Category: new stuff

Coming January 24, 2020 : Xetas – The Cypher

(video directed by Kana Harris)

Xetas – The Cypher (12XU 120-1)   out January 24, 2020

Why do people start bands anymore? To get rich and famous? Compliment re-tweeting? To gain the respect of their peers in the RIAA? I don’t know, and I don’t have a computer so I can’t look it up. But I bet sometimes bands get started with no goal at all, beyond basics like don’t lose the keys to the practice space, and to share the excitement of making music together. From there, the goals become things like, get better at it, and do it more. But, again, no computer here, so, don’t know 100%.

Xetas have been doing exactly that, making wired, joyfully intense music ever since their first 7” in 2014. Their first two albums, ‘The Redeemer’ and ‘The Tower’, are compact, high-voltage, furniture-throwing gems. With ‘The Cypher’, they emerge after a year of work as a one-minded beast. The songs blast off and burn, but carry a new depth and weight. Inside gusts of ferocious noise there are subtly sweet melodies that stick in your head; volume gets quiet, tempos charge, slow down, stutter, and implode. The sounds are of a deeper dimension, surprising glimpses of (what’s that?) and (huh wow!). It all creates a rich emotional dimension, which you feel even while the band is thrashing you around in its jaws like an alligator.

Instantly you notice the vocal arrangements. Everybody sings every song, whether dividing verses or in unison, in true crew fashion. It’s a moving statement of intent. Punk rock? To be sure, but punk can mean anything goes. David Petro’s guitars come in countless layers of tension, incorporating punk mowdown and bad trip psych, at times bringing to mind Pen Rollings, Tara Key, and Roger Miller. On “The Objector,” bassist Kana Harris’s voice effortlessly shifts emotional gears as she reflects on power and change, leaving you to meditate on the lyrics “no one here will remember the old landscape.”

Maybe it’s a concept record? Could be, if the concept is figuring out how to survive by being yourselves, how to get better and better every day at being a band, and leaving nothing on the court. Isn’t that a concept every band should have? Is that even a concept? Isn’t that reality? It’s like I have to look everything up these days. – James McNew 



Xetas :
David Petro – guitar, vocals,
Kana Harris – bass, vocals
Jay Dilick – drums, vocals

‘The Cypher’ was recorded throughout 2019 at Estuary Recording, Austin TX and produced by John Michael Landon and Xetas.

stream / download “The Hierophant”

preorder ‘The Cypher’ on LP/CD  : 12XU / Bandcamp

(photo by Angela Betancourt)

(photo by Angela Betancourt)

Coming October 18 : Rocket 808 – ‘Rocket 808’

(photo : Frostine Shake)

Following a late 2018 debut 7″, ‘Rocket 808’ is the eponymous debut LP from the latest brainchild of John Schooley, a guitarist with an impressive resume in the American underground going back a couple of decades with bands including but not limited to the Revelators, the Hard Feelings, John Schooley’s One Man Band and Meet Your Death.  This, however, might be his most daring gambit to date.
 
Combining the primitive analog drum machine of 1970s New York underground icons Suicide with the snarl and twang of guitar progenitors Link Wray and Duane Eddy, Rocket 808 has created a unique aesthetic mixing minimalist proto-punk noise and roots guitar into a new futurism, finally giving us the tomorrow with flying cars we were promised in 1950s EC Comics, Blade Runner, and back issues of Popular Mechanics. If Martin Rev had produced ZZ Top’s ‘Eliminator’, or if Ry Cooder’s score to “Streets of Fire” was instead heard on “Sid and Nancy”, you’d have an idea of how Rocket 808 blurs the lines between guitar-heavy styles and eras using artificial percussion.
 
Just as The Cramps updated their 45 collection for a new generation, Rocket 808’s cover of Suicide’s “Ghost Rider” exists alongside rockabilly classics like Ersel Hickey’s “Goin’ Down That Road”, while the band name conjures images of both Ike Turner’s supposedly “first rock n’ roll song”  “Rocket 808” and the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, the world’s most famous drum machine. Orville Neely of OBN IIIs and Bad Sports provides live drums, and hotshot Mike Molnar of the Bellfuries adds guitar on a few songs alongside Rocket 808’s Schooley, which lets you imagine what Johnny Thunders trading licks with James Burton on an Alan Vega solo album might have sounded like. Rocket 808 has deconstructed the 1960s guitar instrumentals of Dick Dale or Santo and Johnny into Angelo Baldimanti soundtracks for David Lynch films that haven’t been made yet.

