Genius #10 - Oct '24

Earlier this month, I saw the (very southerly) northern lights, convinced it was the end of time. Yesterday, I started a new job and have had to completely reorient the way that I work on this newsletter (next month will be the true test of whether or not it can continue in its current form). I watched a bunch of horror movies and listened to a bunch of music. It was pretty hard to pare this month down to a bite-sized Genius release, so look out for that scrap heap for a couple gems. October remains a great month — the leaves change, the temperature drops, everything looks like it’s encased in amber. The changing of the seasons reflects the changes within from the past year. Ok it’s time for tunes.

Capitalism:

I haven’t purchased it, but I am lusting super hard after the Vongon Effects Paragraphs II analog low-pass filter pedal. I’m a huge sucker for analog ladder filters, esp on guitars & samplers (synths always get cool filters, lets hear that resonance on something with a more pronounced attack like a guitar pick or a piano hammer!). The mk2 version fixes the main problems I had with the initial version: the new version is stereo, its MIDI implementation includes control over all parameters, and the manual trigger has been upgraded with an envelope follower that can listen to your signal. This thing is the real deal and it really costs four hundred and fifty US dollars. Maybe someday, but that day is not today.

Album Recommendations:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” (Constellation, Oct ‘24)

Anarcho orchestral rock music, you know these guys or you should

Godspeed remain one of the realest bands to do it. Their doomer vision of the world has unfolded right in front of our noses over the past 30 years… in spite of all their warnings & the roadmaps they have laid out. The band’s anarchist philosophy brings an anonymity and power to their recordings — and this one also has an legit rager in “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD” which ends with a tempo-ramping that got my blood moving. A good mix of raggedy post-rock, ambient droning, and orchestral flourishes — feels a lot more urgent than their last few (and I liked their 2021 album quite a bit). Worth noting that this is the only appropriate title for a record in 2024. Fuck the US government and fuck its imperial designs on the Middle East. Free Palestine.

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere (Century, Oct ‘24)

Proggy/Dubby Stoner Death Metal

The latest from the death metal transcendentalists/lifestyle brand is a great listen — I wasn’t convinced by their ambient turn in 2022, but this album’s mix styles honestly slams. The 45min album consists of 2 songs, each broken into 3 “tablets” (for those of us who aren’t math professors, that means 6 tracks). I truly couldn’t anticipate what would happen next on any of these — death metal riffing gives way to dub reggae rhythms, blippy arpeggiated synthesizers (courtesy of legends Tangerine Dream), and a full-on Pink Floyd sounding prog rock track REALLY took me by surprise. One of the most inventive bands & they really found their footing on this held-in-too-long-bong-rip of an album that will piss off all the right losers.

Błoto - Grzybnia (self-released, Oct ‘24)

Hip-hop influenced jazz from Poland

Easily the wildest Polish hip-hoppy jazz album written about mushrooms that you’ll hear all year. The quartet’s creative piano approach, expressive drumming, and powerful sax lines make this record sing, but it’s the rhythmic baselines that make it special. Opens very bright and quiet with a contemplative guitar and sax loop, but then gets weirder and weirder (esp on standout track “Shiitake”). Songs go back and forth on being “more jazz” vs “more hip hop,” but the band plays both sides masterfully, with equal parts skronk and finesse. The album’s title is the Polish word for the kingdom of mycelia, so you learned something about the Polish language from this blog. Look at you, you’re the genius now.

Visible Cloaks, Yoshi Ojima & Satsuki Shibano - FRKWYS Vol 15: serenitatem (RVNG, 2019)

Spacey environmental new age

Distant washy buzzing with pristine digital clarinets, little piano touches, soft spoken words. Cymbal clangs & sine waves touch the hum — and you can follow the resulting ripples in the fabric of sound with your ears. Like living in a haiku that’s being read out loud over a cathode ray tv. This is a really special collab release between 80s/90s legendary Japanese ambient artists Ojima and Shibano and modern scientists Visible Cloaks, working out bleeding-edge MIDI implementation strategies and demonstrating a pristine future-past. Yes yes. Squeaky clean.

