Moth Cock is the duo of Doug Gent and Pat Modugno from Kent, Ohio. They create this backwoods type of noise that could only come from the mysterious parts of the Buckeye State. If you are familiar with the early days of the Alien Workshop skateboard company and their abstract video Memory Screen, then you know what I mean. I found out about Moth Cock from Alex Moskos of Drainolith/AIDS Wolf.
Gent and Modugno use a slightly different batch of instruments than your typical noise jammers by using a variety of woodwinds and horns. I think that's the musical term I'm looking for. Anyway, they run said wind instruments through a variety of effects pedals to produce a sprawling wall of sound. There's also chirps, bloops, and bleeps added into the mix for good measure. It's glorious.
Moth Cock have a bunch of tapes and records on such labels as FairChild Tapes, Tusco Embassy, ITDN Group, Pizza Night, and others. Tusco Embassy released their full length self titled album this summer in an edition of 300 so grab one while you can. It's got a vibrant green and orange screen printed cover and one side plays from the inside out.
For the last couple years my favorite band has been AIDS Wolf. I liked them a whole bunch before 2010, but they weren't at favorite status until then. They are from Montreal, Canada and are the trio of Chloe Lum on vocals and electronics, Yannick Desranleau on drums, and Alex Moskos on guitar and electronics. Chloe and Yannick started the band in 2003 with two guitarists. Over the years there was a decent amount of turnover at the guitar player position, so they reached a juncture where they had three committed members and decided not to worry about having anybody else in the band.
Of course my favorite band plays utterly abrasive unknown wave music.
I found out about AIDS Wolf in 2006 from a slightly less than glamorous Pitchfork review of their debut album, The Lovvers EP. Calling the review slightly less than glamorous is being polite. Never the less, I was intrigued since I was getting into bands like Lightning Bolt and Wolf Eyes at the time and bought the album. A friend I worked with was also into them so I had somebody to discuss their music with. We both thought they were brutal in a good way. They now were a band that I kept track of and would watch for new releases. Their was soon a split with Athletic Automaton and a second album, Cities of Glass. Both were released by Skin Graft, a label I used to be into and sadly had forgotten about over the years. I started checking out Skin Graft again and keeping up with their new releases. It was nice to see that they were still around to put out quality music. The next AIDS Wolf album was March To The Sea and was their last as a four piece. It was available for public consumption prior to the band's first tour as a trio in the fall of 2010. It maybe wasn't the best idea to have a new album that you will be playing zero songs from on its tour, but it wasn't like the band made any radical stylistic shifts that would alienate fans. If you were stoked on AIDS Wolf before, you would still be stoked on them. The band was taking chances and exploring exciting new sonic possibilities.
AIDS Wolf toured a lot and I caught them at Soundlab in Buffalo twice. In 2010, they announced a new tour. There was no Buffalo stop, but I noticed there was an open date for shows in cities that Fredonia was in between. I contacted their booking agent and was able to set up a show in Fredonia. I'd never booked a show before and was terrified that something would go horribly wrong. Fortunately, I think everything turned out alright.
The band was pretty haggard when they got to town as they had been on tour all over the US for the last month with a break at Dub Narcotic in Olympia to record Ma vie banale avant-garde. Dinner was a little awkward, but things got better as the evening went along. They perked up once their friends in D. Rider arrived. Once the show got going I think everything fell into place. Both bands played really well. I think all the people who needed to be there and would enjoy it were there. I had friends who came from Buffalo, Jamestown, and Cleveland for the show. Everybody was in a good mood by the end of the night. I was very much relieved. At this point AIDS Wolf officially became my favorite band, as I had gone the last few years without anybody occupying that spot.
Ma vie banale avant-garde was released in the fall of 2011 with a corresponding cross country tour to go with the double album. There weren't any nearby shows that matched up with when I could take off from work, except for one in Binghamton. This tour was also cryptically billed as the last tour so I felt I had to go. As luck would have it, a friend of mine from skateboarding was living in Binghamton. He knew the house they were going to play at and was down to go to the show.
