Breakfast Cat wants to know “I CAN HAZ MANDALA?”

1. My Lonesome Only Friend
2. It’s Only Another Parsec
3. Hope Is A Butterfly, No Net Its Captor, She Beats Her Wings And Softly Sings Of Summer Scent And Childrens Laughter (Virus Of Silence)
4. Hearts That Hanker For Mistake
5. Mientras La Veo Sonar
6. March Of The Caterpillar
7. White Lies
8. Bury It Down Low
9. Breakfast Cat
10. Bled To Be Free (The Operation)
11. Bring Our Children Home Or Everything Is Nothing

Bad news, Rx Heads: the Bandits’ horns are gone, and no one even stole them out of the van. Finishing a move they began with 2003’s game-changing The Resignation, the Rx Bandits are now just another alt-rock squadron armed with axes and drumsticks. Boo, hiss! Well, and keys, too. But boo, hiss!… right?

Wait, all ye aging naysayers in checkered pants! What the Bandits give up in instrumental uniqueness, they retain in their flair for strong performance and songwriting. Little comfort for third wave ska punks, perhaps, but the facts remain. A continued penchant for live band ensemble performance during the album recording process ensures warm, authentic grit and chime which truly makes the tunes here shine. No gloss, no fakery, no adornment, just musicians putting their music to tape. Mandala waves a big, colorful flag for experimental rock with soul.

The record makes first contact with Matt Embree singing “in the middle of a moment, in the dark of a dream”—watery organ and tickles of electric piano reel the listener into “My Lonesome Only Friend”’s accelerating daze, then the band pummels us with steamrolls of guitar and dire vocalization.

“It’s Only Another Parsec” further solidifies the notion that it’s okay to nix the brass. The inventiveness coaxed out of a flotilla of guitars and keys here is certain singalong slamdance fodder for the consistently brilliant live Rx Bandits experience. A brief spurt of synthesizer kicks things off, then puts the guitars in the driver’s seat for a rollercoaster of stop-start, riff-based fun. Stick around for the beautifully utilized falsetto at 2:25 and a sail down the gentle sea of fluttering, butterfly wing guitars which comprise the song’s minute and a half outro/segue into “Hope Is A Butterfly….”

There are so many little moments that make this disc a joy—the guitar line that crawls out of the speakers at the beginning of “March of the Caterpillar,” the chaotic, blasting exuberance of “Bled to Be Free,” the weird noises and pitch perfect direction changes of “Breakfast Cat,” or the simply overwhelming power of the realization that this is the band live—that it’s hard to find fault with a group so clearly energized by the process of creating music. If Mandala has a problem, it’s in the learning curve. It’s decidedly more difficult to jump right in.

The Resignation had the strength of a solid, rollicking, LOUD opener with a message that mandates a sing-along (”Sell You Beautiful”). Mandala’s immediate predecessor, 2006’s And the Battle Begun, opened with an a capella widget with catchiness far exceeding that of a radio jingle. Mandala is more of an exercise in resurrecting the concept of the album.

That’s not a bad thing if you have a healthy attention span. Perhaps that is part of Mandala’s unspoken purpose: to get the fair weather listeners to crawl out of their woodwork. But it is still a criticism. While it’s an insult to relegate the Bandits to purely “on shuffle” territory, there are few single tracks here with unabashedly poppy bits, and that has certainly not been true of their back catalog to date, even as recently as 2006.

There’s still plenty of win on record here. The words hit on a much deeper level than the superficial, spoonfed afterthought of many a brigade of radio rockers. As for Embree’s vocals, they still age like wine; he pours out glasses of blue-eyed soul on every track. And it’s no small compliment that these musicians are scarily tight as performers. Their enduringly altruistic, peacenik lyrical mantra in mind, the Bandits have the potential to go down in history as a rockier, 21st century Grateful Dead. They sound perfectly comfortable on Mandala, and that’s a good thing. Let’s all join hands now, and pray they don’t get too comfortable just doing their thing, and keep the music flowing out, and the fans flowing in to shows.

Links

Myspace

1. Something In Your Mouth
2. Burn It To The Ground
3. Gotta Be Somebody
4. I’d Come For You
5. Next Go Round
6. Just To Get High
7. Never Gonna Be Alone
8. Shakin’ Hands
9. S.E.X.
10. If Today Was Your Last Day
11. This Afternoon

aww yeah brah, nickleback is the shit!!! let me tell you i have been a fan since CURBED witch was they’re first cd actually. ok not many ppl no this but nickleback are named after me!!! cuz chad usta werk at a store and he had 2 give me back nickles cuz i wood bye my chew with dolla dolla bills yall hahaha. alrite enuff jibber jabber lemme give you a run down of teh trax and my ratings booooooooooooooy!!!!1111

1. Something In Your Mouth 10/10 - fuckin sweet song. chad rites such good lyrics dat british ppl want 2 ban him from speaking in der country. lol its like they want 2 put something in his mouth!!

