Vampire Basketball

Plante | Temples on High c40 (Sweat Lodge Guru)

2010-06-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

Proprietors of the fantastic vinyl review blog OMG Vinyl recently laid the foundation for their new label Sweat Lodge Guru with four solid cassette releases. Based out of Sioux City, Iowa, these guys have really come out of the gates strong with a choice selection of artists and varied but cohesive presentation.

Plante, the project of Kansas City droner Andrew Plante is just as well off to a great start with three releases under his belt this year alone; the other two of which were released by Peasant Magik and Sonic Meditations. Temples on High sees Plante refining his guitar based drone approach, this time accompanied by McKinley Jones of Breathing Flowers on synth.

Temples On High comes to us in two parts, the first being The Chariot, which rolls by at drone speed with tightly layered guitars feeding back in slow graceful fluidity. McKinley's synth melts perfectly into the mix, adding subtle complexity to the piece. The guitars gradually saturate into dense, monolithic slabs and comparisons to Sunn O))) become pretty hard to avoid. Nonetheless, Plante undoubtedly paints in delicate touches that make all the difference in setting him apart. In the albums darkest moments, there still remains a lively vibrance that you won't find on Sunn O)))'s records, at least not at the level produced by Plante.

Journey of the Twins, the second part of the album starts the B side where The Chariot left off; a slow winding down of a long sustained, overdriven thrum. Phantom overtones begin to warmly meld with delicate melodic synth phrases and glassy high register feedback swells. By the halfway mark, everything is working as one living, breathing mass; remaining in perfect stasis for the remainder of the side.

Plante has really got my attention with this one and I've got my eyes peeled for the next one to come down the pike. Justin Wright of Expo '70 puts the Kansas City cherry on top with a fantastic cover, as always. Grab this one before its gone and stay tuned to Sweat Lodge Guru. I'm sure there's plenty more gems coming along soon.

More reviews coming soon

2010-06-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a while...I'll be back with more reviews very soon.

M. Geddes Gengras & A.M. Shiner | The Blue Push/The Red Kush c46 (Stunned Records)

2010-01-28T16:55:00.000-08:00

I first discovered the joys of smoking weed when I was about fifteen. I was living in the basement of my parents place and one night I mustered up the courage to attempt to smoke in the house while they were upstairs sleeping. I figured if I just opened the basement window and kind of hung out of it while I took hits, I'd be fine. The only problem was I couldn't find a match or a lighter to save my life. After a bit of searching I gave up and decided to play my 3DO gaming system. Anybody remember those? Panasonic put them out and they were like $700 dollars when they first hit the stores then they dropped way down to like $150 after they were bought and sold by a few companies. I inherited one from my uncle. Anyway, the controllers had a weird design quirk; you had to plug the second player controller into the first player controller. The input was a few rows of metal pins much like the end of your computer monitor cable. I don't know how or when I figured it out, but I knew that touching your tongue to those metal pins gave the same sensation as touching your tongue to a 9-Volt battery. I also knew from science class that touching steel wool to both terminals on a 9-volt battery caused the steel wool to spark. Would it do the same when I touched it to those metal pins on the controller? My step dads tools were in the back area of the basement and he just so happened to have some steel wool stashed. I grabbed it, the 3DO, some paper towels, and my bowl and locked myself in the bathroom. I sat the 3DO on the sink, plugged it in, and went to work. It took a while to get a spark to light the paper towel and once it finally did I only had like 5 seconds to smoke because those fuckers burn fast and produce a lot of smoke. It wasn't graceful but it was enough to get me pleasantly baked and now I can say with confidence that I am probably the only person on earth who has ever smoked weed using a video game controller. I didn't get caught, but part of me wishes I did. I can see my baffled mother thinking I got so high I was trying to play video games in the bathroom.

