WHITE DOG

 

I have two options, and both are correct. I can either spend a lot of words trying to dissect sixteen minutes of guitar bursts and blurts and applying a deeper meaning to the sounds on 2009's Beer Guzzle. Or I can just say that WHITE DOG offer made ten minutes of droning, meandering guitar blurts and then played one of the sides backwards because I guess that's what you do when you're from Texas because drugs. You know how good it can be to put on a music and then forget that it's even there because it becomes a part of your environment? That is what Beer Guzzle does. I guess I had a third option, and I chose it. 

BEER GUZZLE

Members of: TOTAL ABUSE, THE SNOBS, MENTAL ABORTION, RAYON BEACH, MUTATING MELTDOWN, BREATHING PROBLEM, CAPTIVE, ARCHITECTS, FINALLY PUNK...but somehow it sounds like this tape was made by two-and-a-half stoners. 

SMALL REACTIONS

 

Not even really sure I have words for this. It came to me in a box a few weeks ago and I was smitten from the first listen just as I am smitten on a Thursday evening in preparation for a Friday posting and a long Friday at work. What is Night Reactions Mix 001 exactly? Shit, I can't even say what it is approximately....but it's more or less a politely damaged dark indie shoegaze thing that sounds like it escaped from 1992 Manchester through a tunnel and emerged in a basement covered in mud and sadness. You know....more or less. It's a truly gorgeous recording and it led me down a rabbit hole of releases that spans from the peppy "Cult Hero Jonathan Lewin" (2010) to the advanced indie pop of last year's Your Face Replaces Mine. This tape though? Today's tape? This shit will make you weep. You'll hear Movement-era NEW ORDER and early SISTERS dredging post modern dark indie like WAX IDOLS and TJO through '70s NY No Wave, but mostly you'll hear a brilliant and beautiful tape that came to me in a box. I opened the box and this was inside....it's the little things. The little things still happen, and they're still important.

NIGHT REACTIONS MIX 001

ZUDAS KRUST

 

Twelve minutes of blistering raw Indonesian DBeat? 

Sounds like a perfect Thursday. 

HERE LIES YOUR GODS

TSA

 

TSA were around SF in the 2010s. I never saw them, but this fuzzed out low end heavy hardcore was probably an absolute motherfukkr live and the bass-on-top mix is total an absolute motherfukkr. Shit sounds wilder a decade(ish) later than it ever did then. I guess. I don't know. I never saw them....at least I don't think I did. Seven minutes of destruction headed straight for your earholes. 

19814

SLINKY X

 

I love a tape that asks more questions than it answers. It's like when I listen to FANTASY (which doesn't happen nearly as often as it should) and I can't decide if the band is simply brilliant or just a brilliant pisstake (or both). And here I am listening to SLINKY X wondering if they are conjuring T. REX or VASELINES and accepting that it's probably neither but also potentially both....you know? And if you know what I mean, then you know what it means to love listening to a tape that asks more questions than it answers. Darn. is fully realized, brilliantly constructed and simply gorgeous to listen to. If Todd and I had listened to this in our 1991 Norman, Oklahoma living room we would have bent to the altar of SLINKY X....which makes me wonder how Todd is doing these days. I'm gonna write him tomorrow - because friends and shared experiences are not just important; they are irreplaceable. 

DARN. 

DEKREPIT

 

Fist banging white noize kång from Tacoma is pretty much all you need to remind you that the week is going to be a shitsystem. Te good news is that you will not just get through it, you will conquer it - don't believe me, then just blast "Cologne" and reassess. High points on this banger include the pop punk stutter riff in "Peace Or War" and "Taught To Bleed," the guitar tone/s throughout, the anguish in the vocals, the guitars in "Cosmetic Living" (and the backing vocals in same). A ferocious offering across the board....just let the title track lead you to victory. 

IF IGNORANCE IS BLISS...

•••

I would be remiss if I didn't comment on the name. I don't remember if I first heard the split with SCATHED or the split with CEPHLATRIPE, but they both rule and Seattle's DECREPIT remain one of the fiercest under the radar DIY crust/grind bands from the '90s. The Tired Of Licking Blood From A Spoon LP is an unfuckwithable masterpiece, and it's wild that a band 30 miles and 30 years down the road can just step into the same name by just switching out a consonant. 

SUBPIT

 

Once again, an envelope in the mail and once again, I'm amazed. The compulsion to create is once that I sometimes think I can identify with.....and then I look at the YSFWP / Music For People / Hair Clinic Family of savants and I remain quiet and humbled. This offering pairs frequent Escape visitor Max Nordile with one Sam Lefebvre (PREENING, WARM SODA) and features two quarter hour improvisational missives made from electronics, horns and found sounds - that compulsion is truly a thing of wonder. Respect.

THE MAIN DRAIN