The show was in a punk house that probably is only a few years away from being condemned and demolished. Every inch of the basement was covered in dripped and splattered paint so it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Decrepitness aside, it was a neat looking space. When we got to the show, AIDS Wolf had set up their merchandise table in a small room between the kitchen and the living room. They were with Val Martino, who is Unicorn Hard-On. It was great to see everybody again and meet Val. It was fun interacting with the various kids at the show and watching how the band handled them. For example, there was a guy who was blown away by the concept that bands still sold tapes. Needless to say, he didn't buy any tapes.
As for the show itself, it was a little weird. This band called Cloud Becomes Your Hand played first. They did some type of experimental psychedelic pop and wore funny costumes. I wish I had paid more attention to them and taken a couple of pictures because they were friendly guys. The next band was a relatively local hardcore band. I saw none of their set and hung out upstairs the whole time. I think a good chunk of the crowd was there to see them because they were releasing a 7". Their crowd wasn't feeling AIDS Wolf at all. At shows with a variety of bands, you can always tell who is there for what band, who is going to be open minded about things and who maybe needs to leave. So there was a little bit of tension in the air.
AIDS Wolf set up after the hardcore band. While they were plugging in and turning on their wall of amps and gadgets, a girl in the crowd took offense to the loud noise. She said something that Chloe called her out on for saying. It got dicey for a second, but calmer heads prevailed. I'm positive the girl and her crew left about two songs in. The best part was that Alex kept soundchecking the entire time. With the hassle behind them, AIDS Wolf got to play. I think they had one of the best sets I've seen them do. Val ended the night with a batch of warm and fuzzy electronic beats. I'd never heard Unicorn Hard-On before, but any band that is friends with AW always turns out to be good. The bands were supposed to crash at the show house, however the party didn't seem to be dying down and they wanted some quiet. My friend was cool with them staying at his house so we all escaped to there. It was much calmer and there were cats so everybody was happy.
This past March, the band made the announcement that they were breaking up. Academic pursuits, art world opportunities, difficulties in touring, growing older, physical distances, and changes in what passes for underground music versus what should actually serve as underground music were factors in the decision to call it a career. That last reason is why AIDS Wolf matters more than ever. It was a little surprising that they decided to end the band, but I sort of had a feeling it would happen sooner or later. David Yow of The Jesus Lizard had said something to the effect he knew his band was going to have limited life span when he started and it wasn't going to be forever. Given the similarities between the two bands, you just have to enjoy the ride while it lasts.
I think the appeal of AIDS Wolf for me goes beyond the music alone. As a printmaker, I think it's great that Chloe and Yannick have the Seripop screen printing entity. Their artwork has been used on most of the band's releases, which provided a well defined visual image to go along with the music. I like it when a band puts in that extra attention to detail. It has been fascinating to see Seripop evolve from doing gig posters to doing large scale sculptural installations made out of paper in museums and galleries. Alex has his Drainolith solo project, which explores fractured synthesizers and guitars to create a different type of noise. They have influenced me as to what other bands I should check out, too. I've learned about Athletic Automaton, Outer Space, Pre, Sightings, Unicorn Hard-On, and U.S. Girls. Anybody they pick to tour with always turns out to be worthwhile, even if I had completely never heard of them before. It's all of these things that make me like band. And I should mention that they are wonderful people as well.
While I am sad that AIDS Wolf is coming to an end, it doesn't feel like it is an unhappy ending. The band is going out on the top of their game and on their terms. Even though this is an ending, it isn't the final ending. Alex has a Drainolith full length out on Spectrum Spools by Editions Mego. Chloe and Yannick are going to continue with Seripop and pursue academics. There's also going to be one last recording from AIDS Wolf. Nine years is a long time and to have four albums that don't suck, plus a bunch of singles, splits and tapes is quite an accomplishment. I'm happy I got to be there for part of it.