2. Burn It To The Ground 1/10 - i took points off b-cuz have u evah tried 2 pick up a “fistful of whiskey” like in this song????? it is really fuckin hard dawg i aint kiddin. so fuck off chad 4 trickin me like that and no da bottle doesnt bite U unless its really a dawg or a rabid koala or somethin. damn man fuck koalas dude, dey think their all pimp an shit but their just all gay sittin up in eucalyptus trees eatin n shit. fuck them

3. Gotta Be Somebody 12/10 - da lyrricks are so true man cuz everyone wants to feel like some 1 cares and deres gotta be some 1 4 me like dat… WITH SOMETHING IN THEY’RE MOUTH!!! hahahahaha

4. I’d Come For You 69/10 - i wood come for you too brah lol. this is gonna B on powerr ballads #87 4 sho-zees

5. Next Go Round 7/10 - funny story!!! one time chad covered me in jello and gave me a bath then he started up my mower and rode me up and down da lawn!!!!!! we were kinda drunk but theres nothin 2 do in canada wen all U have is jello and a lawn mower and 2 drunk guys.

6. Just To Get High 84/10 - cocaines a hell of a drug lol chapels show!! good times man good times

7. Never Gonna Be Alone 10.9947/10 - lol he wants to B alone fo-eva wit her and her pink thong and SOMETHING IN HER MOUTH!!!! hahahaha

8. Shakin’ Hands 7/10 - dis song is ok but i dont really want to have sex wit the witch from da wizard of oz shes all green and weird and even with a schoolgirl skirt dat is sum weird shit man id rather ride chads lawn mower again

9. S.E.X. 1000000000/10 - dis song is so insitefull man like wen he says s is for the simple need e is for the exstasy and x marks da spot damn dude that is sex rite there. haha u can mark my spot any day chad. lol S.A.F.E S.E.X. A.I.D.S. and C.O.N.D.U.M.S. shood be on they’re next cd fo sho lol.

10. If Today Was Your Last Day 10.847512/10 - hells yeah every day mite B ur last day dude so make shure u listen 2 good music liek nicklebakc wile u snort coke!!! or pepsi lol!!!!11

11. This Afternoon 3.14159265…/10 - i like pie dis aftanoon. and SOME KIND OF BEER IN MY MOUTH!!!!! LOL

alrite so as U can C dis is liek totaly a fuckin rockin cd and U shood go bye it rite now dude cuz nickleback is gonna B N da rocknroll hall o fame sum day and den every1 is gonna be liek dude nickleback is da shit yo just liek dey say aboot (lol “aboot” get it cuz their canadian!!) metalicka!!!!! /m\ rock on chad!!! i wood b dere drinkin & pimp slappin hoes n thongs n europe wit U but i dont think da gas stashun wood let me have time off!~!! bcuz dey are teh ghey dude u got a big brake writin songs aboot bein a drunk assh0l3 an all i get is a fuckin blue polo shirt i have 2 wash every month

… fuck u chad i hate u

1. From Roots to Needles
2. What’s in the Ground Belongs to You
3. Terra Incognita
4. Above the Earth
5. Below the Sky
6. The Sun is in the North
7. Thirty-Six Silos
8. The Flames of Herostratus
9. Rebuilding the Temple of Artemis
10. Deus Ex Machina

You’re reviewing some band that wishes trees could talk?

Yes. In case you couldn’t tell from the artist name/album title, If These Trees Could Talk are a post-rock band. They like to give fancy, poetic, introspective titles to things because their music is mostly or completely instrumental.

“Post-rock”? Should I be expecting farm equipment and banjos or something? Cows, perhaps?

I wish! But no. Like most genre labels—try some “post-hardcore,” or “post-punk,” or (eventually, I’m sure) “post-slowcore”—this genre label makes little literal sense. It’s supposed to mean “after rock.”

… So, should I be expecting banjos? I am afraid.

Nah. Post-rockers are like classical musicians that got lost on the way to the music store. In lieu of more traditional orchestra paraphernalia like strings and horns, they make do with the traditional rock band ensemble: guitars, bass and drums. And effects pedals. Don’t forget the effects pedals. No post-rock troupe is truly complete without copious amounts of delay/echo/reverb.