Now I still enjoy a toke now and again but let's just say I “didn't” smoke before I listened to this recent Stunned offering because I don't want anyone thinking weed had anything to do with saying this is one of the best splits I've heard in a long time. Not to mention the slick piece of eye candy these sounds are housed in: A purple cassette shell graced with the clever side titles “The Blue Push” and “The Red Kush” and various marijuana related paraphernalia all imprinted in silver ink and wrapped in an eye popping full color double sided collage work. Looks great though I have to admit it's a bit hard to tell what other recreational indulgences these guys partake in aside from all this noisin' business.

M. Geddes Gengras brings a wallop of a hazer to the table on his half of the rhyme. Drums loosely decorate your headspace in restrained hits and rolls, echoing through wisps of smoke and floating red ash. Deep thuds ripple and stick to the speakers while a red-eyed synth burns slowly, suffused with a dull orange glow. Another synth riffs on some hypnotic leads, with notes rising high in pitch, teetering right on the edge of madness as astral birds chirp and splash in a lo-res digital bath. The pot (see what I did there?) simmers for a good while, save for an occasional rise and fall in dynamics. Some extra string pluckin' sauce gets added in for a little extra flavor before a gorgeous hazy and melodic sample loops wistfully through like a warped fever dream ice cream truck dripping rainbow sherbet exhaust.

A.M. Shiner starts us off with some morning bird song and an extra-long and cavernous rise and shiner bong rip. This is abruptly replaced by some dull metallic whips and snaps...whipper-snappers, and before this bit can collect any steam, in comes what sounds like another monster bong rip. It's just dubious enough (see what I did there?) to possibly be something else but I can't help but make the association given what we're dealing with here. Some robotic bubbles start a froth complete with sandy morse code taps and two possibly stringed instruments playing a game of marco-polo while a 50's sci-fi computer gets taxed as it tries to calculate what the fuck is going on. That isn't to say this shit's a mess. It's super tight. You have to remember computers back then had to be the size of your house just to make a dot chase after another dot. Halfway in we're met with a beautiful incandescent drone and some low tide synth waves lapping at the shore. Some wet and drippy cave business soon finds its way into the picture and is abruptly replaced by a more evil, slightly more metallic and growling drone and another monster bong hit. All things considered, all this bong ripping might sound a little contrived on paper. But it works, damnit. And it works well. The side closes with a long stretch of frenzied ghost tones in a blurred and gritty blast and a rusty off-balance washing machine set on Aleatoric Spin-Cycle for 333,333,333 times around the sun and back.

These two have layed down a heavy contender for best shit of the year (2009) right here, folks. Find it if you can. Unfortunately Stunned is fresh out. Happy hunting!

AL QAEDA + D/A A/D Split c71 (Husk Records)

2010-01-06T18:04:00.000-08:00

The hardest part about writing reviews is starting them. Unless I have a good story to get things moving, I typically dread this paragraph and save it for last. How to start..I guess I could say something like “San Fransico trio Al Qaeda and Halifax synth pusher D/A A/D tag team on this hefty c71 on Husk Records” but it'll never make the final cut. Or I could say “Husk Records recent offering of Alex Pearson's D/A A/D and San Fran trio Al Qaeda is....ah fuck it.

Side A belongs to Al Qaeda who creeps in with Rotten Trail, a slow burner navigating through deep and dark muddy waters with a paltry headlight which in it's intermittent flicker reveals contorted images of what could be those creepy assed fanged fuckers you see on Discovery Channel, or maybe it's just some seaweed and a trick of the light. It doesn't really matter what it is because at depths like these, you can bet on it trying to eat you. Somewhere far off, drums drift with the currents; weathered and splintered by the salty waters, appearing for a few moments only to be carried away again just out sight.

Somewhere on shore, Late Bloomer comes wandering in through the warm glaring sunshine, strolling by in slow contented motion, stopping here and there to pick up a seashell, zoom in on the seashell and FUCK WHO TAPED OVER MY FILMSCHOOL FINAL WITH THIS BLACK METAL VIDEO?! IM SO FUCKED! DID YOU DO THIS?! DO YOU UNDERSTAND LI—oh man, thank goodness you didn't tape over the whole thing. Shit, I can probably splice the two ends together...not like anyone understands my vision anyway.

