unpiano: music

Whew.. you made it. Hopefully you can breathe a sigh of relief and know that you dodged whatever bullets you had coming in 2009. This year coming up is gonna be a great one, you just watch and see. Fucking magic. Anyways, here is to all my friends and here is to this amazing cover of Big County’s best known single. Montreal’s Tonstartssbandht have made a washed out, slow burning, distorted bedtime story that goes very well with a snow covered city and a New Year’s drink.

Tonstartssbandht – Black Country

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I’ve been digging the new record by Little Claw lately, Human Taste is definitely a continuation of their first effort, but there are some solid jams on here. Dark, warbling pop soaked in lots of fuzz and reverb, sometimes spinning off into endless-jam/one-note-drone land but the handful of tracks that hold some sort of structure are pretty amazing.

Little Claw – Human Taste
Little Claw – Frozen In The Future

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//photo by rick ele

Wow, Autumn finally kicked in full gear and nothing goes better with Fall weather than a drunk guy screaming in your face over a heap of distorted noise-punk. I was lucky enough to catch Portland’s The Hunches amazing live show a few times before they blew apart this last year. Luckily they offered up one hell of a parting gift with their final LP Exit Dreams on In The Red.

The Hunches – Fall Drive
The Hunches – Carnival Debris

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This Night Control album was stumping me for a long time. I knew I liked it but I couldn’t figure out why and it just sat there for a while.. daring me to make it through the whole thing. Then one rainy, foggy night after being couped up in the house too long, I decided to take a walk down across town to the Mission. Suddenly everything just clicked and I realized that Death Control is the perfect album for ambling about in the foggy night weather of San Francisco. It’s dark, melodic and semi-brooding, not to mention unflinchingly drenched in lo-fi reverb, so that each step down the wet sidewalk is echoed in your ears. Hats off to Kill Shaman for finally getting some of Christopher Curtis Smith’s music onto a record. Who knows, maybe there will even be some more live shows this year.

Night Control – Star 131
Night Control – Star 129
Night Control – 20 Years Old
Night Control – Two Hard

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//photo by jason fisher

Monterrey, Mexico has been kicking out some interesting noise-rock these last few years. From the Sonic Youth inspired Los Llamarada to the weird-punk of Ratas del Vaticano, this city and its surrounding area are breeding a hot new crop of bands you should watch for. Bass guitar and drum duo XYX are no exception, in fact after their stunner sets at SXSW (some of my favorite of the whole festival) you might even find them the cream of that crop.

XYX – Anel And Her Problem

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Here’s another post-SXSW post, I’m trying to document the handful of bands that got a lot of attention before the fest. Per usual with SXSW, I missed most of the bands I wanted to see (I missed most bands period) due to trying to shuffle our stupid gear from one show to the next in a mob, while navigating Austin’s terrible freeway system, usually while drunk. Wavves were one of the bands I wanted to see, but since most trusted reports point to them being one of the worst live bands of the weekend, I’m not going to dwell on it. The records are pretty heavy with filler, but there are some interesting, blown-out pop gems burried under all this tape hiss that are growing on me.

Wavves – Wavves
Wavves – Side Yr On
Wavves – So Bored

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Seattle punks Bend Sinister happened upon a little known Sacramento California band called Karate Party and had their minds blown. They shuffled their aesthetic, borrowed from Karate Party’s bag of tricks, and reformed as the thunderous art-punk outfit the A-Frames. Mixing harsh, art-damaged punk with rigid krautrock and a heap of bubblegum catchiness, the A-Frames put out 2 amazing LPs (A-Frames 1, A-Frames 2) and a grip of killer singles (Police 1000/Traction 7″ an all time fave) before dropping and “eh” of an album on Sub Pop. Nevermind that, the first two records are must-haves and if you can E-Bay any of their singles you won’t regret it. Members moonlight in The Intelligence, AFCGT, Children’s Hospital, Rodent Plague and others.

A-Frames – Hostage Crisis
A-Frames – Electric Eye
A-Frames – Ionic
A-Frames – Wasteland
A-Frames – Search And Rescue

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Canada’s Women put out a pretty interesting self-titled LP last year, an odd (but likable) mix of pop, experimental noise and math rock. This track in particular has me hooked.

Women – Black Rice

This French art-punk outfit came through the U.S. a couple of months ago and delivered. Not that its something that hasn’t been heard before but they do it really well and brought it live. Lots of driving bass & drums, wild noise freak-outs and chattering guitar riffs. They’ve got an LP that just came out on In The Red, here’s a couple tracks from an earlier 7″ as a teaser.

A.H. Kraken – Gianna Michaels
A.H. Kraken – Je Suis Ton Marecage

Ho-lee-sheeeiit. Wow. Whoa. If someone’s going to call them “noise-punk” from now on, they’d better sound at least this good and this harsh. Arizona is fucked, anyone who’s driven through there knows its hot as Satan’s butthole pretty much all the time, the desert is boring and shitty (except to Europeans, they love the desert for some stupid reason) but all that brain cooking is good for weird-o rock and Francis Harold And The Holograms proves it. Like the crazy, addict Yankee cousin to the Brainbombs (just more meth and less criminal pornography).

Francis Harold And The Holograms – The Eagle Can’t Fly With One Wing
Francis Harold And The Holograms – Two Faggots One Cunt