Stream / order Rocket 808

(photo : Frostine Shake)

Coming October 25 : Spray Paint – ‘Into The Country’ (12XU 119-1)

Stream “Cleaning My Gun” at Spotify
Preorder ‘Into The Country’ from 12XU
Preorder ‘Into The Country from Bandcamp

‘Into The Country’ was recorded throughout the year of 2016 in-between touring/working and Cory & Chris moving to Mexico and Australia respectively. Basic tracks were recorded by longtime collaborator Ian Rundell in his studio and then messed with in our practice space at the Monofonus compound in Austin, TX. Chris did most of the heavy lifting. Cory did some of the drum machines, and George was fiddling with some electronic gadgets, with lyrics once again mined from the info wars comment section and various other stressful situations like airports and hospitals. This is the first proper Spray Paint LP since 2016’s ‘Feel The Clamps’ (Goner). Since then collaborations with Protomartyr, Ben Wallers, Ben Mackie, and Dan Melchior have been released.

Though Spray Paint have no touring plans in the immediate future, the trio will reconvene in Austin this November to for multiple nights at Hotel Vegas as part of the Monofonus Press RIP weekend taking place at said venue and the M.P. compound, November 22-24 (other participants include The Rebel, Beech Creeps, Tashi Dorji, Sun Araw, Obnox, Claire Rousay, Ralph White, Brandy, Matchess and many others).

Coming June 6 : Golden Pelicans – ‘Grinding For Gruel’

Over the course of the last 8 years, Orlando’s GOLDEN PELICANS have made a compelling case for themselves as one of the planet’s most relentlessly malevolent ensembles, both live and on record. Thankfully, however, this is not an episode of “Hot Bench” and rather than finger-pointing and tearful recriminations, I’ll offer as evidence their succession of titles for the Total Punk and Goner labels with which the quartet of vocalist Erik Grincewicz, guitarist Scott Barnes, bassist Sammy Meneses and drummer Rich Evans have reached American punk’s apex in the 2 thousand teens more than once (like goalposts, the thing moves around a bit)

(photo by Nick Allam)

On the band’s 2019 entry, ‘Grinding For Gruel’, recorded by Ryan Bell of GG King / Predator, Grinewicz’ fatalism & Barnes’ not-nearly-heralded-enough virtuosity are captured with the sort of chromatic sheen that would’ve at one time been considered unthinkable (well, before electricity was invented, anyway). Is this the finest, most fully-realized Golden Pelicans release to date? Is rock D-E-A-D? Have you ever been hit in the head with a soft rock? YOU SURE DO POSE A LOT OF INTERESTING QUESTIONS.

There are those who well might mutter “how many Golden Pelicans records am I supposed to own, anyway?” Would you ask the same of Tangerine Dream? Nana Mouskouri? Why don’t you say it to Nana Mouskouri’s face right now and see what happens

Golden Pelicans on the road :

April 17 Snug Harbor, Charlotte NC w/ Pleather, Fixed Faces, Mutant Strain
April 18 Wonderland, Richmond VA w/ Cement Shoes, Sick Bags, Shiftless Citizens
April 19 The Glove, Brooklyn NY w/ Urochromes, Brandy, Foster Care
April 20 Greek American Club, Somerville MA w/ Sticker Shock, Nice Guys, Thighs
April 21 Machines With Magnets, Pawtucket RI w/ Funeral Cone, Sticker Shock, Songbirds
April 22 Skid Row, York PA w/ Eggman
April 23 Wicked Witch, Raleigh NC w/ Huffer, Das Drip, Scarecrow

preorder ‘Grinding For Gruel’ from 12XU or Bandcamp

Coming March 22 : USA/Mexico – ‘Matamoros’

As a young person I frequently heard tales that high-end stereo shoppes used Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ as a demonstration disc, in order to fully document the prowess of their impossibly-expensive wares.

I rarely frequented any of these establishments but always took these stories on faith. I’m no audio guru, but it seems to me that someone attempting to do the same thing in 2019 could do a whole lot worse than adopting USA/Mexico’s long-awaited 2nd album, ‘Matamoros’ for similar purposes. The trio’s first album 2017’s ‘Laredo’ might’ve been a worthy candidate for a test-spin in the Bang and Olufsen showroom, but the successor is the sort of record that really makes sense if you’re the sort of person who can appreciate the BACKES MÜLLER BM 100 loudspeaker (list price $500,000.00 USD)

Once you’re comfortably settled in, you’ll find that the all-star team of guitarist Craig Clouse (Shit & Shine) drummer King Coffey (Butthole Surfers) and Nate Cross (Marriage, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth) have done everything possible to help you expand your sonic palette — some might say they’ve even done too much! Either way, these guys are as unselfish as they are loud. Or perhaps they’re as selfish as they’re quiet — i do hope you’ll agree their motives are less important than the results, and in this instance, those results are nothing less than a staggering sensory overload.

