Kaleidoscope Death - Litost (2009)

Litost is a word we don't have in English. It's Czech and means, amongst other things, a state of torment created by the sudden insight into one's own misery. A feeling that is the synthesis of many others: grief, sympathy, remorse, and an indefinable longing. Pretty heavy. This album, maybe heavy in lyrical content, is anything but miserable. Unlike many of his previous albums, Chuck Chambers has firmly planted himself in the rockus world of punk-rock—experimental noisy punk rock, at that. Chuck lets it all hang out on this one. Scratchy distorted guitar, spazz drums and blistering bass lines drop in and out of these 12 songs in an unexpected, lively, and berserker fashion. Almost unrecognizable, Chuck's voice yells and shouts his frustrations and contempt for all things contemptable. Honestly, I think his vocal chords were meant more for this ferocity, then anything else. Being a big fan of the previous 25 (?) Kaleidoscope Death albums, the energy on this one took me by surprise. Every punk enthusiast in Greensboro should crank this shit up loud and drive around town in your beat up car with your stupid faded high school bumperstickers on the back. Crank it, go a little nuts, get drunk, ditch the car, jay walk, spray-paint some stop signs, bark at some dogs, piss in the woods, then hitch a ride home and try to make out with your housemate(s).

Songs:

1. on the clock

2. the saddest sadist

3. sender

4. watch it time out

5. unsubst

6. gravel

7. fingers

8. litost

9. mass culture shut in

10. tired

11. #1

12. shitty

Sonic Fuel to get StupidCrazy To

Kaleidoscope Death on myspace

Geezer Lake - King Frost Parade (1997)

Alternative Press magazine said that, “North Carolina’s Geezer Lake pick up the baton from June Of 44, Grifters, Unwound and Sunny Day Real Estate and Parade is a hodgepodge of influences that makes for 11 songs with more cohesion and thematic focus that has been heard in some time. Filled with equal parts beauty and ferocity, King Frost Parade is simply startling.”

This was their 3rd and final album. The band broke up in the late 90s. Scotty Irving, who still lives in Greensboro, now plays as Clang Quartet, a truly crazy/amazing solo electronic/noise/experimental project that is comprised of the father, the son, the holy ghost, and Scotty.   He puts on quite a show. Like the Raymond Brake, Geezer Lake was before my time in Greensboro, so I missed out seeing them play live.  I'm posting this older stuff up here because I think it's important for all the younger Greensboro rockers to get a little bit of a history lesson - and these albums are damn good. Sure, at times you can tell they came from the 90s, but sounding like where your from ain't always a bad thang. 

Get it here

Raymond Brake - Never Work Ever (1996)

So here's something different: Greensboro indie/post-punk from the 90s. The Raymond Brake are definitely one of the better bands to come out of Greensboro. Unfortunately, they existed before my Greensboro time, so I never got to really experience their music.  Lead man, Andy Cabic now lives in California and is the man guy for new folk band Vetiver, which also features members of another 90s indie/post-punk outfit Rebar. Vetiver often collaborates with Devendra Banhart, so I guess they're doing alright.  It would have been interesting though, to see what would have become of them had they kept on with the experimental rock music like what is on this disc from 96.   

ENJOY

And if you like what you hear, and want some Rebar to go with your Brake, check out this post on my brother's blog: Raymond Brake/Rebar Split 7"

INVISIBLE: RHYTHM 1001

Here's a video I put together of footage from INVISIBLE's month long show at the Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, VA.  

INVISIBLE - "Irresponsibly Electric" (2009)

INVISIBLE's post-post-post-punk-rock debut. Recorded in 2008 when they were consistently playing as a four piece with experimental electronicist Dan Kaufman (the Neon Sea, Miso Skitzo).

The first 9 songs on "Irresponsibly Electric" find INVISIBLE playfully at their gnarliest: noise battles & surf rock, death-core & dance-grooves, war screams & dub-reggae. After exorcising their punk rock demons with various genrecidal techniques, INVISIBLE closes the album out on a relaxing long collage of improvisational pieces using instruments found in an elementary school's music room as well as electronic beats, live sampling, and guitars.

This album is available for purchase from the band and some local stores (Greensboro - Maya Gallery). There were only 100 physical copies made and most have found homes. Being that this incarnation of INVISIBLE is no more, there are no plans on making more copies.

