September 2002

AUDIOSLEEP
s/t ($5 at www.audiosleep.net)
If you are one of those folks who enjoy swirling space noises with lingering guitar lines, Audiosleep is a must for you. My only complaint about this trio's first release is that it is only a three-song EP, and even though one of the tracks was ten minutes long it was way too short. Patrick Dinglasan, Chris Moncada and Trevor Sloan formed their first band in high school but started this project in 2000. Their space-rock music perfectly balances the ambient, groove, experimental and electronic side of things. Structure and sound experiments are heard at alternating times, going from one direction flawlessly into another, making this release enjoyable and very unpredictable. It makes you feel like you are exploring the Andromeda galaxy. Their slow-moving basslines, lingering echoes, delays and slightly distorted fuzzy guitars evolve until there is nothing left but wavy oscillations in randomly synthesized soundscapes layered among the most quiet, whispering voices. And to top that all off, they throw in fun, light-hearted "I'm In Love With A Robot", a synth-driven pop/rock song. Audiosleep's strong melodies and beautifully timed outbursts of bleeps and other futuristic synth noises make for wave upon wave of intense sound installation. Nothing's too outrageous, but nothing's too accessible. It's a seamless space journey, a timeless listen. AS
File next to: Tom Spacey, Tristeza, Windy & Carl, KC Accidental.
Catch Audiosleep live at Wavelength 133 on Sunday Sept. 29, 10:45pm.

BENDING MOUTH
s/t (Tinmen/Skyscrapers Collective; www.mp3.com/bendingmouth)
Thesis Sahib and Selfhelp do so much more to make Halifax look good than all those losers with guitars out there, it even makes the other rappers look bad. Look, it's not their fault they flow like Mensa alumni on good ecstasy, so lay off. They're making good music, which was starting to look illegal or something. BP

HAPPY #2
(Top Shelf, www.topshelfcomix.com)
In case you missed the first issue (and if you did -- you gotta buy that too), or my review of said comic book, lemme say this loud and clear: Josh Simmons is the fucking coolest. You need his comics to be cool, and if you want your friends to be cool, you have to constantly tell them about how cool Happy is. This time around the pipe, he gives a Laryndectomy to autobiographic comix with his teeth, shows us the king of the world, and, in a two-pager called "Helping Hand," he answers my prayers for the funniest punchline ever. What's with this guy? He's the fucking coolest. BP

HEMOL/BLEUBIRD
s/t (crkrdrrzr@aol.com); s/t (Right Left Records, info@rightleftrecords.com)
Two amazing home-baked hip-hoppers from Florida. Theme parks and suburbs have raised their consciousness far beyond that of ordinary humans (Hemol is the only person I've ever met who got more lucid while on acid) -- so far beyond, in fact, that their records are so fun to listen to you might not understand it. Maybe you should stick to slowcore and math-rock. Me, I'll be singing "Your parents think you're full of shit / You owe a lot of people money" at my day job. BP

LIARS
They Threw Us All In a Trench and Put a Monument On Top (Mute/Blast First; www.liarsliarsliars.com)
"Can you hear us? We got our finger on the pulse of America." Choice words. So starts these no-wave/post-punk revivalists' stellar album (just reissued by Mute/Blast First). Brooklyn seems to be the place these days for such things and this one gets an "A" for sure. "A" also stands for ass, which this album gets a-kickin' with its frenzy of bass-heavy blasts, accented by angry art-punk swagger. Truly danceable and funky as hell too, this album just makes you wanna tear shit up (but in a good way). "Mr Your On Fire Mr" has the most interesting (ab)use of drum machine in place of screaming guitar fills. Australian frontman Angus Andrews blurts out the lyrics in an impaling fashion, like an A.D.D.-addled John Lydon. Just when you think that this album couldn't get any more bizarre and diverse, along comes the "The Dust That Makes Mud." Progressing seamlessly from an eight minute song into a 22-minute locked groove, this one is truly brave. God I love New York. SV
File next to: Gang of Four, PIL, The Rapture, rollercoasters, screaming for fun.