Expect a lot of slow, heady build-ups from minimalist near-silence into massive dins of heaving, rupturing crescendo. Rinse and repeat… or just step out of the shower while you’re ahead, because there’s as much bland, unoriginal, over-imitative and crappy post-rock as there is in any other genre of music. The major difference, of course, is that 100% of post-rock bands have next to zero chance at getting radio airplay.

Then what the hell should I listen to the Trees for, if they sound like every other boring, slow post-rock band?

Here’s why: they don’t. Sure, it’s not something you necessarily throw on at parties, as there are no words to yelp drunkenly along to, but their admitted Tool influence rears its perfectly manicured, yet mane-tossing head, and this is a good and welcome thing in this realm of music. Others might just go for the easy way out—broody intro makes way for crashing, drony crescendo—but the Trees are happy to play around with something more interesting to bring about their idea of catharsis than the “9 minute long crescendo = song” formula popularized by many of their forebears.

Take track 2, “What’s In The Ground Belongs to You.” At 4:14, it’s “over time” for radio play in some jurisdictions, but brief by post-rock standards. The intro is busy enough to hook the listener in, and then about 0:56 in, a decidedly Adam Jones-y delayed guitar line steers the tune into “damn, that’s cool” gut reaction territory. But the real feast doesn’t start until 2:32, when the band pulls out all the stops, launching first into a pulse-pounding mini-crescendo, and then into a metallic, thundering riff peppered with bullets of trem-picked lead guitar.

Will I still be awake by then?

Yep. “From Roots to Needles” lets the wind blow the branches for a bit, but it picks up rather fast, as well. For those who wish it, there are also quieter moments on the disc, such as the 57 second segue “Terra Incognita,” or the minor key, sorrow-drenched closer “Deus Ex Machina.” If These Trees Could Talk seem to know their audience might have diminished attention spans, however. The slow moments don’t translate to sleepy moments.

So it’s absolutely great. What’s wrong with Trees?

Talking about My Bloody Valentine’s masterpiece Loveless, one reviewer bashed the record for having “no hooks.” “Try humming any song here from memory. You can’t.”

While post-rock can be full of hooks in its own way, it is impossible to hum along to in most cases, and If These Trees Could Talk are no exception. This doesn’t take away from the propulsive power of many, many moments on this album. However, it could be a dealbreaker if you’re driving somewhere and just want something to scream along to. The Trees definitely produce what I call “parlor music”—music for listening to in the bedroom, or the parlor, probably with headphones—albeit parlor music for tastes that don’t mind distorted guitar riffs every once in awhile.

So is there post-post-rock yet?

Go away, boy, you bother me. Ask Aphex Twin or Merzbow.

The star of the show is undoubtedly Mr. Joe Walker, “America’s most beloved unemployed actor,” who seems at times near comatose while listening to Young Jeezy or Fuck Buttons (not that I can blame him), but opens up afterward with nuggets of gold:

“I wonder how this would go over with some of our more prominent black people who have fought so hard for the black race, and then this guy destroys it with a song like this. [..] We have some Girl Scout cookies on the table today. Don’t forget your Girl Scouts, and buy a box of cookies and enjoy them. I love the Thin Mints.”

Don’t we all?

About the Decemberists: “They used to be known as the Novemberists. [...] Maybe we ought to hold back on the rating because they could get worse, or they could get better. Who knows?”

Someone start that cover band, now!

If you have to watch YouTube, Breakfast at Sulimay’s is a winner. Joanna Newsom and Pitchfork get creamed harder than the corn in a school cafeteria. My heart soars like a hawk.

The Thermals, Joanna Newsom, The Decemberists, Clipse

Joe Walker interviews the Fuck Buttons

Young Jeezy, Animal Collective

Electronica composer/chiptuner Lain (or Piotr) Trzaska, who records under the moniker she, is a bit of a favorite at the Three Star Smash “office”… and probably anywhere else where there’s considerable nostalgia for retrogaming and the associated inspiring soundtracks therein.

It’s come to my attention that his 2008 album Coloris has been sold on physical CD by Japanese label Pony Canyon since January 21. I mention it because this means Coloris is no longer free. If you waited too long, you can still get your hands on it from Pony Canyon here.

Also check out an interview with she on Ningin.com. Trzaska talks about how he got into making music, working with FastTracker (those familiar with chiptune/demoscene culture should know all about this piece of software), future plans, and how he isn’t Japanese.

This is your brain on Final.