Free download

Check out INVISIBLE's web page for too many videos and pictures, plus info on upcoming performances.

America Reads - Humming in the Night Skull (2008)

America Reads is a dark spacey sound collage noise experiment conceived by one R. Lloyd Mason. Released DIY style on tape, the album consists of two tracks: (Side A) and (Side B).  Each side is about 20 minutes long and takes the listener on a journey through the dark matter of space in a lo-fi noiseship held together by jangling glass bottles and cans.  While floating in the void, you pick up a signal from an alien race, but either they are speaking too quickly, or you are hearing too slowly—you can’t quite make it out -- it doesn’t matter anyway, because your radio device, which is controlled by a toy piano, only works half of the time anyway.  In the end, the crumbling church bells lead you home again, only to discover that while you were gone, time turned in on itself, leaving only a negative of where you once lived. 

Download the trip here

visit America Reads at myspace here

Secret Message Machine - "Giants, Madmen, and Ghosts" (2008)

Shedding much of the lo-fi aesthetic of past releases, Secret Message Machine’s 4th album sparkles and shines with crisp production, airy vocals, and thoughtful arrangements. Michael Barrett has been releasing music as Secret Message Machine for over five years, while at the same time playing in countless Subjective Collective projects, including Blank Blank. In the first few moments of hearing Barret’s deep vocals, you might be tempted to think: “This sounds like that guy from Smog”, or you could go the way of the Go Triad, saying that the vocals “echo Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields) with its organic melancholy tone and reverb”. But I don’t know about all of that. Barrett’s personality (and thus songwriting) is far from the smart-ass, sad clown schitck of Merritt, or the downtrodden slit-your-wrists stylings of Bill Callahan.  “Giants, Madmen, and Ghosts” is a beautiful layered experience, expressing much more complicated thoughts and emtions than just everyone’s old pal melacholia. 

Accompanied by Erik Chaplinsky (Summer Camp Casanova) and Chuck Chambers (Kaliedoscope Death), Barrett’s songs contain the best elements of singer/songwriter indie rock, with no cliches or tired sounds. Each track, although fronted by seemingly forlorn vocals, springs to life with intricately placed layers of bass, acoustic strumming, magical effects and rock guitar coming and going at just the right moments. The songwriting comes off in an extremely natural way, making the transistions from one song to the next easy, smooth, even ghostly—like, hey is this a different song, or a different part of the one before it? This album definitely has flow. Actually it flows so well, I’m always surprised when it’s over. With 11 songs, it clocks in just over 30 mins, proving that there’s never anything wrong with leaving the listener wanting more.  

Highlights include: 

the opener “Insomnia” - busy drums, drone, slide guitar, backwards casio, --”We’re all Guitly! We’re all Crazy!”  so good. 

“Literary Criticism” - mostly acoustic -with some otherworldy effects laden violin playing.

“Ghosts” - haunting vocals, flowing rhythm, casio melody, ghostly.

“Greensboro” - peepy little piano ditty about a donut run. Apparently for Michael, Greensboro and sugar highs go hand in hand. Maybe I need to get with the program and visit Dunkin Donuts. 

There’s not a bad song here.  A must listen for fans of lo-fi, dyi, indie singer/songwriter stuff, in the vein of Sebadoh, Netural Milk Hotel, Summer Camp Casanova and Kaliedoscope Death

Download it here.

Visit Secret Message Machine on myspace, here.

Romancer - Romancer (2008)

I have to start this off by saying that you if you have lived in Greensboro for the past couple of years, love rock music, and haven’t seen Jonathan Moore peform in one of his two bands,Tiger Bear Wolf or Health (r.i.p.), then you have no idea the scope of amazing music this town has to offer.  

I first saw Jon with Tiger Bear Wolf in 2003 - the unlikelypairing of explosive punk ferocity with 70s prog-rock style monster riffs was enough for me to almost run down Lee St. to the nearest tattoo shop and get a TBW heart on my upper arm. Tiger Bear Wolf is still blowing minds in local venues, - not as often as some would like, but see them if you can-- they are not to be missed. Jon, who provides Tiger Bear Wolf with most of the singing, and half of the guitar work - later formed Health, --- a sort of introspective alt-country realization of the Velvet Underground. Group harmonies, epic guitar solos, powerful yet minimal percussion, and on top of it all, Jon’s soulful vocals. 