Last show:
05/11 - AIDS Wolf, Child Abuse, Gordon Monahan, and Not The Wind, Not The Flag - The Garrison, Toronto
About ten years ago, I decided that I was going to start keeping track of how many CDs I bought each year. I was doing this mostly for curiosity's sake, so I'd mark down on a little sheet of paper a hash mark every time I got a new disc. Gradually my note taking got a little more detailed as I would include data on how many albums I bought from the current year and the year immediately prior. I wanted specifically to see how much new music I was buying for some notion about being up to date with what was happening in the present day. I also started marking down if an album was from a Canadian band. I have no idea why I started doing that, but after doing it for a decade, I'm not going to stop now. Within the last couple of years, I've started buying more vinyl and then I began picking up tapes again, so those were added to my list. I keep track of the total number of releases I buy each month for control purposes. Sometimes I add wrong and it helps to have a second set of numbers to square away the math. After looking at last year's slip of paper covered in hash marks, I decided that I was going to make a form to record all the data on. This is what I came up with. It has columns for CDs, records, tapes, the current year, the previous year, the Canadian content column and a total for each month.
These are my favorite albums of 2011. As always my rules are that they have to have been released during the calendar year, they have to be proper albums, not compilations, and that I have to have listened to each a lot during the last twelve months. That last one, along with the formality of the release date, should be the two main criteria in determining an album of the year. I also tried to pick only one release from each band or label. No real reason for that, I just felt like having as much variety as possible.
The list goes band/album/label for those with questions of that nature.
01. AIDS Wolf - Ma vie banale avant-garde - Lovepump United - Fugazi could do no wrong for me in the 1990s. AIDS Wolf is at that point for me in the 2000s. 24 songs on two LPs of heavy duty unknown wave music. Brilliant. The cover art is by Robert Beatty. Beatty also does Three Legged Race and his "As Ed Sunspot" tape on Night People is great.
02. Cave - Neverendless - Drag City - Proving the earth is not a cold dead place, Cave take you on a warm and bouncy ride that you don't want to get off. This is epic driving music.
03. Disappears - Guider - Kranky - Old fashioned 1990s Space Rock a la Bailter Space. And it's on Kranky, the original home of all things far away sounding.
04. Factums - Gilding The Lily - Assophon Records - Gilding The Lily is a double LP of murky and weird Krautrock tunes. They only made 700 of them and I grabbed one at Spiral Scratch in November after hearing their tape on Night People. I wasn't sure what to expect as it was somewhat of an impulse buy. I'm glad I got this record as it became the best purchase of the day. I feel like I use the word Krautrock too much and it might not even be the right word, but I feel it vaguely fits what I'm liking.
05. Kitchen's Floor - Look Forward To Nothing - Siltbreeze - This Australian band reminds of Guided By Voices and Pavement in a way. Not that they are trying to copy either, but it sounds as if they could have been contemporaries of the two in the early 1990s. There's a big difference between being inspired by and flat out copying.
06. Sightings - Future Accidents - Our Mouth - Sightings make utterly massive and abrasive noise as a power trio. It took me a while to get into them for some odd reason and it finally clicked with this record.
07. Six Organs Of Admittance - Asleep On The Floodplain - Drag City - Ben Chasny has blended a good mix of mostly instrumental acoustic guitar songs with smidges of random sounds here and there for texture. This is probably my favorite Six Organs album as whole from the last couple of years since it feels a little lighter and looser than other recent releases.
08. Pete Swanson - I Don't Rock At All - Three Lobed - Pete Swanson used to be in Yellow Swans. "I Don't Rock At All" was released as a bonus CD with the deluxe edition of Three Lobed's 10th anniversary box set. Swanson recorded a few tracks of swirling guitar atmospheres for the project. It has the best album title ever.
09. Trailblazer - Successor - Night People - I'm a sucker for things that are honestly done in a lo-fi manner. I've been getting more into analog and/or cheap synthesizers, too. As always repetitive driving beats are great. Treating the vocals as another instrument by keeping them even or down in the mix is how I prefer my singers. Trailblazer does all of these things.
10. Woods - Sun & Shade - Woodsist - Yes, I like Woods. It doesn't seem like I should, but I do. In particular I want them to make an all instrumental album of Neu! sounding songs similar to Out Of The Eye and Sol Y Sombra.
****
These were things that I liked a real lot, but weren't necessarily proper albums, although some were. The same rule of listening to a lot over the year still applies.
01. Cloaked Light/Pale Blue Sky - split 12" EP - Arbor Infinity - Blissed out drone. This is two beautiful pieces of music to crank first thing in the morning.
02. Dirt Eyes - You Are A Kind Magician, Indeed - Bad Drone Media - Three songs of non-techno drum and bass destruction. I always listen to Dirt Eyes on the iPod on the walk downtown to the bars. Sometimes it gets depressing to go from listening to this to whatever music is playing at the bar.
