “quick, smash it before it touches me” scene hardcore into something melodic, yet noisy, and above all, unclassifiable.

The Always Open Mouth bartered Fear Before’s abrasive heaviness for sonic density, yielding a crop of songs which sound ferocious on record, but pose problems to recreate in a live context. Here, brevity acts as the sugar to help the medicine go down. As long as you don’t miss the March of Flames of yesteryear, Fear Before is their greatest and most easily-swallowed record yet.

Clocked at under 40 minutes, everything’s shorter on Fear Before, right down to the band’s officially truncated name. And it’s tighter, too. Hooks immediately dig in deep when “Tree Man” lunges for the jugular with its spooky vocalizations and palm-muted rundowns. “I’m Fine Today” pits gothic wails against a battering ram guitar chug, and “Fear Before Doesn’t Listen To People Who Don’t Like Them” opens with the sputtering, desperate heart murmur of an amplifier at breaking point, then descends into passages that concoct imagery of Adam Fisher strumming helicopter blades instead of guitar strings.

Mostly quiet (mostly) “Jabberwocky” plays like “Absolute Future Pt. 2,” a complete departure from the band’s earlier works, sinister and comfortable in its eerily sparse arrangement. But wait! Noise mavens, never fear! Fear Before still dabble in discord, as on the closing “Review Our Lives (Epic).” A mashed-up wall of Marshall stacks, and the off-kilter duet of guitarist Fisher and singer David Marion’s voices, clear the way for lonely trem-picked sirens. The song descends into deconstructed sludge riffs and implodes, concluding the record in a soup of Satanic noise.

If their track record is any indication, Fear Before’s next record (2010’s self-titled Fear, perhaps?) will bear even less resemblance to the cookie cutter, wrist-slicer screamo of their past… and probably won’t sound anything like this, either. They don’t care what you or I think. So, enjoy their newfound love of metal/noise-pop while you can, on this and on The Always Open Mouth. Knowing them, it’s sure to be fleeting.

The recording of Fear Before

song: “Fear Before Doesn’t Listen to People Who Don’t Like Them”

Tourette’s Guy endorses The Always Open Mouth

Links

Download (All Time Greatest Hits) (support the artists—pay the band if you like it)
Myspace