But enough about the past and onto the present.  

Romancer finds Jon at his most experimental - which isn’t to say this is a weird album—In fact, in his experimenting, he offers up his most abstract and also his most accessible at the same time.  The self-titled album opens and closes with the Fripp/Eno-esque “Wheels Within Wheels”, produced with the almost forgotten technique of recording on reel-to-reel tape then physically cutting it and splicing it together again to produce a geniune tape loop. Creating layers of guitars and keys that echo and delay in the depths of a pulsing ambient drone.  The last thing you’d expect to find inbetween these spacey bookends is the feel good hit of summer (“The World Is Exploding”) - but it’s there—it’s catchy—and it makes me loathe the winter. 

Now, I’m no bible scholar, but  “Moses” seems to be a narrative of Moses, complete with a 3/4 tribal beat and splashed with bursts of horns.  Jon comes off as a deranged preacher, hitting his climax of crazy yelling about blood and snakes. Combining intimate stripped down songs with full blown rockers works really well on this mini-album by multi-instrumentalist riffrocking songsinging Greensboroian.  

Download Romancer’s self-titled album here.  

Hey, it’s really good. 

visit Jon at www.myspace.com/romancergso

Summer Camp Casanova - High Windows (2007)

Summer Camp Casanova is one of many of Erik Chaplinsky's incarnations. If you live in Greensboro and have attended a few shows, chances are you've either heard Erik play, or were standing beside him in the crowd.  Erik is one of the founding members of the Subjective Collective, a small group of musicians/friends that often rotate in and out of each other's music projects.  A few projects Erik has been or is involved with are:  Blank_Blank and the Wilson Street Warriors, Poodlestick, Snackster, Hogwild, Aaarrrgghh and Secret Message Machine. The guy must have a notebook full of myspace passwords... geez.  

Blank_Blank, the most consistent of his projects, has been around since 2004 and I'm definitely a big fan, but I gotta say that High Windows really hits the spot for me. Blank_Blank plays mostly instrumental slacker rock in the vein of early 90s lo-fi favorites Sebadoh and Pavement. And while there is some of that sound here, there's a lot more experimenting going on. Erik finds joy in incorporating found sounds into or on top of his music . Like him, I'm a sucker for the sound of some forgotten instructional record on top of keyboards or rock music - on this album, two sampled highlights deal with the benefits of marriage, as told by a 1950s record, and some guy talking philosophy on death and dying - probably some famous guy. 

The instrumentation switches around a lot on these 9 tracks.  The first track is a repeating voice loop speaking of high windows, god, the devil, and so on.  Hide & Seek has a sneaky ambient droney sound going on in the background behind the laid back slack rock guitar, drums and bass.  Mt. 52 is all electronic, dark and creepy.   

The album drifts back and forth between full band instrumental rockers, lo-fi acoustic numbers, voice samples, fuzzed out keyboards and electric guitar stylings reminiscent of Lou Barlow (Sebadoh, Folk Implosion) and sometimes the less aggressive side of Archers of Loaf or Polvo. Regardless of the experimentation, the dark mood and songwriting is consistent and well worth a listen.    

Tracks: 

1. High Windows

2. Hide & Seek

3. Mt. 52

4. Beach Song

5. Part 2

6. Thousand Armies

7. Somnopolis

8. Aubade

9. Call it a home

Download High Windows free here

Invisible live on local Fox WGHP

Invisible was asked to play some new material from their recent typewriter/keyboard project live on High Point's local Fox channel.  Little did Fox know, one of the songs they played was making a statement about Fox's biased views.  

The song is called "Binary".  It is about groups of two that compliment and define each other in direct relation to the other.  Not exactly like opposites, but close.  The song starts with everyone's favorite binary, one and zero—as in digital binary code.  Others that follow are: "black:white", "north: south", "up:down", and "hot:cold".  Eventually they start becoming a little less clear, like "hate:love" and "cop:criminal".  A cop should be the complimentary other to a criminal, but that's not always the case here on reality earth.  Finally, just for Fox - Invisible ends on "news:propaganda", followed by a sample of Fox news host E.D. Hill saying "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently."  (in reference to a gentle fist tap exchanged between Michelle and Barack Obama before a speech).  