03. Medecine Rocks - cassette - self released - This is a collaboration between John Elliott of Emeralds and Alex Moskos of AIDS Wolf. Elliot plays synths and Moskos plays guitar. There's drumming, too. It's awesome. Also deserving a mention is the Outer Space/Alterity Problem split cassette on Deception Island. Anything with Elliott's analog synthesizer magic is worth buying.
04. Slutever - Pretend To Be Nice 7" - Bantic Media - Slutever is two girls from Philadelphia playing skuzzy and fun punk rock. They played the best show I saw all summer at Sugar City in Buffalo.
05. various artists - Not The Spaces You Know, But Between Them box set - Three Lobed - Three Lobed Records made a box set to celebrate their ten year anniversary of releasing Bardo Pond albums. It is a four record set featuring unreleased material from Sonic Youth, Comets On Fire, Eternal Tapestry, Mouthus, Bardo Pond and a couple others. The cover art for each record is a dated piece of technology, such as a rotary telephone, typewriter or film camera.
My friends and I booked this band a few years ago when they needed some date filled or something. I remember them playing an alright set, but for whatever reason it didn’t hold my attention. I heard the album a bit after and had no idea it was the same band. I remember booking them again after a few of us really got into it and only the lead singer showed up. Great songs, great album. I hope they’re still around. Pick up "Take Her Favour" if you can find it or have a soft spot for good folk-ish stuff.
There was this noise band called Harry Pussy from Miami, Florida. They existed from 1992 to 1997. The two founding members were drummer Adris Hoyos and guitarist Bill Orcutt. Both contributed vocals. They also had a second guitar player to round out the lineup. Mark Feehan and Dan Hosker occupied that position over the band's lifetime. The rumor has it that they got their name from a nickname that John Lennon used for Yoko Ono.
I had never really heard of Harry Pussy until Load Records put out a compilation in 2008 called You'll Never Play This Town Again. It collects a bunch of material from 1997, including both studio and live tracks. This release is slightly repetitive in that it includes multiple versions of the same songs taken from different shows. It doesn't feel as repetitive as that sounds due to the inclusion of stage banter between the live songs. There is even a show in its entirety, making for an 18:00 minute track. You'll Never Play This Town Again gives you a good sense of what the band was like.
Harry Pussy played some of the most abrasive music ever. The blistering dual guitars created a wall of no wave bliss over top of some epic drumming. Adris Hoyos is hands down one of the best drummers ever. The sheer amount of energy she put into the songs is amazing. In addition to hitting the drums as hard as possible at a high tempo, she was screaming at the top of her lungs for the vocals. I think what works for me about this band is that they achieve all the things I like without falling into any clichés. Or maybe they stuck to the clichés that I like. You could describe the typical metal or punk band in some of the terms that I used because both of those type of bands play fast and have noisy guitars, but they would be miles apart upon comparing the actual sounds.
"At the time I figured this is as popular as this kind of music is going to get. I felt like Harry Pussy was probably all anyone would ever want to hear along these lines. And then around 2005 people in these bands started writing me and I started to pay attention, and I realized I was wrong" - Bill Orcutt
The band was somewhat of a singular entity during the mid 1990s. There weren't really many other bands doing what they were doing at this time. They did garner the support of Sonic Youth and Lou Barlow. Harry Pussy even toured with Smog and Sebadoh, which would have been a show to see. Of course when anybody is ahead of the curve and underappreciated in their own time, it usually means their impact tends to be felt sometime in the future. Such is the case with many of today's no wave and noise bands who list them as an important influence, including AIDS Wolf, Hair Police, Magik Markers and Sightings.
Notes: 1. Harry Pussy also have a pair of CDs that are still available from Siltbreeze. Ride A Dove is an album and What Was Music? is a collection of assorted compilation tracks. They released a number of 7"s and live LPs as well. Most of those are long out of print, but can probably be found on the internet. 2. Guitarist Bill Orcutt resurfaced in 2009 with a 7" and a LP. Both were collected by Editions Mego for a 2011 release called A New Way To Pay Old Debts. This record features Bill on an old acoustic guitar with four strings. 3. There are actually a lot of interviews with the band from 1990s 'zines that have made their way online. Just make sure to include the word "band" when you do the old Google search.
