1.) Otomo Yoshihide - Night Before The Death Of The Sampling Virus
Seeing as Ground Zero have a pretty spotty catalog, I kinda went in to turntablist Otomo Yoshihide's solo work with the same assumption. Yeah, it's a shitty way to approach anything, but right of the bat, the pessimism has proven just. Have 54 minutes to kill? Like things that are of no potential interest to anyone? Then this is probably right up your alley. I have no idea how I've listened to this disc enough times to come to this conclusion, but it's not simply that I don't like this album, it's just... unlikable. I realize that the quality of music is primarily subjective (arguably, of course, but always to some extent), but with 77 tracks, almost all of which are untreated samples of people speaking in Japanese, I can't really see two ways about it. At one point, I speculated that this works best regionally, and is somewhat lacking when a non-Japanese speaker listens to it. Nope. If there's an overarching "storyline" or theme present, it doesn't really matter - you're intended to listen to this on shuffle. Admittedly, the idea of allowing chance to construct a new piece of music each time is pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the components are made up from the dull-as-fuck spoken samples I mentioned before, as well as a handful of semi-intriguing loops and manipulations (including Yamatsuka Eye making puking sounds) and even fewer cosmic-sounding harsh noise pieces. After hitting shuffle and listening to an incidentally constructed 10 minute block of calm Japanese voices, I figured throwing this to the wind wasn't necessarily the biggest mistake I've ever made.
2.) Aye Nako - Demo 2010
Occupying the same universe as Superchunk, Discount, and J Church with Go Sailor-esque vocals courtesy of guitarist Mars, Aye Nako are an awesome gender-boundary-crushing 3-piece pop-punk unit from Brooklyn who I know pretty much nothing about. I saw them about 6 months ago in support of P.S. Eliot's farewell show at Death By Audio, and they drilled their hooks deep enough into my head that I recognized every song on the demo when I gave it a spin a month later (much like The Sidekicks, who I also saw by chance a few years back). The first few seconds of "The Rind" make you think there's something immaculate going on, production-wise, but it flops down into punk-demo mud thereafter. It's nothing that'll saw your eardrums in twain, but I figured I should mention it since my ears have been forged by years of goregrind endurance, and thus, aren't the greatest judges of tolerable production. Either way, the songs are great, and the hooks are "a'plenty", as someone might say unironically. Check out some tracks at their ridiculous ASCII site: http://ayenako.org/. I can't wait to hear these guys record something new.
3.) Pearls Before Swine - One Nation Underground
For some reason, even though I've owned hard copies of the first 4 Pearls Before Swine LPs for the past 4 years, I've never really absorbed them properly. I guess now's just as good of a time as any to rectify that, starting with their 1969 debut, One Nation Underground. I've always loved a handful of tracks on here, especially the opening number, "Another Time", which is probably one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard. Reading the lyrics, I'm not entirely sure I understand how it relates, but apparently this was not only the first song Tom Rapp ever penned, but was also written in memoriam of an awful car crash he walked away from unscathed. I know when I had my car accident, the first thing I'd asked myself was whether or not I had seen myself "deep inside the velvet pond" after I followed "the crystal swan". The embarrassing "Playmate", on the other hand, takes the lyrics and structure of the Saxie Dowell song (notably plagiarized from an old Charles L. Johnson number) and slathers it in a chintzy, keyboard theft of both Bob Dylan's nasally whine and the hook from "Desolation Row". Luckily, the rest of the album is more in line with the opener, and floats around outside the Cringe Dimension, with a remarkable amount of variation at that. Check out the angry protest folk on "Uncle John", the weird, drone break in "I Shall Not Care", and that fucking rad hook in the hippy-cliche "Drop Out!". This is a great album, and while its not quite as "out there" as other psych-folk I love, the songwriting is pretty fantastic across the board. At this rate of Pearls Before Swine album exposure, I should be familiar with all 7 items in their catalog by 2036, so I'll let you know what's good by then.
