masteller

Blotchouts – Lenora Guards the Egg

6.26.20 by Ryan Masteller

I couldn’t even imagine living in Alabama on a good day, let alone during this TIME of the COVIDs. But Blotchouts finds a way, the carnival-punk cacophony of “Lenora Guards the Egg” a greasy sparkle in the festering dirty river of human existence in the Deep South. Blotchouts probably can’t even wear a mask into the grocery store these days without the threat of getting beat up. It ain’t American to be forced to wear face coverings in public places, so anybody infringing on anybody’s freedom to walk into an establishment and NOT see a bunch of goobers covering their faces in surgical apparatus is ripe for a pounding. RIPE, I say!

Not that this has much to do with Blotchouts, or anything at all actually, and that’s before I even question my own preconceived notions of whether Blotchouts WANT to wear masks in public places. They may be the punchers instead of the punchees! At any rate, “Lenora Guards the Egg” is like listening to an itchy rash materialize on your skin and spread as far as it can before the antibiotics begin to do their dirty work. And that’s a good thing, trust me! Guitars irritate tender skin and synths squirt countermelodies like festering lesions lanced with the herky jerky rhythm section. That’s so gross! But that’s what you have to expect when you name your band anything with the word “blotch” in it – skin ailment metaphors are just par for the course here.

Skin ailment metaphors are probably par for the course in Alabama too, what do I know. You think those southerners are into songs called things like “Cockroach Milk” or “Enema”? How about “I’m a Baby”? Come to think of it, those aren’t so far-fetched. Still, the jittery jangle and abrasion of the wacky Devo’d maelstrom Blotchouts kicks up whips across the land, bursting through the borders of the Yellowhammer State and out into the great wider unknown. Weirdos getting picked up on tape decks from California to the New York island, just like Woody Guthrie promised. Did Woody Guthrie promise accessibly punk weirdness on the scale of Blotchouts when he wrote the New Testament? That’s a trick question – EVERYTHING was promised in the New Testament.

Buy Blotchouts and more, more, more from Pecan Crazy Records!

Related Links

Various Artists – Doom Mix Vol. IV

6.22.20 by Ryan Masteller

Isn’t it usually around the time of the fourth installment that franchises start to see a dip in quality? “Indiana Jones,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Halloween,” the Pearl Jam discography – nothing good lasts. Yet here we are, four years into the annual “Doom Mix” series from LA vampires Doom Trip Records, who, like clockwork, are celebrating the annual occurrence with a fourth cassette tape of the best the label has to offer. If you ask me, I’d say they’re playing with (gun)fire, spinning the chamber of their revolver in the Russian roulette game of quality musicianship, placing the barrel against their temple, and pulling the trigger.

I’m as terrified as you are.

But I’m also wildly intrigued, because the first three installments never suggested that quality would EVER be a problem, and, thus, the trigger clicks harmlessly and everybody goes back to what they were doing for another year. And here’s the real secret: there were never any bullets in the gun in the first place! It’s all quality, all the time for these Doom Trippers, and now that we’ve got that all out of the way it’s time to celebrate with sixteen more tracks of “freaking awesome.”

And they pretty much started this the way I would have started it if they had asked me my opinion on the tracklist. “Well, Doom Trip, I know this is a big ask, and I feel silly for even suggesting it, but is there any way you could start it with some Fire-Toolz? Angel Marcloid’s a pretty big deal right now, so that would be a guaranteed entry point for the uninitiated. Me? I’d be all over it. Then follow that up with some NMESH. (I know, right? Dreaming!)” 

So “Doom Trip IV” starts off with some new Fire-Toolz and some new NMESH, just like nobody asked me but should’ve. So I can’t stay mad at Doom Trip, because, in the end, I got my way, and isn’t that just how it should be? “Volume IV” keeps rolling with new faces and old, but all of them welcome presences among themselves. Want the alums? You’ve got Pale Spring (watch out for “DUSK,” super soon!), Mukqs, Diamondstein and Sangam, Rangers, and Heejin Jang. Dntel’s up in here, Tamborello in the house! (Sorry.) Personal faves of mine Ki Oni and KWJAZ show up. N00bs include Infinity Knives (ft. Bobbi Rush and Tyler Moonlight), maral ft. A.B.E., Cruel Diagonals, Lighght, Nordra, and Pauline Lay. 

So as usual, come for what you expect and get blown away by somebody you’ve never heard before. (Plus the Mukqs track here is kinda techno-y, which is awesome.)

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, did we break the curse of the fourth installment with “Doom Trip IV”? I think the answer is a resounding yes. Plus this tape’s dropping just in time for the summer, if you wanna blast it out your car stereo. (Which would be weird, I think, given the subdued nature of some of these tracks. Not that you’re going anywhere anyway with the COVID, unless you’re in Tennessee or Georgia or some other place where nobody cares whether people live or die.)

Good luck conjuring this already-sold-out nugget from the label! Use your dark magic on Discogs instead, or the black market.

Related Links

New Standards Men – I Was a Starship

6.12.20 by Ryan Masteller

We’re not going to have great ensemble music for a while, I reckon. What with self-isolation and social distancing, who’s gonna get together for band practice? Who’s gonna tour a full band around the country? Who’s gonna allow anybody in a studio? It’s all up in the air right now.

