“House Of Jackpots”
video directed by Frostine Shake
Rocket 808’s self-titled debut album came out in late 2019, and luckily, absolutely nothing happened in 2020 to divert the world’s attention away from the release. Combining the primitive analog drum machine of 1970s New York underground icons Suicide with the raw guitar of Link Wray, Rocket 808 blasted rock n’ roll guitar into our new, weirder present. Now Rocket 808 returns with a new LP, ‘House of Jackpots,’ taking up where the previous record left off while adding some new elements to juice things up.
Still channeling Alan Vega, the Cramps, and Duane Eddy influences from the first LP, ‘House of Jackpots’ further explores 1980’s television cop show themes and Ry Cooder film scores. “Punk rock Mike Post” might not be something you knew you needed, until you hear the first cut of the record. Slide guitar gives you your own personal screening of Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” in your mind’s eye, or imagine if instead of the Barry De Vorzon intro, “Simon & Simon” opened with a trash-rock instrumental instead. Saturated in big-screen iconography whether its surf tunes for 100-foot waves or David Lynch soundtracks for a grimy 1970s Las Vegas strip, ‘House of Jackpots’ takes you out of our current reality that frankly, we all probably want to forget anyway. Covers of 1950s proto-goth Jody Reynolds and reviled eighties electro-rockers Sigue Sigue Sputnik give nods to the obscure rock n’ roll weirdos of the past while dragging them into the future.
Recorded by Grammy-winner Stuart Sikes and mastered by Crypt Record’s Tim Warren, ‘House of Jackpots’ takes electronic punk rock guitar noise into the 22nd century.
Rocket 808 is John Schooley – guitar, drum machines, vocals
Produced by John Schooley
Recorded, engineered and mixed by Stuart Sides at Big Orange
Mastered by Tim Warren. Vinyl lacquers by Carl Saff
Water Damage – ‘Repeater’ (12XU 133-1)
out April 29, 2022
There is something really special about music based on drones. Whether it’s the vocals of Pandit Pran Nath, the ARP 2500 of Eliane Radigue, or the nearly-blown amps of Sunn O))), by changing the listeners’s focus on details to one that favors flow, drones are uniquely capable of transporting our brains far far away. The debut LP, ‘Repeater’, by this loudly droning Austin septet is a goddamn splendid example of how the process works. Using the motto, “Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation,” Water Damage create glowing fields of post-rock lava that pretty much suck you right in and boil you alive.
Water Damage, while technically a septet, actually operate in various configurations, with the proviso there should always be two drummers and two bass players on hand. They prefer if each of their sonic ideas takes up a whole reel of tape, and once they start they don’t look back. Everything proceeds towards an imaginary end point that is only achieved when the tape starts flapping. What a way to run a railroad!
But the folks in the band are all vets of various projects – Spray Paint, USA/Mexico, Marriage, Black Eyes, Thor & Friends, among others — so let’s assume they know what they’re doing. And why not? They sound fucking great. Their approach to the form is less front-loaded than most of their peers, and the surface of their sound is sometimes ruffled by aural events of an un-drone-like nature. But the main gush is usually a blend of harmonic tones and textures pointing towards a goal that is just out of
ear-shot, just over the next bluff, and perhaps forever just beyond our reach.