Wrapping the side up and taking the gold medal for best track on this here audio tape is the bent star-gazer, Something Electric. It's a tough decision as the whole thing is pretty damn killer but it's just got all of the right ingredients that I'm typically a sucker for. It's a cold night in the desert. Gorgeous cascading guitar leads ripple and expand through an ever repeating riff in a crystal clear sky. Incoherent vocals echo back and forth in monotone mumbles. Stars and satellites drift by in a steady glide. You've got your portable radio on but way out here it's only picking up bleeps and static. That's okay though. You lay back, eat your last cap, and try to lick the moon.

With all that said, don't expect things to go sour for the remainder. Alex Pearson definitely holds his own on the D/A A/D flip side. The only instrument at work here is a lone analog synth, churning out moods starkly minimal yet completely encapsulating. It's almost as if the sounds are staring you in the face through an unrelenting scowl and you can't do anything but stare back, too scared to look away. This is some stone-still, uncompromising, I ain't movin' for fuckin' nobody shit. Barest of all and a perfect closer is Break Through the Blood, consisting of a single tone which distills the mood of the entire side in a thick, concentrated molasses growl over and over and over again. Fuck.

Although there are is a variety of color and sound to be found all over this split, there is a constant thread that runs throughout; a feeling of being smack in the middle of something incredibly vast. It's both frightening and beautiful in it's hugeness and it seems to push in on you, heightening your awareness and making you feel every single cell in your body. This is limited to 70 copies and still available on Husk. Go Get It.

GRASSHOPPER | Wretched Blood Wraith C24 (Obsolete Units)

2009-12-19T12:33:00.000-08:00

Grasshopper is the fantastic New York based project of Jesse DeRosa and Josh Millrod which I was just recently acquainted with via a stellar live performance that I caught this past November in Newark, Delaware. They pretty much floored me so I grabbed a handful of releases from them at the show that night and they've all been on steady rotation ever since. Except for this one...

But that's because it fell behind my computer desk and I forgot I even had it until the other night. I had just gotten off a long day of work and was sitting down, getting ready to smoke some weed and dropped my lighter on the floor. Of course, when I looked down, it wasn't anywhere in sight (isn't that how it always goes?) so I had to get under my desk to look for it. And then, right before me eyes, there she was, in all her orange glory, staring back at me on a puffy white cloud strewn with piles of red and white skulls. She hadeth betwixt her bosoms the tail of a red sea serpent, whose body wrapped around her slender neck and was being heldeth in the blurry hand of the crimson robed serpent keeper. Dude looked pissed and was emitting all kinds of angry yellow sound circles.

It's triumphant times like these when weed actually is more appropriate than before you dropped the lighter under your desk and cussed under your breath because you actually had to get your lazy ass on the ground, way down there, and look for it. See, the name might not suggest it but Grasshopper are excellent music when you are on the pot. This tape being no exception – baked or not.

Regal Blood Wraith kicks things off with slowly oscillating tones peeking through a dense layer of huge and foreboding, yet surprisingly soothing, brain massaging fuzz. Swirls of colorful synth soon get kneaded into the mix and trumpets sound off in short repeated blasts. All sounds begin to hold tight in a steadfast hum and there is simultaneously a sense of intense motion and complete stasis. It's like being awe struck in the eye of a tornado as you watch the beautiful beast collect and devour everything in its path.

Two towns over, in the breeze rustled grass is The Langoliers, holding down the b-side. Things are much calmer here but the mood imposed by Regal Blood Wraith is still faintly present, making it a perfect complement to it's former track while having plenty of personality to stand on its own. The trumpets are pushed a little further into the foreground, giving them a bit more room to wander and the synth elements are more defined, holding things together with simple, repetitive melodic phrases.

This is a fantastic release all around that reveals more and more subtle nuance with each listen. Awesome artwork provided by Witchbeam, as always. This is an edition of 60 and is still available from Obsolete Units. It's hard to pick a favorite release from Grasshopper, but this might be it.