Did WGHP totally miss the text on the screen and their own infamous racist quote?  Are they just too much of an infotainment factory to catch something poetic and artful? Chances are they weren't paying enough attention, and still aren't.  You'd have to type "fuck fox" or something stupid like that in order for them to see it.  Invisible was truly invisible to Fox WGHP. 

Due to bad lighting, the text can be hard to read, but look closely-  you can still make it out.

Workday/Schoolnight - Electronic Trash (2008)

Tracks:

1. radio w/s

2. The Children

3. What I Want

4. Square Music

5. the Representative

6. Electronic Trash (Refuse)

7. Train to Sleep

8. Michael

9. Going to Work, Working

10. Rewire

11. The Other End. July 19, 2001

12. Immunity

13. Inmemory

Download album for free here

Kaleidoscope Death - Kaleidoscope Death's Odyssey in Confusion and Contemplation (2007)

Kaleidoscope Death is probably best described as experimental lo-fi rock played mostly on acoustic instruments.  (At least as far as this album is concerned.)  Recorded on a 4-track in his hometown of Greensboro, Chuck Chambers has been putting out tapes and cds under the name Kaleidoscope Death since 2004.

What at first seems like a collection of simple chorded songs with verses and choruses quickly becomes a washy aural dream, not unlike listening to shoegaze music.   In fact I'd say that Kaleidoscope Death exists somewhere between My Bloody Valentine and the more lo-fi side of the Sebadoh incarnations.  True to shoegaze, the vocals are often lost in a sea of instruments. On KD's Odyssesy in Confusion and Contemplation more often than not, percussive acoustic guitars dominate the space as the mostly unintelligible vocals float around in a muddled mess of warm tape analog earnestness.  Unlike many shoegaze bands, there isn't any sense of grandiosity going on here - in that regard Kaleidoscope Death is a lot like Lou Barlow recording whatever diddy happens to be on his mind at that (possibly stoned) moment.  

Made for no one except himself, Chuck seems to put out an album every 6 -12 months.  Like many of us, his solo project is not his only musical love affair.  He is part of the charmingly incestuous Greensboro collective known as the Subjective Collective , where he plays in several different projects (Blank_Blank, Secret Message Machine.. ).  The words "subjective" and "collective" not only rhyme, but are an obvious statement of purpose: The music made by those individuals and groups is about their subjective experience, nothing else.  They're making music only because it feels really fucking great to make music.  That's rock-n-roll—Even when it's folk, synth pop, noisetronics, death metal, psychedelia, (especially psychedelia), or beach music.  (Okay, not beach music.  gross.)  Although I'm not officially part of the Subjective Collective, I'm friends with many of those fine young men and women, and share the same mission statement that's kind of half-assedly hidden in their name. 

What you will find on Kaleidoscope Death's Odyssey in Confusion and Contemplation is an array of passionately strummed acoustic guitars, haunting whistling, drunk tambourines, fuzzed out electric guitars, creepy voice samples and backwards feedback.   Chuck's welcoming murky vocals surface through the acoustic noise and radiate his modesty.  

Oh, and I almost forgot, (as it is easy to forget), that Chuck only has one hand.  I think it's always been that way, but I've never asked him or anyone about it.  Because it doesn't slow him down in the least, it is easily overlooked.  When he plays drums in the slacker college rock group Blank_Blank, he uses electrical tape to attach a stick to his handless right wrist before beating the living hell out of his drum set.  

Chuck is a talented, shy, multi-instrumentalist introvert, with only one hand, who will stop at nothing in his quest to play music forever.   

To learn more about Kaleidoscope Death and become his really real true friend, go to www.myspace.com/kaleidoscopedeath

To hear more about the Subjective Collective visit one of their sites.  New   and   Old.

There are some pretty funny names here.

Tracklist:

1. heading off pts. 1&2

2. someone else's relic (headed off)

3. on going into town

4. matter of consequence

5. somanyroadsbluescelebration

6. cautionary little village

7. confusion suite

8. i want no place in your world

9. (what's so fun about) normal people

10. contemplation suite

11. one man homecoming precession waltz

12. somanyroadslbuesshuffle

13. the first stone

14. the first stone's throw

15. routine

16. death dream

17. somanyraodsbluesrelief

18. never to old to fuck shit up

19. last song

20. heading off pt. 3

get Kaleidoscope Death's Odyssey in Confusion and Contemplation here. 