So remember to drink plenty liquid while you spin this fine album. Nobody wants you to parch. –Byron Coley
photo by Angela Betancourt
Bass : Nate Cross
Bass : Jeff Piwonka
Bowed Guitar : Travis Austin
Drums : Thor Harris
Drums : Greg Piwonka
Drums : Mike Kanin
Synthesizer : George Dishner
Engineered and mixed by Max Deems at Diseased Tapes Billion Dollar Studio
Winged Wheel is made up of four musicians whose worlds have intersected for years without them ever all being in the same room. Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Expensive Shit), Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana), Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray), and Matthew Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo, solo) have been longtime participants in various d.i.y. communities, crossing each others’ paths through shared gigs, working on releases, or taking the stage at Cory’s small upstate NY bar. Each player has developed their own personal practice of improvisation and home-recording, and Winged Wheel began by chance when Cory asked Fred (drummer for Detroit summer punks Tyvek) to send over some rawly-recorded drum loops to jam over. Cory tracked rangy guitar and bass parts over these repetitive loops and songs slowly started taking shape. Matthew’s guitar layers took these foundations to a whole new level, and Whitney’s submerged vocal tracks solidified everything, elevating the project from a soup of partially formed ideas into something intelligible. The entire album was written, recorded, and mixed in remote collaboration, eventually turning into a balancing act of precisely arranging sonic details and maintaining the formless excitement the music began as. This paradoxical process can be heard in the final form of the album, a continuous zone that manages to be strange and amorphous while still carving out space for four distinctive musical personalities. It’s a sound that hovers and stumbles as often as it takes declarative turns in unexpected directions, the circles getting smaller the closer you zoom in.
Whitney Johnson
Cory Plump
Matthew J. Rolin
Fred Thomas
Lonnie Palmtree – Lap Stee / Sambago Bells on “Monsella”
Mastered by Mikey Young
Sometimes change comes with big shocks, sometimes it comes with small steps. On ‘In Your Hands’, Lewsberg’s new album, a bit of both seems to be happening. Take the second song, ‘The Corner’. A remarkably discreet song: a violin plays a simple melody; a gentle drum loop keeps its finger on the pulse. “This brick is a brick to build”, it sounds, though a little later: “This brick is a brick to throw”. A brick offers many possibilities, for those who want to see it. One time as a part of something bigger to come, the next time just as a simple stone, left on the ground. After all, most things are relative. Sometimes one can achieve more by breaking something than by building something. If you think you can determine which of the two is needed, you’d be fooling yourself.
(photo : Els Kuijt)
‘In Your Hands’ embodies the moment when all the bricks are there, but the wall has yet to be built. It’s a moment with perspective, a moment where everything still seems possible, but caution is advised. The album sounds both smaller and more spacious than the previous albums. Guitar chords are plucked instead of fiercely struck, the bass guitar is given more room for melodic explorations, the drum kit is dismantled to just a tom and a tambourine. There is doubt in the lyrics, but it’s a strong kind of doubt. A doubt that can stand in the way of a wrong decision but also invite for a good conversation.
The old Lewsberg has been professionally demolished and the building blocks are on display. Ready for future applications and already finished at the same time. ‘In Your Hands’ is therefore an ode to the potential and a call to carefully give way to it. Just what we need right now. But if I were to claim this so boldly, I wouldn’t have learned much from Lewsberg.
Niek Hilkmann October 2021
‘In Your Hands’, Lewsberg’s third album, will see the light of day on October 29th. Just like their self-titled 2018 debut and second album ‘In This House’ (2020), this record will be released by the Rotterdam-based band themselves+. For ‘In Your Hands’, Lewsberg was reduced to a three-piece: Arie van Vliet, Michiel Klein and Shalita Dietrich. With nine songs and a total playing time of 23 minutes, it can rightly be called a mini-album.
+ – In North America, as was the case with 2020’s ‘In This House’, ‘In Your Hands’ will be released by 12XU.
music by michiel. words by arie. words for all things (continued) by shalita. performance by arie (guitar, violin, vox), michiel (guitar, drum loops, keys) & shalita (bass guitar, percussion, vox). recorded and mixed at schenk studio during the summer of 2021. produced by jan schenk and michiel. mastered by jasper boogaard. c&p 2021 lewsberg under license to 12XU.
6 November Badlands, Gent BE 12 November Crofters’ Rights, Bristol UK 13 November, Fusion Arts, Oxford UK 14 November, The Castle Motel, Manchester UK 15 November, Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh UK 16 November, The Hug & Pint, Glasgow UK 17 November, Bobik’s, Newcastle UK 18 November, The Smokehouse, Ipswich UK 20 November, The Festing, Portsmouth UK 21 November, The Latest Music Bar, Brighton UK 22 November Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds UK 23 November, Moth Club, London UK
Gram Parsons coined the phrase “Cosmic American Music” to describe the synthesis of country, blues, rock and soul that he traded in. Sheridan Frances ‘Francie’ Medosch wouldn’t be born for another 28 years after Parsons’ 1973 death, but that Cosmic American sound was waiting for her all the same. On ‘Big Fall’, she embraces it like an old friend.
