PEASANT YERMO

 

Q: Is there a place for vaguely funky outsider hippie cult oldies music?

A: Yes. Here.

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I don't know how to describe PEASANT YERMO, and typically when that is my conundrum I tend to blather on nonsensically. I'll try to avoid that today and simply suggest that you listen for yourself and draw your on conclusions and comparisons. I hear East Side Story comps, Krautrock, GONG, 4-track bedroom improvisations....and a San Francisco band from the '90s whose name I cannot conjure and thus I will spend days and (hopefully not) weeks trying to remember. I saw them at Kommotion and gave the guitarist free bagels often and they had a lot of amps. Anyway, this is really damn peaceful music and I love it and please focus on "Bullwinkle Sutra." You're welcome. 

HOMESPUN DANCE

KONTRASOSIAL

 

Ferocious ScanDBeat from the subgenre's heyday in the mid-2000s. You can imagine KONTRASOSIAL added to a Pointless Fest basement gig or Chaos In Tejas after show easily; shit would have been the perfect recipe for joyous chaos...and if you know what I meant then you know precisely what I'm talking about. Fist banging kång and lightning fast mid-tempo moshes, it's like THE TOTAL END and DISMACHINE linked arms and doused the entire warehouse with beer. Relentless, in your face and dedicated to the craft - this is the DBeat band I was dreaming of when I dreamed up KS MUTATION with Jon and Anton fifteen years ago....that one four-song set wasb't enough, but we have KONTRASOSIAL.  

KONTRASOSIAL

MUSCLEGOOSE

 

You know how sometimes you have more questions when you're finished than you did when you started? Enter: MUSCLEGOOSE. First off, they're called MUSCLEGOOSE. Secondly, they're from Arkansas. Now for the rest.....they exude genre-less '90s USDIY punk sometimes, but sometimes sound like some new century Northwest Indiana shit. Shades of squirmy shit punk and I swear a couplke of times I wondered if they were gonna remind me of SHELLAC (they never did...but it was close). There's a song called "Stand By Your Mandwich" that gave me UOA energy but those punks would have never written a song about a sandwich. Also there's a song called "Sgt. Pepperoni's Provoloney Hearts Club Sandwich" and obviously that's gonna raise an eyebrow (and yes I'm serious about the song title). It doesn't sound like anything I know and I'm still asking questions after three consecutive listens and still I feel like these sounds are already in me....in different forms. But what do you expect from a band whose follow-up release was titled Yah Mo B There, God? It's Me, Michael McDonald?

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD BUFFET

HEDGEFUND

 

A dozen years after HEDGEFUND initially appeared on these pages comes their post script. I posted their self-titled debut in 2012 and Apreiron was snail mailed to me with the companion OHR // P.A.Y. shortly thereafter. I sat on both of them for the average lifespan of a trash panda before I unleashed the former on you a few years ago but still I waited for this one.....just because. "OHR" is a brutal sonic exercise, painful noise and deliberately manipulated sound while "P.A.Y." is an even rawer version of the band who hurt us with their two previous releases - howling, desperate. You're going to recognize the sounds here....but you'll never hear them the same again after you listen to them like this. This band was relatively short lived and I fear the waves they made were rather small, but damn this shit was good. 

OHR // P.A.Y.

COVID SS

 

I don't want to start talking about isolation and it would be disingenuous if I tried to talk about Covid-era isolation, but suffice to say that 2020 was a weird time. Some people shut down, and others felt the spark of opportunity (or desperation?). The result of that reality was....some killer recordings. This is one of those recordings. Punk rules, ok?

COVID SS

MARY ANN

 

This sounds like some dead ass '90s "melodic hardcore" aka "skate punk" formed from the solidified drippings of the Fat scene that oozed into every international crevice. It just took a little longer to get to some places, and thus Hit The Road didn't come out until 2004. If you toured in the '90s then you've heard this band, or at least the version of this band that you played with at a VFW in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Or Joplin, Missouri. I think you get my point.

HIT THE ROAD

THE WOODEN NICKEL JASS BAND

 

Sometimes you just need a little something to make you feel (a little) good, you know? Turns out that little something for me yesterday was Sacramento's THE WOODEN NICKEL JASS BAND, a tape I never saw coming until it was making me boogie. You see, sometimes I just start ripping things without listening to them - rip first and listen later - if it's good then it gets an earnest, "stop everything" listen but sometimes (admittedly) it gets a "listen while you edit" listen. But occasionally I get a "hey what's this?" feeling and I stop....and listen. That happened yesterday, and even though this is light years removed from a tape that I think I actually need, it's a tape that I apparently needed in the moment. That's worth far more than the $1 price tag. New Orleans jazz, show tunes, Western Swing....maybe a touch of high school jazz band for good measure? Tough to describe the sounds and justify the effect they had, but music is a motherfukkr man. Had several twinges of "Down Yonder" from Red Headed Stranger and it's almost the King's birthday so maybe that was a factor but......really this one just got plopped in the deck at just the right time. 

SHUFFLE OFF THE BUFFALO