Miso Skitzo - Songs: for an old boy (2008)

Songs: for an old boy is a companion piece to a film titled Old Boy, (which admittedly I haven't seen)—but according to my sources, it is from 2003, by South-Korean director Park Chan-Wook, and won much critical praise.

Miso Skitzo is Dan Kaufman.  Dan has played in numerous punk, experimental and electronic groups over the last decade or so: Sugar on Shit, Vacation, Verboten Jogen, Penfield-88 and Invisible (the latter two with me).  Dan is all about some home recording and has put out many noisy electronic releases on cds and cassettes under his solo project name, Miso Skitzo.  Dan currently resides in Chicago where he and his partner run the "lazy CDr/tape label", Dirt Road Technologies.

Skitzo's album is an instrumental collection of dark noisy samples,  screeching overdriven tones and warm washes of industrial frustration.  A few electronic beats surface here and there, as well as some pleasingly minimal synth lines.  For every chaotic or abrasive moment, there is an equally delicate down-tempo counterpart.   Honestly, there is a lot going on on this album.  As Dan's moniker suggests, the music comes across as if it was made by a crazy person.  Then again, the movie it is based on is about a man who was trapped in a hotel room for 15 years and then seeks vengeance on his captors.  The emotions the character of the film must have felt in are certainly represented in this music.    (That's all I can say about that, considering I haven't seen the movie.   Yet.    I probably should, huh?)

If you took all the synthesizers, beats, scream-singing, and spoken clips away from a Ministry album, and left only the khooorrrrrrooohhhhrrrrrhhhhhzzzzzzzz sounds, then added the delicately played sparseness of the end of a Nine Inch Nails song, you'd have a Miso Skitzo album.

Tracklist:

1. the gas

2. octopus part 1

3. for those that cut

4. exoskeleton

5. we eat the living

6. octopus part 2

7. on the bridge

8. old boy

9. why

10. song for a little dog

11. octopus part 3

12. haircut

13. snow in the blood

enjoy it here

Penfield-88 (2007)

Penfield-88 was a one-off kind of project.  1/2 of Invisible (Dan Kaufman -aka Miso Skitzo and Bart Trotman aka Workday/Schoolnight) improvising on electronics; small yamahas and casios, samplers, a loop pedal, a bass and a guitar.  We (Dan and I) played together in this arrangement only three times.  Once to record this 5 song cd and two shows.   The music at times has a lightness to it -- strange samples floating in and out with minimal guitar over looped electronic beats.  Other times things are more industrial, like on track 2—which sounds like some sort of synth saw cutting through a piece of space trash.   Tracks 3 and 4  drift atmospherically in small puddles of delay and swells of warm clouds of static.  

The name of the project came from the Philip K. Dick book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.  The Penfield was a machine that allowed the user to dial in their desired mood.  Setting 888 would cause the user to have a desire to watch TV regardless of what was on. 

The five songs are simply titled #1 - #5.  

Enjoy it here (It's free to download.  Just enter the 3 letters it asks you to, wait a few seconds, then click the download tab)

Acid of All Ruins

Spacey, rhythmic, sparse, minimal, krautrock-inspired.   This is an improv performance by a group of 4 guys from June 15, 2008 on a live radio show on WUAG in Greensboro, NC. Reminds me of parts of some Can albums - and other similar artists from the Kosmiche Musik scene of early 70s Germany; Cluster, Harmonia, Neu!, early Kraftwerk, Ash Ra Tempel, Popol Vuh, etc... 

One track that runs 33 minutes — but has a few nicely timed breaks of silence here and there, coming off like song breaks.  

If anyone's interested in who's doing what, here's the rundown:

Lloyd Mason: Synth, Djimbe

Lee Gunselman: Synth, Bongos

Justin Swayze: Synth

Andrew Weathers: Various Percussion

For a bunch of people who don't play together as band, they come of sounding really on the same wave length -- so much, actually, it's a little scary at times. 

A really great listen.  Lots of full percussion (played by a percussion major), droney keyboards, blips and bloops, some nonsense chanting, and no guitars.  Experimental. 

Enjoy it here.