MACH TIVER
The Means of Escape (Goodwin Centre for Audio Design; machtiver@hotmail.com)
Mach Tiver like to tour. Just to, ahem, drive the point home, they've literally sewn a picture of their van to their CD sleeve. The sibling duo of Adam and Shannon Goodwin are the kind of band that puts out records just so they can sell them on the road. Not that this isn't a worthy recording -- in fact, engineer Alex Durlak has done a brilliant job as always (disclosure: he worked on my last two records; thanks, Alex) -- but there's no possible way it can compare to their fearsome live show, as those unsuspecting Wavelength patrons who witnessed their pulverizing, landing-Concorde-volume assault will attest. Translating that live energy to tape is a problem that hardcore bands have faced since day one, and hence the album becomes more of a memento for the show. You get to find things lost in the din, like Shannon's excellent singing voice. A lyric sheet illuminates what on earth Adam's screaming about, while song titles like "Dungeons and Dragons Ruined My Life" indicate that Wavelength should extend a formal apology for declaring the band humourless last issue. Pick this up and burn the songs into your brain before their next gig, which sadly won't be Ôtil 2003 at the earliest. JD File next to: Godheadsilo, Unwound, Shotmaker, "let's just get in the car and let's just drive."

PIANO MAGIC
Writers Without Homes (4AD, www.piano-magic.co.uk)
There has always been something unique about listening to a Piano Magic album. No surprise that Spanish film director Bigas Luna walked out of a Madrid record store proclaiming them the best candidates to score his film, Son De Mar (which they did). Similar in aesthetic to the This Mortal Coil school of supergroups, ringleader Glen Johnson always surrounds himself with a variety of talented performers, bringing differing hues to the melancholic groove of Piano Magic. On this new release we hear Tarwater, John Grant of The Czars (doing the best impression of Ron Sexsmith I've ever heard in awhile), Simon Raymonde (ex-Cocteau Twins), Paul Anderson of Tram and Ô60s folkie Vashti Bunyan. Even Bigas Luna appears here to render a phonetic repetition of the word "ghosts" in Spanish. This ghost idea seems to permeate the album throughout. Quiet, yet beautiful songs that seem to haunt you. SV File next to: This Mortal Coil, Fridge, Hood, Quay Brothers films, rainy days.

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE
(dir. Michael Winterbottom, now in first-run)
Hilarious, clever, faithful to its subject matter, yet ultimately superficial, the docu-drama about Manchester's Factory Records scene has got the spirit, but somehow loses the feeling. Told from the POV of TV presenter turned music impresario Tony Wilson, the film is split into two acts by the suicide of Ian Curtis. Joy Division fans will delight in minutiae such as a cantankerous Martin Hannett teaching Stephen Morris the beat to "She's Lost Control" (on the studio roof, no less!), yet agonize over Peter Hook's lack of a beard. The use of JD's music definitely reinforces its timeless, bone-chilling power, but the same cannot be said of the heroes of act two, the Happy Mondays, who are amusingly fucked-up but musically vapid -- sorry Tony, Shaun Ryder is not the greatest poet since Yeats. Worse, Manchester is arrogantly posited as the source of rave culture via Wilson's Hacienda club, while Chicago and Detroit are presumed not to exist. Suddenly the town is full of shiny happy people, and how we get there from the rainy, gray, post-industrial introspection of Ian Curtis' world is not explained. Neither are the circumstances of his suicide, which, considering his epilepsy and marital breakdown, are not to be glossed over. Winterbottom seems afraid to slow down and let any of these wonderful characters have an actual conversation. Instead, "Tony, you know your problem? You're a cunt" is about as much as we get to understand how our absurdly self-mythologizing narrator relates to anyone else. And when he says the story's not about him but the music and the people who made it, he's not exactly convincing. All that said, the existence of this movie is still a Good Thing, given how it may raise awareness of these unlikely heroes of the multiplex. JD
File next to: Deborah Curtis' book Touching From a Distance (for added human interest content).

WHITE STAR LINE
s/t (AntiAntenna, www.antiantenna.com)
Recorded at Andy Magoffin's House of Miracles in incremental installments over the course of the past two years, this stylistic mixed-bag of a band's debut full-length is kept in check by a predominant crispness that for the most part works in serving to reign in the scattershot slack. What's likewise laid even more bare than ever are each song's seeming inspiration, again abetted by the playing-with-the-big-boys fullness of the recording that holds the band's sound up for scrutiny as no live show ever could. I mean, WSL themselves would be the first to admit that they more than liberally toy with The Flaming Lips' before-we-fell-for-ProTools fakebook, but that's a no-brainer. Who knew, though, that the boys had enough Ween in Ôem to crib "Big Jilm", phone-voice EQ, stabbing guitar line and all, as on "Bowels of a Bummer" (and don't even get me started about the Yes flirtations)? CFD
File next to: Jim O'Rourke's latest, kids' songs that don't drive you insane.
White Star Line appear at Wavelength 131 on Sunday Sept. 15, 10pm.

Reviewed by: Jonny Dovercourt (JD), Craig Fraid Dunsmuir (CFD), Buddy of the Pines (BP), Ann Sulikowski (AS), Steven Venn (SV)