George Dishner (Spray Paint) and Kevin Whitley (Cherubs — on a rendition of his band’s “Shoofly”, as previously heard on 1992’s ‘Icing’) make cameos. The entire affair was engineered by budding genius Ian Runndell (he of every other great record recorded in Austin) and is available via the 12XU and Riot Season record labels in North American and UK/Europe respectively.

(US/Canada preorders :
12XU / bandcamp)

(UK/EU preorders :
Riot Season / bandcamp)

credits

Bass – Nate Cross
Drums – King Coffey
Guitar and vocals – Craig Clouse
Vocals on “Shoofly” – Kevin Whitley
Extra Guitar on “Matamoros” – George Dishner

Recorded by Ian Rundell
Mastered by James Plotkin

Coming February 22 : Dark Blue – ‘Victory Is Rated’

‘Victory Is Rated’ is the 3rd studio album from Philadelphia’s Dark Blue, following 2014’s ‘Pure Reality’ and 2017’s widely acclaimed ‘Start Of The World’. Over the course of the last half decade, the ensemble —helmed by Clockcleaner / Puerto Rico Flowers founder John Sharkey III, have walked a thin line between defiance and fatalism, often trading in the anthemic with equal doses of the sardonic and the melancholy. That all of it is increasing informed & influenced by the real goddamned world probably helps.

 

(photo by Angela Betancourt)

There’s some cruel irony in Sharkey’s (second) self-imposed exile from the USA occurring right after completing the recording of ‘Victory Is Rated’ with conspirators Andy Nelson (Ceremony), Michael Sneeringer (Strands Of Oak, Rosali) and B. David Walsh given that this is by far, Dark Blue’s most fully realized statement — in some alternative universe where this band toured consistently, they’d be way too big for this label (frankly, they already are), but really, what has America done to actually deserve their brutal honesty?

Sharkey says the album’s main themes are class war and mortality. I’m not entirely sure there are other themes (not simply on ‘Victory Is Rated’, either) , but we’re very fortunate he’s so skilled at writing about those two. He also likens the record to “if Blitz went Brit pop” and while that ticks off a couple of crucial boxes for me, let’s get something rather thorny out of the way. However many allusions you’ve seen to some subculture you either dislike or can barely be bothered to skim the surface of on a Dark Blue flyer, this is not a high (?) concept series of mannerisms disguised as a gloriously powerful rock band. Dark Blue is a gloriously powerful rock band. For all time.

John Sharkey III – vocals, guitar
Andrew Mackie Nelson – bass & piano
Michael Sneeringer – drums
B. David Walsh – guitars

with additional support from
Kurt Vile – trumpet
Sara Schimeneck – keys

Recorded & Mixed by Jeff Ziegler
Produced by 2 Young Attorneys

preorder ‘Victory Is Rated’ from 12XU or Bandcamp
stream “Waterford Crystals” at Spotify, Apple Music or Bandcamp

Coming Septemer 21 : Borzoi – ‘A Prayer For War’

(“Big Pink” – video directed by Taylor Browne)

Borzoi – A Prayer For War (12XU 109-1)
out September 21

I’ve grown weary of calling Borzoi one of the nation’s best live bands, not because it isn’t 100% true, but because I’ve long ago stopped making excuses for how their prior recordings failed to capture the full range of their muscularity, their absurdity or nearly boundless level of invention. Thankfully, though, others actually liked those recordings.

Of the Austin trio’s 2017 ‘Surrender The Farm’ EP, The Wire’s Byron Coley called the 7”, “very thudly” (“slams straight along like a cement truck full of corndogs”), while Yellow Green Red’s Matt Korvette hailed the band’s “mangy form of post-punky garage-rock, equipped with a nimble heaviness and plenty of dirt under the nails,” (“there’s no confusing their rough-and-tumble punk with noise or no-wave, and yet I feel like subtle hints of Sightings, Liars and Harvey Milk creep through. Borzoi run through a variety of tempos and moods on these four tracks, from inebriated and confused to spastic and scared.”)

(l-r : Zachary Wood, Rhys Woodruff, Taylor Browne. photo : Jordan Willis)

On the way-too-long-in-the making, ‘A Prayer For War’ (expertly recorded by Ian Rundell, notable for recent works from Xetas, Spray Paint and Exhalants), I’m happy to confirm Borzoi are exponentially less mangy though improved production values have done nothing to quash the band’s idiosyncrasies. While fellow travelers plunder the early ’90’s Amp Rep catalog and perform spirited mimicry of The Year ____ Broke, Borzoi’s Rhys Woodruff (drums/vocals), Zachary Wood (guitar/vocals) and Taylor Browne (bass) are operating on another level altogether, and if completing a conceptual K.O. like this album hasn’t entirely cured them of self-saboteur moves (ie. blatantly lying about where they’re from — though under the circumstances, can you blame them?), they’ve set an awfully high bar for what any remaining deep thinkers might attempt, lyrically or musically (though truth be told, their fixation with life during wartime is no easier to figure out than whatever Wood comes up with on the guitar). ‘A Prayer For War’ takes Borzoi’s truculent worldview and glues it to accompaniment that’s as dazzling as it is confounding. You’ll be tempted to call the trio of Wood, Woodruff and Browne a well-oiled machine, but unless you’re comparing them to an Koenigsegg Agera RS, you’re selling them very short.