Medosch grew up outside of Philadelphia in a family home that encompassed three cats, a dog and a pig. Her mom loved music; she played all kinds of stuff around the house, but mostly alt-country like Gillian Welch and Wilco. ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’, the seminal 2002 album by the latter became formative to a young Francie’s love of music – “I never really got into ‘Sgt Pepper’ or anything, so I think that album kinda took the place of that.” She learned violin for a while, then she was a natural on piano, but that stuff bored her. Eventually, her mom bought her a guitar. “I was actually very bummed out at first. I think I wanted an Xbox or something that year. But I came around to it very quickly,” she laughs.
As a teenager she got into obscure underground rock and power pop, influences she channeled in the band she initially named Francie Cool, which would later transition into Florry (these days it’s a solo project, in which she’s backed by Jared Radichel on bass, John Murray on guitar and Joey Sullivan on drums). In 2018, at the age of 17, Medosch put out her debut Florry album ‘Brown Bunny’ (Sister Polygon). The following year, she went out to Willow, New York – a tiny hamlet outside of Woodstock – and recorded a follow-up album with producer Paco Cathcart that she ended up shelving. Backed by Theo Woodward on drums and Pete Gill on bass, it was dark, and angsty, consisting of songs written between the ages of 16 and 18 and reflecting the depression that defined that time for her.
During the pandemic, she began writing again. Her headspace had changed a lot. She was much happier and embraced “absurdist existentialism” – “where you realise that nothing really has any meaning, and that it’s pretty funny that we’re here at all.” She was also bored of indie rock, and for her new songs she looked towards her upbringing among country and folk music, and her fascination with Parsons’ Cosmic American Music. “There’s something about that kind of music that just makes me feel really good inside,” she says. Her main goal was just to write songs that felt good, that translated her newfound positivity. “That was the biggest change for me, just writing and playing music when I’m feeling good, instead of when I’m feeling sad.”
With 6 of those songs home-recorded with the early iteration of her new lineup, she pulled another 4 from the Willow sessions, a way of closing one chapter and opening a new one. There’s a clear split between the old songs – dark, sad, confused – and the new – self-assured, fun, free. Opening track ‘You Don’t Know’ was the last one to be written, and the one that Medosch feels most accurately captured the spirit of Cosmic American Music. It’s a Neil Young-indebted, pedal steel-adorned country tune, the melody of which was born from a dream Medosch had about the Staple Singers. She addresses a loved one who is “fucking their life up”: “You don’t know what you’re doing / And you’re hurting so many people”.
Meanwhile, Medosch channels traditional country with the honky-tonk piano of “Say Your Prayers” and the rollicking bassline of the title track “Big Fall”. On both, she is full of optimism, claiming the idea of a joyful future with exuberance. These are the record’s lightest moments; its heaviest are the Elliott Smith-esque ‘Dream Diary/Growth’ and the slowcore closing track ‘Lovely’, where Medosch conducts a bitter post-mortem on a toxic friendship, singing despairingly: ‘When you tell me to quit being so loud, I will / When you tell me to quit being myself, I will”. It ends the album by “collapsing in on itself”, with a sudden compressed crunch followed by interlocking guitars that spiral towards the song’s conclusion like they’re circling a drain.
Musically, Medosch comes all the way out of left field on the punky ‘Older Girlfriend’ and the dance track ‘Everyone I Love You’; these feel like moments of total unbridled glee. Of the latter, which was influenced by both Philadelphia’s club and rave scene and Neil Young’s 1982 album ‘Trans’, Medosch says, “For like a month, it was all me and my friends would listen to, ‘cause everyone was so pumped up on it. Without a doubt, it’s the weirdest track on the album. But I love that song.”