1. Slow Air
2. Caved
3. Fearless Systems
4. Disordered
5. Inanimate Air
6. Subterrane
7. Smeared Air
8. Descendre
9. Dead Air

If “patience is a virtue,” welcome to the promised land. Listening to Dead Air feels like being stuck in a traffic jam. This hour-long slab of brooding noise is for folks who love the dark and discordant. You need to be half-awake, half-asleep, or half-stoned in a windowless room to get through it in its entirety more than once.

Sometimes it’s difficult to envision the moments in life which call for Dead Air, or albums of its ilk. No, ambient listeners aren’t searching for melody or even convention, so it’s not like you’re going to put this on at the football stadium. What situations, or people, are best served by music that sometimes sounds like a defective refrigerator (”Dead Air”) and other times like a swarm of interstellar cockroaches (”Inanimate Air”)?

The answer is, most probably, zombies. “Slow Air” and its machinist’s wet dream distorto bass are for when they want to rock out, “Disordered” is for those times when they’re in more of a “shuffle around at the mall mumbling ‘brains… brains!’” mood, and “Smeared Air” is the perfect soundtrack to the aforementioned traffic jam. A synth totally devoid of life or vigor drones for infinity, the sole, droning backbone in the piece for splashes of short-circuited musique concrete modem static and at least one (shockingly, for this record) busy bleep-blip “solo” at about 3:50 in.

“Fearless Systems” is perhaps the most straight-lacedly ominous pick of the bunch. This time the synth plays more than one note, and its creepy-crawly ostinato gels perfectly with lurching bass undulations and an incessant chattering noise in the background like that of some kind of mechanical woodpecker. Other unidentifiable sounds “flesh out” the piece… leaving it still a bit lacking in the vitality department. But that seems to be the point.

Final is a.k.a. Justin K. Broadrick, a.k.a. the main man behind noisegazer three-piece Jesu. Which means that if you can’t stomach Jesu, listening to Final will be like gargling battery acid. Loiterers and armchair superheroes might get something out of it. If medical marijuana is involved, there’s a good chance that if you stick with Dead Air long enough, it will put you to sleep before you can turn something more lively back on. And that’s always preferable to having to watch the fucking Superbowl.

Links

Band website
Myspace

The spirit of Hendrix compels you!

1. Sandcastles
2. Sinking Ship
3. The Day The World Stopped Turning
4. Cry Of Architeuthis
5. Touch The Sun

Opus Däi’s Tierra Tragame LP was a nice pick-me-up in 2006. As if sensing the need for a record to tide us over in-between albums from dredg or Fair to Midland, these Angelino alt-metalheads “Rain”-ed down old school crunchy guitars and gripped throats/sacks with slow, epic arias like “Bella Christa.” If it were the ’70s, the vocal touchstone would be Robert Plant. Since it’s the ’00s (for now), the go-to faux-castrato is now Matt Bellamy. Yeah… kinda. But with a touch more balls (read: no pianos allowed).

So, of course, now Opus Däi have been forced to replace their vocalist for Touch the Sun. It’s not entirely a bad decision—worse would have been to call it quits altogether—but Opus newcomer Tim Neighbors, while completely competent (shit, can you sing that high?), is a new flavor of aggressive, and slightly more on the shrieky side at times.

Don’t worry, nothing tinnitus-inspiring. But his performances sometimes lack the oomph Chris-Paul Basso brought to the table. Take 1:41 of “Sinking Ship”… double-yew tee eff, mate? Was there a CD manufacturing error? How did I end up with part of a My Chemical Romance tune in here?

Such gaffs, though, are exceedingly rare. Nothing foul can be said about guitarist and consummate badass Atsushi Miyamoto’s continued parade of nailgun-to-the-head axework. His parts tie the band together with a singularly Hendrixian vim. High energy tunes like “Sandcastles” or “Sinking Ship” peg the headbang-o-meter into the red without deteriorating into sludge like every other hard rock band on the gravy train/radio. Instead, Miyamoto opts for propulsive riffage, stabs of staccato chordwork and long, out-of-nowhere slides, front and center. Like Jimi, he’s capable of exercising restraint, too. The title track is a hushed, finger-plucked affair, and “Cry Of Architeuthis,” while still electric, is downright Spartan in construction.

The jury’s still out on their new pipes, but Opus Däi in general are something any good Guitar Hero would enjoy. If they make another full length, you’ll see Zeppelin fans dancing in the aisles with glee. Let’s hope they keep on pluckin’. Cross your fingers.

Links

Myspace

To tide you over till then, take a look at some crap that I could have done without in ‘08, if you’d like, courtesy of Amazon. It might make you feel better, or worse. Either way, it’s a winner!

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