Sun City Girls- Eye Mohini

Majora

1992

Most people that care about such things consider the early 90's Majora releases to represent something of a high water mark in this band's long and storied career. It was also a particularly productive period- this is one of four singles released that year.  The music here works well as an addendum to the amazing albums of the era (Torch of the Mystics, Bright Surroundings, etc).  None of this stuff turned up on the fairly recent singles compilation,  but I suppose future releases of that nature will be forthcoming.  The brothers Bishop played a mere hour down the road last week and I didn't go.  No excuse.  But I'm seeking solace in the Girls' back catalog.  

Eye Mohini

Mantis- Drüler

Drag City

1993

Early 90's Chicago band that only did three singles and a couple comps.  Great records though.  The A side here is really one of the great tracks of the era.  Features Drag City's ubiquitous Rian Murphy.

Drüler

Labradford- Everlast

Retro 8

1992

In 1992, the independent/underground music stratum was pretty much, top to bottom, rockist in nature.  Even those who looked to expand, destroy, or just piss on conventions were still working with the tools and language of Rock N' Roll.  The music was overwhelmingly guitar based, abrasive, and usually relied on sheer volume to make its point.  Obviously, there was no shortage of bands who incorporated, to varying degrees, a number of the same influences (Sonic Youth, Spacemen 3, Glenn Branca, Swans, My Bloody Valentine, etc, etc), but those elements were almost always absorbed into a more or less traditional rock band setting (guitars, drums, verse/chorus song structure).  But Labradford seemed to jettison most overtly "rock" influences in favor of thick washes of analog synthesizer, delay drenched guitar, and simple bass ostinatos whose only analogous contemporary was perhaps Talk Talk.  On this and their full length follow up Prazision (which, fittingly, launched the Kranky label) the sound owes a serious debt to the pioneering German electronic musicians of the 1970's- Ash Ra Temple, Popul Vuh, Klaus Schulze, Kraftwerk (Their 2nd album in particular) and Cluster.  Other folks at the time though were starting to sniff out those old Krautrock albums and as such Labradford was banded together with a disparate group of artists- usually Stereolab, Tortoise, Cul de Sac, Ui, and Trans Am- and thus the concept of "Post-Rock" was introduced.  While the term is often met with derision now, at the time it referred to bands who were genuinely pushing music into new territory.  Being the least "Rock" of the fold spared Labradford the hordes of cheap imitations that plagued some of the other groups and their records remain unburdened by over saturation.  Both of these tracks were added to the recent reissue of Prazision.

Everlast

Tyvek/Cheveu Split

S-S Records

2007

A split release to coincide with a joint US trek last summer.  Detroit's Tyvek deal in the sort of attitude heavy, no fidelity scuzz that the midwest seems to spew out every 15 years or so.  It takes some cajones to flog a past dead horse like Punk Rock anymore, but Tyvek have managed to turn out a few singles worth of greatness that should be enough to placate even the most jaded curmudgeons out there.  I haven't heard enough from Parisian Art-Rock weirdos Cheveu to completely wrap my head around what exactly it is they do.  The handful of tracks I've heard haven't provided any real answers, just raised more questions.  This go around they come across like a team of Mexican wrestlers trying to cover Chrome tunes or something.  That description would probably sound retarded without a record like this to back it up.

Tyvek/Cheveu

Dos- Bob Lawton EP

Ecstatic Peace

1991

Kira from Black Flag and Mike Watt of Minutemen/fIREHOSE.  Two basses, occasional vocals.  Old friends in intimate and playful conversation.  A side is a Patsy Cline cover  while the B features an arrangement of a tune that appeared as "Song for Dave Alvin" on fIREHOSE's "Flyin' the Flannel" earlier that year.  The instrumentation imbues in the music a subtle majesty and the warm bass tones highlight the sublime beauty of these melodic miniatures.  Let's hope that new recordings are forthcoming from this combo that has remained active for the last 20+ years.

Bob Lawton EP

Urinals- First EP

Happy Squid

1979

First release from the seminal LA band released on their own Happy Squid label in '79.  I first heard about these guys via the Minutemen's version of Ack, Ack, Ack, and a great track on the Homestead Human Music comp, but it was years before I was able to track down any of their albums proper.  Started in a dorm room in 1978, these guys took punk primitivism  to an extreme.  Their songs usually clocked in at under two minutes and rarely consisted of more than a single chord or two.  They were barley competent on their instruments and their setup was so stripped down that initially the bass and guitar were run through the same amplifier while the drummer banged away incoherently on a toy drum set.  But damn did it sound good.  Eventually they learned to play their instruments and adopted a sound that was something like a lighter Mission of Burma or Wire c.Pink Flag and changed their name to 100 Flowers (which was still great, btw).  But man, there's just a real charm to these early Urinals records.  This stuff sits very comfortably with a lot of the stuff on those messthetics comps which is, of course, a compliment of the hightest order.  

Urinals First EP

Trumans Water- Hey Fish

Drunken Fish

1994

Nice early single from this very  prolific band.  It's a name you don't hear that much these days, which is a shame.  Their output, which includes, christ, I think like a dozen singles or something in addition to a bunch of EPs, full lengths, and compilation contributions,  is all over the place.  When it works though it can be quite a nice bit of racket.  A couple of particularly great tracks here make this one of their stronger records for sure.  This is on Drunken Fish out of L.A.which for awhile put out some great records. Most notably was probably the Harmony of the Spheres triple LP set, but the whole roster was pretty solid.  lots of gems from the noisier fringes of the indi world of the time.  One of these guys was born again and left the group to start the christian-themed Soul Junk.  Now that's something you don't hear about everyday.

Hey Fish

Dadamah- Scratch Sun

Majora

1991

Music scenes are by nature incestuous.  But the word still seems wholly inadequate when applied to the heyday of the New Zealand post-punk underground (c. late 70's- mid 90's).  There is an amazing body of work from that corner of the world at that time spread over a myriad of cassette, 7", hyper-limited lathe cut, compilation, and LP/CD releases.  Delve in and you'll immediately start to notice a handful or so names that seem to pop up everywhere.  everywhere.  With Dadamah we have Roy Montgomery, Peter Stapleton, and Kim Pieters who had been in or would go on to a number of bands like (but certainly not limited to) The Pin Group, Terminals, Flies Inside the Sun, Victor Dimisich, band, Dissolve, Scorched Earth Policy, etc.  Montgomery also eventually went on to release a number of solo and collaborative records and garnered something of a cult following by the late 90's.  

As far as the pantheon of Kiwi Rock goes, Dadamah is a near perfect example of a particularly virulent strain of NZ noise weaned on equal parts White Light era Velvets, Kill Yr Idols era Sonic Youth and the darker corners of UK Post-Punk a la Joy Division, Wire, and the Fall.  They didn't last long, but what they left behind still resonates pretty strongly.  This record along with everything else they ever recorded (a scant 2 singles, an LP and a single comp track in all) were compiled on a CD collection by Kranky back in the mid-90's.  Amazing.

Scratch Sun