Complete with their "Freedom Bus," afros and long-ass sideburns, these two New York homeboys (Nosaj and Sebastian) look like they're refugees from the '60s, but slam down some hardcore shit. The whole thing is real "retro," especially the old-style samples of stuff like the James Gang, Miles Davis and Grand Funk Railroad -- no sampled metal or hip-hop anywhere here, which is cool.
These two pot-smoking brothers are environmentally-conscious, too. On "Mother Nature" and "Good Times," they attack the big corporations for fucking up the planet, while tossing in some reggae-style rhythms on the slow, stomping thunder of "Mother Nature."
I like the use of unusual instruments, too -- there's what sounds like a steel drum on "Mother Nature" and a harmonica on "Half Seas Over."
The even do some decent rhymes about their favorite car (a Ford Maverick), in a deep, way-up-front groan over some heavy tribal noise. On the mellow tip, "Lazy Smoke" is a doped-up pot dream with some smooth sax on the side, and "Mars" jumps from fast hardcore to psychedelic, jazzy swirling.
The more I hear of this, the more I like it. The liner notes say they're inspired by everybody from Houston's own Geto Boys to Black Flag to Jolt Cola, but they don't sound like anybody else. New Kingdom aren't everyday rappers -- they've got a style all their own, ripped partly from the '60s but changed and made new.
Swirlies
Blondertongueaudiobaton
The cool cobbled-together cover art perfectly exemplifies this album -- "collage." On the whole, the Swirlies play shoegazerish pop, but there are so many disorienting -- and yet somehow "appropriate" -- jumps from place to place that this album is difficult to categorize. It opens with twisted synthetic video-game noises, uses all kinds of gimmicky sound tricks and leaps from mellowness to squealing guitar in seconds.
I'd call this a skillfully-done blend of pop melody and "noisiness," not as disturbing as Sonic Youth but not as blissfully mellow as My Bloody Valentine. The dream-pop element is definitely there, but underneath lies a darkness to the music that sometimes comes through in the lyrics: "Every night, every night, I scream a little..."
The Swirlies seldom seem to stick with a melody for more than half a song before wandering off on strange tangents and styles.
This is tough to listen to track-by-track. None of the songs really stand out in any way, but instead they all run together to make the album a complete whole by itself. The music is dreamy and dissonant at the same time, with weird samples and effects jumping in for good measure. At first, this album made no sense at all to me. But after a few more listens...
Medicine
The Buried Life
Easily one of the more unusual bands I've enjoyed listening to in the past few years, Medicine (basically the vehicle of guitarist/vocalist Brad Laner) has unfortunately taken a bit of a wrong turn.
On the band's debut, Medicine came up with a "wall-of-noise" sound akin to My Bloody Valentine, but used the noise less as melody and more as sheer noise. Laner weaves feedback, guitar and static together in a way not many other folks can, and it's a mindfuck to listen to.
Now, while the "Medicine sound" is here in abundance on The Buried Life, so is some other stuff I wish they had left out. For one, this is way too danceable, much more than what I heard off Shot Forth Self Living, their debut. A few of the songs, like "Babydoll," are little more than standard "dream-pop" stuff, and one song, "Fried Awake," is Madonna with feedback, all the way down to the "Vogue" vocals. What went wrong, guys?
The Buried Life has some good stuff on it, nonetheless. "I Hear" is more overdriven and feedback-laden than the first few tracks -- much more like the old Medicine. "Live It Down" starts with piano and then switches abruptly to guitars and distorted vocals, making some sweetly-distorted pop and sound like an otherworldly Christmas carol.
The best song on here isn't really a song, though. The last track, "The Earth Is Soft And White," is several minutes of nearly-industrialized feedback, random bass noise, dripping sounds and static, with the guitar sound placed somewhere between very distorted train noise and a buzzsaw. This is what makes Medicine interesting, not the dream-pop.
From ear-shattering screech to demented birdcall, from low-end bubbling to wrenching feedback, Brad Laner does brilliant things with a guitar, things most people would call unmelodic noise.
There's a difference, though: a lot of bands make noise, but not many make a tightly-controlled, precise, rythmic noise.
(The Rice Thresher, Volume ??? No. ???, November 5, 1993)