The emotional heart of the album is arguably “Jane”, one of the Willow tracks, which recounts a major turning point for Medosch. In the lowest depths of depression, she watched “Jane”, the 2017 documentary on Jane Goodall. In the theater, she broke down in tears as she saw the passion and pride with which Goodall spoke about her work. In that instant, Medosch knew that was what she wanted for herself. To love herself; to be proud of who she was and what she had done. Now here she is, presenting ‘Big Fall’ to the world, and she’s proud.
– Mia Hughes
1) You Don’t Know
2) Drivin
3) Big Fall
4) Jane
5) Say Your Prayers
6) Older Girlfriend
7) Animals
8) Dream Diary / Growth
9) Everyone I Love You
10) Lovely
Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 produced by Sheridan Frances Medosch, mixed by Jared Radichel, September-October 2020, Home Studios, Berwyn PA and Philadelphia PA
Tracks 4,6, 8, 10 produced by Paco Cathcart and Sheridan Frances Medosch, mixed by Paco Cathcart, July-August 2019, Natural Jank Studios, Willow NY and Home Studios, Crown Heights NYC, Saugerties NY and Berwyn PA
Track 9 produced by Elijah Jarocki and Sheridan Frances Medosch, mixed by Elijah Jarocki, October 24, 2020, Home Studio, Philadelphia PA
Mastered by Carl Saff
Words & Music by Sheridan Frances Medosch
Sheridan Frances Medosch – vocals, guitars, keys, percussion, whistle
Pete Gill – bass
Jared Radichel – upright bass
Sammy Weissberg – upright bass
Theo Woodward – drums
John Murray – drums
Zena Kay – pedal steel
Erin McGrath – vocals
Katie Alice Greer – vocals
Paco Cathcart – percussion, whistle
Will Moloney – bongos, whistle
Steve Yankou – whistle
Written and recorded amidst the devastating bushfires which ravaged his adopted hometown Canberra, just before the wave of pandemic broke, Shoot Out The Cameras reveals John Sharkey III to be a master craftsman; honing in on the existential dread of living in a burning world, and the imperative to find beauty in what remains.
Perhaps best known as the creative force behind confrontational noise-punk band Clockcleaner, which erupted from the fertile soil of Philly’s DIY scene in the 00s, Sharkey’s solid underground creds include hardcore/punk bands such as 9 Shocks Terror and more recently, literate rock explorations as Puerto Rico Flowers and Dark Blue.
It was love (of course) that brought Sharkey from Philly to Melbourne in 2008, where he worked behind the bar at beloved venue, The Tote. Sharkey and his partner Yasmin moved back to Philly for several years; then, amid the darkening landscape of US politics, the couple decided to settle in Canberra, Yasmin’s hometown. A lunatic sports fan, Sharkey adopted the Canberra Raiders with the same fervour as his beloved Philly Eagles, and has connected with hardcore Rugby League fans, making several guest appearances on the wildly popular NRL Boom Rookies podcast.
At a physical but not psychological remove from the horrifying dysfunction of Trump’s America, Sharkey watched catastrophic bushfires encircle Canberra, raging through the hills of the Southern Tablelands, the city glowing orange, the suburbs suffocating in smoke. This is when the songs of Shoot Out The Cameras took form.
As if to echo the craters of “before” and “after” that apocalyptic events leave in our collective consciousness, the songs arranged themselves into a cinematic narrative arc, from the foreboding of disaster (Side A) through its aftermath (Side B). The background horrors of totalitarianism, paranoia and surveillance also stalk the album – the cameras of the title inspired by Canberra’s omnipresent CCTV and speed cameras – just to add to the unmistakable sense of impending doom.
(photo : Yasmin Hassan)
Such heavy subject matter brought into his music, for the first time, a treasure that Sharkey had carried within him since his teens; the mighty influence of one of Americana’s great auteurs, Iris Dement. Dement’s ability to cut to the bone, in her sweet and devastating songs, deeply informed Sharkey’s songwriting on ‘Shoot Out The Cameras’.