So we grasp what we can. Did I say “instant classic”? If not, New Standards Men’s “I Was a Starship” is an instant classic, a loaded t-shirt cannon aimed in the face of a superfan, and once that trigger’s pulled, there’s no amount of lawsuits or settlements that will make things go back to the way they were. In fact, just suggesting that you listen to this is going to probably set me up for multiple lawsuits. (I have no idea why I have lawsuits on the mind lately – I tend to be a sue-r, not a sue-ee [insert “Deliverance” joke here].)

That’s because “I Was a Starship” is road music for a series of fatal car crashes shot by Lost Highway–era David Lynch. It’s stoner metal and prog and the deepest, darkest lounge all smooshed together like auto wreckage in a trash compactor. Imagine Tonstartssbandht listening to a bunch of Bohren, or Explosions in the Sky getting their Sleep on. But all at once. AND WITH NO GALL-DANG VOCALS. What, you’re gonna mess up this mood with some jibber-jabber? I dare you to. I DARE you.

NSM is a quintet this time around, the core members of Drew Bissell and Jeremy Brashaw joined by Personal Archives’ own Bob Bucko Jr., Ike Turner, and Luke Tweedy (no, not THAT Ike Turner – he died in 2007). “I Was a Starship” is three tracks this time around (and forever), each an eleven-plus-minute jam sesh that finds the players in total kraut lockstep as they stretch and evolve ideas. And it’s loud – you can really crank this sucker up! So if you’re looking into your crystal ball and see a future bereft of awesome records from bands (my friend John: “Next year’s records are going to be the worst”), circle back to “I Was a Starship,” and flip 2021 right off (god, I can’t believe I’ve already given up on 2021 too).

Plus, the artwork. You see that octopus? *chef’s kiss* That’s courtesy of Daria Tessler/animalsleepstories.

Did I also mention that ol’ Warren Defever of His Name Is Alive fame mastered this thing at Third Man Pressing, home to human vampire bat Jack white of Edward Scissorhands fame? Now you know.

Edition of 100 out now on Personal Archives!

Max Zuckerman – The Corner Office

5.26.20 by Ryan Masteller

We’re not going anywhere anymore. At least I’m not. I’m staying home. There’s germs out there, and by golly I’m not going to get any of em on me. Luckily, I work from home, so I don’t even have to worry about braving social spaces like a workplace environment – my corner office is literally the office in the corner of my house. No public transit, no elevators, no lunch counters or cocktail hours – all that stuff is FILTHY with the COVID.

Max Zuckerman probably doesn’t have to worry about public transit or lunch counters. He probably has an exclusive, personal elevator to his glass-walled “Corner Office,” one that looks out over Manhattan. Cocktail hours? Forget about it. Everything in his wet bar is imported and sanitized long before it’s in his presence. He doesn’t share any of that, either – that’s his own personal stash. Why sully his presence with other people? That’s just folly in this day and age.

So he whiles away his time presiding over his business empire, and also making some great Steely Dan–inspired soft rock on the side. “The Corner Office” is how it happens, where it happens, why it happens. Truly success makes the man, etc., and Zuckerman oozes success. And not just success, but confidence too – and why wouldn’t he exude cascading showers of self-worth? All this is pumped through the PA, the atrium absorbing “The Corner Office” and ricocheting it at the perfect volume for all to hear. 

And so we’re left to ponder Zuckerman’s worldview, one where the most extravagant things are the norm and where a not-insignificant amount of money – say, $240 – can get blown on a trivial thing rather than on two weeks’ worth of groceries. It’s the penthouse life, and we can only dream of it. That’s what happens when you have Galtta cash.

Now, somebody get me $240 worth of pudding – I need to rub my silk-dinner-jacketed ass in it, just like Max Zuckerman does.

Available right now in an edition of 125 from Galtta.

Related Links

Matthew D. Gantt – Diagnostics

5.21.20 by Ryan Masteller

“Patella I GM Expo” ends its 18 seconds at the beginning of Diagnostics with a cymbal crash, a digital exclamation point on the track that seems intended as a “ta-daa!” to the introduction, a curtain call at the beginning of the album instead of at the end of it. It doubles as an announcement, something along the lines of, “If you liked this teaser, you’re going to love what comes after it!” Matthew D. Gantt’s not wrong in feeling proud of his album, even after only 18 seconds. He proves over the rest of Diagnostics that he deserves a little applause already.

The “procession of nested MIDI architectures, clip art serialism, and hypothetical kinetic sculptures suspended in virtual space” spirals out from there, assuming that someone like me is smart enough to get it, that my brain has been sensitized enough to compute the details and get what the heck Gantt’s trying to accomplish here. Good thing I’m up to the challenge. While you may assume prior to listening that Diagnostics is going to be a clinical trek through exhaustive (and exhausting) experimentation, often at a deeply scientific level, you’ll be pleasantly surprised that it is, instead, a diverse and, dare I say, inviting listening experience, in the most Orange Milk–y way possible. Sure it’s got the requisite digital mayhem, percussive hits and plosives ricocheting off in chaotic polyrhythms. But it’s also got heart, it’s got soul, which is something that’s intended to exist in a virtual realm should not necessarily have. Maybe the AI’s becoming self-aware?

Regardless, Gantt’s got an ear for off-kilter melodies (or maybe it’s his programs’ doing), thus removing cold, hard science from the equation. He’s able to produce and inhabit miniature sound-worlds, allowing imagination to soar through the landscapes. That he does this while at the intersection of experimentation and accessibility is no small feat, and proves that Gantt’s on the leading edge of technological sound art. Maybe that’s what happens when you work for Morton Subotnick as a studio assistant (as Gantt did from 2016 to 2018). It’s also me being extremely jealous.

Grip it and rip it from the source!

Related Links