Inventory

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.

Best Of 2011

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.

Kentucky Nightmare

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.

Harry Pussy

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.

For more info:
Load Records
Siltbreeze
Out Door Interview with Bill Orcutt

Fall Mix

I posted this a few days ago, but here's a mix for your headphones. Inspired by walking around and the cold air freezing the snot in your nose.

Attic Abasement "A Werewolf"

Radio Flyer "(312)"

Lync "Silverspoon Glasses"

Ida Sessions "Summer Days"

Rockets Red Glare "Red Shift"

Tomorrow is Forever "And Now We Are Four"

Into It. Over It. "No Good Before Noon"

Thingy "Letterbomb"

The Anniversary "The D In Detroit"

Claire Danes "Adam, I Live For Danger"

A Wonderful "Under Cover(S)

The Gritty Midi Gang "Valentine's Day"

Piebald "Two Rocking Chairs on a Front Porch"

Boilermaker "Pathos Delay"

Tamiroff "Getting Out of Mt. Hope"

falldippy

Piglet

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

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.

For more information:
Arbor Infinity

Tapes

"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.

For more information:
Artforum

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.

Outer Space

Outer Space is the solo synthesizer endeavor of John Elliott. Elliott is a member of Emeralds with Mark McGuire and Steve Hauschildt. He plays a variety of analog synthesizers and keyboards. He also has a number of collaborations floating around out there. This includes Medecine Rocks with Alex Moskos of AIDS Wolf and Drainolith, plus Inner Spaced with Telecult Powers. Like most noise jammers, the man is prolific at putting out tapes and CDRs.



I caught Outer Space last summer on a tour with Drainolith at Soundlab in Buffalo. My friend Kyle was doing the sound and running a video projector for the show. He had these nature films of undersea life/scenes that fit exactly with the deep and bubbly sounds that Elliot was cranking out. It's weird how outer space and under the ocean match up sometimes. When the show was over, I bought the self titled Outer Space LP. It was a toss up between that and the newest Emeralds' album. I figured I could get the Emeralds someplace else and had better grab the record by the band I just saw. I made the right decision because Elliott made an album full of six glorious sci-fi synth excursions. It's my record of choice for breakfast on pleasant summer mornings.



For more info:
Emeralds at Last FM
www.arborinfinity.com
shesellsrecords.blogspot.com
deception-island.com

Chinook

Chinook is a four piece band from Michigan. I was first introduced to them on tour when we stopped in Kalamazoo and played the Strutt. We never really said much to each other besides the usual band banter or whatever, but I think it was because I was a bit nervous to follow them. They played so tightly and every instrument sounded so pivotal and perfect, what band wouldn't be intimidated? I know I was inebriated, maybe it was the August heat too, but this band carried me like a river.

Their four song EP Me All Night Long was recorded by Matt Ten Clay of Skull Studios and has some great moments on it. The band manages to mix their 1990's angular guitar driven sound with a lot of shoegaze effects to pull you in, but never have you lost in an effect or drone. 1:28 into "Poison Peanuts" for example, where the band's guitar players demonstrate some spot on guitar work as they pick a harmonizing lead, leads to some great delay and effects to close it out (3:22). If you're a fan of Castor, Piglet, Shiner, My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver or American Football, show this band some support. In a sea of 1990's "revival" bands, this is one that deserves more attention.

Here's a video we took of them playing the end of "Poison Peanuts" and "Jencon", both from their EP Me All Night Long. The band is also looking for a singer, so contact them if you're interested:

cameron.chinook@gmail.com