Piglet was a trio from Chicago. Asher W. on guitar, Ezra S. B. on six-string bass and Matt P. on drums. They always made me think of Trees, Swallows, Houses era Maps and Atlases without vocals. They use choppy angular riffs without any loops or effects. Their EP Lava Land came out in 2005.
Arbor Infinity is a record label run by Mike Pollard and based in Brooklyn. The label is all about ambient drones, noises and soundscapes. It's been in business since 2005 and has released music from Emeralds, Pocahaunted, Yellow Swans, Outer Space, Zaimph, Robedoor, plus a whole lot more. Things are usually on vinyl or cassette and in limited editions of 300 to 500 for records and 150 for tapes.
I kind of found out about Arbor Infinity last summer after I saw Outer Space. I never investigated what else the label had to offer until this summer. I ordered a few records that I've been listening to a lot lately. Secret Abuse, Pale Blue Sky and Cloaked Light have all been in heavy rotation on the turntable in my living room. The three bands create the afore mentioned ambient droning soundscapes. There is a degree of warmth and accessibility to what each is doing. The descriptions of the albums on the website was probably what caused me to pick out these records. All three are dealing with a sense of space and distance, but not so much a specific, clearly defined space. It's a more abstract space with parts that disappear or are obscured. And they sound great cranked up really loud.
One little thing about Arbor Infinity that I appreciate is the consistent design on each release. I'm seeing a lot of Helvetica type in the liner notes to go with album art that borrows from either minimal color field painting or drawings that vaguely resemble Jean Dubuffet, to generalize things here briefly. There's enough variety to keep everything interesting while maintaining a visual unity from record to record.
"It is an embrace of limitations and constraints, at a time when everything is available." - Hua Hsu
Who knew that in 2011 I'd still be listening to music on cassette? Yet it turns out that I am and I've even bought three new tapes in the last few weeks. My old SONY Walkman is functional. (Of course I was always one of those kids who took really good care of his toys.) A couple of months ago when I needed a new CD player for work, I saw the SONY CFDS05 on the shelf at Wal-Mart. There was no way I wasn't buying the thing. It has a radio, CD player, line in for an iPod and a cassette deck. I'm of the age where I've got a box or four full of tapes under my bed so the option to listen to them again was appealing. This new stereo changed any tape that I might pick up from being a novelty to support a touring band into something that I could listen to regularly.
"Cassette aficionados also see aesthetic possibilities in the format's constraints. While digital compression techniques ensure that songs we hear on the radio or in MP3 format are bright and loud, cassettes - particularly those dubbed en masse - slightly blunt the dynamics of a song. Perhaps it's no coincidence that many cassette labels specialize in works that are ambient, ethereal, or noisy. Fidelity is sacrificed for a different kind of listening experience." - Hua Hsu
Beyond listening to old music I haven't heard in years, I think part of my fascination with cassettes is that bands I like are releasing them. These end up being the ambient/ethereal/noisy jammers plus the occasional punk band. They are making a tape to have as a document of their music and/or to raise a little money while on tour. They are doing it for the sake of doing something. It does feel special knowing that you are buying something that was made in a limited edition, often with custom artwork. It's a tangible object when everything else is becoming a collection of ones and zeros on a server somewhere. It doesn't feel somewhat forced, like the part of the current vinyl revival where the dinosaurs of rock are having their classic albums repressed for a deluxe edition.
I'm not going to make any grand claims about the greatness of cassettes. I like 'em and they bring back a certain degree of welcomed nostalgia of when I first started buying music. The audio quality isn't always the best and they can be fragile, but for the most part everything has sounded respectable with the tapes I've bought. They are what they are and that's fine by me.
Notes: Both quotes are from an article by Hua Hsu called "Thanks for the Memorex" that appeared in the February 2011 issue of Artforum (Volume XLIX Number 6). The writing was about the slight return of cassette culture in this current digital age.
Radish White Icicle doesn't fully support the idea of shopping at Wal-Mart or schilling for SONY, but if they make a good product or happen to carry a good product, than that's cool by us.