PREORDER ‘A Prayer For War’ from 12XU
PREORDER ‘A Prayer For War’ from Bandcamp

upcoming shows :

August 30 – Beerland, Austin (with The Dead Space)
September 14 – Spiderhouse Ballroom, Austin
September 25 – Barracuda, Austin (w/ Deaf Wish, Sean Morales)

October 4 – Paper Tiger, San Antonio, (w/ Metz)

October 5 – Hotel Vegas, Austin (rec release show, w/ Tshushimamire, Loafer)
October 7 – Backyard on Bell, Denton TX
October 8 – The Backspace, Fayetteville AR
October 9 – The Middle East, Kansas City MO
October 10 – Brother’s Lounge, Ohmaha NE
October 11 – Moon Palace Books, Minneapolis MN
October 12 – Mickey’s Tavern, Madison WI
October 13 – The Archer Ballroom, Chicago IL
October 14 – Donovan’s Pub, Detroit MI
October 15 – Gooski’s, Pittsburgh PA
October 19 – The Glove, Brooklyn NY
October 21 – EMP Collective, Baltimore MD
October 23 – Static Age, Asheville NC

Coming September 7 – UNHOLY TWO – ‘The Pleasure To End All Pleasures’ LP

More than 4 years have elapsed since Unholy Two’s ‘Talk About Hardcore’ rendered what was left of the nation’s alleged “noise-rock” milieu as obsolete as the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Though naive, feeble competitors struggled to keep up during that period, Unholy Two instead retreated to their Columbus, OH compound where the exhaustive attempts to top a universally-acknowledged masterpiece began. 

Nearly 51 months (and hundreds of dollars) later, the duo of Chris Lutzko and Kellie Morgan-Lutzko)— have re-emerged with the 3rd Unholy Two album, ‘The Pleasure To End All Pleasures’. Putting the O NO in “monolithic”, the Lutzkos have made zero concession to past or present notions of rock, underground or otherwise. With scattered allusions to some of history’s most malignant figures (Peter Kürten in the album title, Chris Benoit in “Master Of The Crossface”, the Rev. Jim Jones in “Let The Night Roar”, Godsmack in “Woodstock ’99”), the two guitar onslaught sounds closer to two hundred. The end result is nothing short of musical obliteration and the most fully realized documentation of this band’s nightmare vision.

Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

(photo : Michael O’Shaughnessy)

preorder from 12XU or Bandcamp.

Coming September 7 – Rocket 808 -“Digital Billboards”

Since the mid 1990’s guitarist/vocalist John Schooley has been performing CPR on a succession of raw musics — as of this moment in time, he’s the only person who can claim to have been a member of the Crypt, Goner, Sympathy For The Record Industry and 12XU rosters, which either qualifies him for a plaque or combat pay. While this label presided over projects as idiosyncratic as Schooley’s acoustic collaboration with Walter Daniels (2014’s ‘Dead Mall Blues’) or the electric Meet Your Death (2016), neither are sufficient preperation for John’s other one-man project, Rocket 808.

(photo by Angela Betancourt)

An ingenious mix of 1970’s analog drum machines with raw guitar, this is less of a style clash and more akin to a minimalist tour de force. Like Suicide adding Link Wray as a third band member, Rocket 808’s debut single is an incadescent, noirish hint of what’s in store for a full-length album in early 2019.

preorder from 12XU.bigcartel.com or Bandcamp

Coming April 6 – Charnel Ground -s/t LP

CHARNEL GROUND: an above-ground site for the putrefaction of bodies, generally human, where formerly living tissue is left to decompose uncovered.

Represents ‘the death of ego’ and the end of:

— attachment to this body and life
— craving for a body and life in the future
— fear of death
— aversion to the decay of ‘impermanence’

CHARNEL GROUND is a meeting of Chris Brokaw (Come/Codeine/The New Year etc). on electric guitar, James McNew (Yo La Tengo, Dump) on bass, and Kid Millions (Oneida/Man Forever/etc) on drums, dedicated to exploring the outer and inner regions of instrumental rock music. ‘Charnel Ground’ was recorded in Brooklyn NY in 2016, and informed and dedicated to pivotal transitions.

purchase from 12XU, Bandcamp or stream via Spotify