“My grandmother raised me on country music – Ray Price and Patsy Cline”, Sharkey recalls. “When I was 12, my mother would flog Iris Dement’s first two albums on drives to the beach. I was into Black Flag, but come 16 or 17, I was sneaking into the car to steal her tapes. Iris Dement crept into my psyche, and never left. She taught me not to hold back, when it comes to death or sorrow, doubling down on depressive lyrics.”
Fate intervened in the shaggy shape of Philly hero Kurt Vile, who invited Sharkey onstage when he toured Canberra last year. In the audience that night was Canberra native Nick Craft, who stood mouth agape as Sharkey sang pristine country harmonies with Vile on a cover of The Highwaymen’s “Silver Stallion”. Once Craft heard Sharkey’s demos, he urged him to make an album.
Holed up in a small studio on Queanbeyan’s industrial estate, Sharkey and Craft captured ‘Shoot Out The Cameras’ in two marathon sessions. Beautifully recorded, the starkness of Sharkey’s lyrical imagery and pit-of-the-stomach emotions are honoured with nothing more than guitar and voice, and, on the album’s closer, the glisten of Philly homie Mary Lattimore’s harp.
The result is an album of searing emotional depth, which faces the onslaught of disaster unflinchingly, with the hope and determination that families and communities must muster to pull through the personal and collective nightmares we all face. Sharkey remains a staunch optimist, his love for his adopted Australia only strengthened by watching it burn.
“We will adapt, we will get through this together,” he vows. “The most important thing to have in your arsenal of emotions is empathy. Not many people have it; so you have to build your own resilience and strength to deal with that too. You have to be tougher than anything the world can throw at you.”
‘Shoot Out The Cameras’ is released March 5 via 12XU (North America) and Mistletone (AUS/NZ)
preorder (first 200 on brown opaque vinyl ) : 12XU Bandcamp
‘Del Rio’ is the third album from the Austin triumvirate of guitarist Craig Clouse (Shit and Shine), bassist Nate Cross (Marriage, Expensive Shit) and drummerKing Coffey (Butthole Surfers) and the band’s first release to feature vocals from Colby Brinkman (Taverner). While their two prior albums (2017’s ‘Laredo’ and 2019’s ‘Matamoros’) were somewhere on the periphery of rock music , ‘Del Rio’ is a step or several beyond and a real testament to human imagination (maybe you’re impressed by Tesla Powerwall batteries but that’s because you’ve not heard “Soft Taco”, yet)
Coming off a pair of records their respective labels could barely keep in stock and critical assessments that put reviewers’ own chops to the test (see below), USA/Mexico have delivered their most fully realized statement to date.
(if ordering from the UK/EU, ‘Del Rio’ is available from Riot Season)
Voice Imitator is the collaborative project of Per Bystrom, Justin Fuller, Mark Groves, and Leon O’Regan. All four have been active as part of numerous, cross-genre ventures in the Australian underground for many years. Bystrom has offered a rhythmic heart for Exhaustion and Leather Towel, whilst further expanding on metrical ideas in Compound, his solo electronic undertaking. Zond, TOL, Grane and various solo outings have all showcased Fuller’s severely manipulated, hallucinogenic guitar and unsettling electronics. O’Regan has provided lithe, turbulent and imaginative bass guitar for The Bunyip Moon, and antagonistic industrial electronics as Dire Ears. Groves, as vocalist, has previously oscillated between the idiosyncratic combination of drily delivered text, close-miked voice and concrète sound for Red Wine and Sugar and solo project Absurd Cosmos Late Nite, as well as functioning as frontperson for noise rock and heavy electronic acts True Radical Miracle and Dead Boomers.
In Voice Imitator, these four pursue mutual auditory fixations and eccentric individual inputs toward a distinctive and cohesive unit. Groves’ texts are the outcome of anxious and fatigued surveillance, emerging as bleak satire and quietly surreal flashes drawn from the mundane. Vacillating awkwardly between barely contained frustration and ironic detachment, this voice is ushered by a relentless ostinato pulse, washes of heavily effected guitar, subterranean electronic noise and a tense ambience of self-conscious nervousness. Recurring undercurrents of motorik rhythm, and motor city techno draw shared obsession together, providing an altogether new construction. Much like the allegory of a boiling frog, here tension slowly builds to an aggressively muscular conclusion.
Wolf Eyes – “Winter Sunday” b/w Blank Hellscape – “Concrete Walls” 12″ (12XU 127-1)
out January 15, 2021
What happens when Detroit’s Wolf Eyes and Austin’s Blank Hellscape team up to provide a suitably nightmarish backdrop for USA 2020 vanquished by fear, greed, incurable disease, etc. ? Fuck if I know, it’s not like they recorded their tracks in the same room while watching cable news. I mean, credit both ensembles for having an imaginative bone in their bodies or two. On the left, we have Michigan’s synapse-snapping heavyweight champs. On the right, 3 fellas whose 2019 Diseased Tapes debut was one of the year’s most harrowing listening experiences. This EP required no fewer than 3 mastering engineers, 2 personal trainers and 1 and a half psychologists (there was a credentials question) to complete.
The quartet’s latest offering seeps into your consciousness in a different way to their debut, though their tendency towards existentialism and black humour is present throughout. Harsher in sound, but more humane in spirit, In This House refuses to let the listener settle for a single moment. The metallic, atonal guitar strum on opening song “Left Turn” leaves no room for discussion. This is Lewsberg at work. The unnerving sound of a revving car, handbrake on, suddenly coming to an abrupt and silent halt. Is the title of this opener a warning for the listener for the rest of the set, as if we’re going down Robert Frost’s “road less traveled,” or is it just a description of this lonesome character’s unexpected behaviour in this particular song?
‘In This House’ is full of surprises. The teasing guitar break on “From Never to Once”. The two instrumentals “Trained Eye” and “Interlude”. The emotionally affecting ballad, “The Door”. And there’s the pairing of the last two tracks: the fatalistic “Jacob’s Ladder” and the wild, evocative “Standard Procedures” —- as if each piece works independently from the other, gazing back occasionally on what came before and, in turn, adding a different flavour to what comes next.
“Cold Light of Day” and “Tbrough the Garden” are textbook Lewsberg ; 2 songs, provocative and enchanting in their minimalism. Whilst “At Lunch” is seemingly innocent and carefree at the start, ultimately conjures a looming sense of doubt by its conclusion.
“In this house we make mistakes
In this house we never give up”
These lines from closing song “Standard Procedures” could be the adage of the band. Not like some sort of peptalk or an expression of winner’s mentality, but as an homage to the beauty and comfort you can find in perseverance.
Lewsberg would like to draw your attention to the following:
1. Some people are nicer than they think. Some people don’t dare to show how nice they are.
2. More pixels means less imagination.
3. Next time the mice will catch the owl.
4. In Rotterdam they don’t use concrete anymore.
5. Sometimes you only find out how fragile a thing is, when you touch it for the first time.
6. Not every good deed is part of a plan.
7. There’s comfort in continuous toil.
8. In this house we make mistakes. In this house we never give up. The door is always open.
Lewsberg are Arie van Vliet (guitar, vocals), Michiel Klein (guitar), Shalita Dietrich (bass, vocals), and Dico Kruijsse (drums)
Music by Michiel Klein.
Music for “At Lunch” and “The Door” by Arie van Vliet & Michiel Klein.
Recorded & mixed at Sahara Sound Studio.
Produced by Henk Koorn & Michiel Klein.
Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk.
Lewsberg on tour
March 27, ACU, Utrecht, NL
March 28, Extrapool, Nijmegen, NL
April 5, Hafen 2, Offenbach DE A
pril 6, Monarch, Berlin DE
April 7, Gastfeld, Bremen, DE
April 8, Tape, Aarhus, DK
April 9, Vera, Groningen NL
April 16, Latest Music Bar, Brighton UK
April 17, The Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth UK
April 18, The Smokehouse, Ipswich UK
April 19, Bobiks, Newcastle UK
April 20, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds UK
April 21, Crofters Rights, Bristol UK
April 22, Moth Club, London UK
April 25, Rotown, Rotterdam NL