Satoko Fujii - Torrent (Libra, 2023)

Free improv piano with extended technique

This piano album turned my head upside down. I was familiar with Fujii’s work in bands, but this was the first solo album of hers that I’d given a listen to. Sometimes it’s clear that she’s playing a piano, but sometimes it’s really unclear what instrument you’re hearing — because Fujii is improvising on both the keybed AND the strings inside the piano at the same time. Really compelling and musical free improv from the maestro.

Upcoming November albums to look forward to:

• Portland singer-songwriter Hayley Heynderickx blew me away with her debut back in 2018 — she’s finally following it up with her 2nd for Mama Bird, Seed Of A Seed, out today, 11/1.
• PNW stays winning! Anacortes WA’s Phil Elverum has a new album out under his Mount Eerie project — it looks to be a direct follow-up to his haunting and difficult 2017 album. Night Palace is out today 11/1 on his own label, PW Elverum & Sun.
• The boys are back in town! Omnivorous jazz trio-turned-quartet The Bad Plus have their 2nd album in their new configuration out (after pianist Orrin Evans departure, bassist Reid Anderson & drummer Dave King have been joined by guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Chris Speed). Complex Emotions is out 11/8 via Mack Ave Records.
• NYC noise rock siblings Venus Twins are absolutely going to be breakout celebrities in the near future. Get in on the ground floor of this bass-n-drum duo’s chaos & reap the benefits when you can say you knew them before they were cool. Their SEO-allergic EP titled /\/\/\/\/ (pronounced as “Stitching”) is out on 11/8.
• Ocean City MD freaks Full Of Hell are releasing their 2nd album of 2024, this one is a collab with production from electronic artist Andrew Nolan and a series of guest vocalists. It should be another violent listen as the band pushes away from their grindcore roots and into industrial & noise rock territory. Scraping The Divine is out via Closed Casket Activities on 11/15.

Replay: Wolf Party

The Blood Brothers - Crimes (V2, 2004)

Let’s set the scene in 2006. I’m a high school sophomore and I had never heard of The Blood Brothers. I’m listening to a lot of punk music and some metal (and “weird” music like Primus), but it’s all got “clean” singing — any screaming/growling/howling is purely incidental and not the main method by which the singers vocalize. The BBs song “Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck” was ubiquitous on MySpace pages (which had not yet lost its ground against the current metaverse garbage), so I gave it a listen and it shattered my understanding of how voices can be used in punk music.

They croon, they yelp, they screech — the song starts off all clean guitars goth-pop then jumps to full-on hardcore shredding before returning to where it started. The 2 lead vocalists are each annoying in their own special way — Jordan Blilie’s low moans counterbalanced by Jordan Whitney’s whine — and then of course they both scream in the same high-pitched screech register. Watching live videos is nuts, the band is all over the place and still making it through their incredibly challenging songs perfectly.

I threw on Crimes while driving around and was immediately transported back to the world of 2005 — the album is significantly more political than I gave it credit for when I was a child. There are specific references to soldiers and wars, and they stake a stance in opposition to both (kind of boldly in the era of “Support The Troops”).

Listening to BBs records as an adult is kind of wacky. The lyrics recycle tropes of animals (wolves, swans, pelicans, peacocks, seagulls), there’s a lot of coughing and vomiting and spitting. The lyrics are often moralistic, casting judgment on sinful MySpace-era behaviors. The songs are at once allegorical and in conversation with allegory.

In my head The BBs were basically freaky nobodies, but (as above) they definitely played on Jimmy Kimmel Live in support of this record.. and V2 records is absolutely a major label, which is pretty kooky. Plus it was recorded in Seattle by John Goodmanson (Bikini Kill, Harvey Danger, Unwound). Maybe I was just stupid when I was 15, they clearly had a lot more backing behind them than I figured.

That said, one thing that I wanted to test was my lasting impression of every Blood Brothers album: that they’re front-loaded. The first 6 songs are the best songs on the record, and the last 6 are the “others.” While that’s definitely true for Crimes, the second half doesn’t drag as bad as I remembered it.

That said the albums highlights come early: “Feed Me To The Forest” and “Trash Flavored Trash” are a perfect 1-2 punch to start the record: bratty and thrashy, setting the scuzzy tonal shift from their bright and brittle previous album.

The single “Love Rhymes…” we already talked about — then comes the e-piano & maraca heavy “Peacock Skeleton With The Crooked Feathers” (a pretty cool ATDI sounding track with great overlapping vocals) and the sick fuzzy bass punk “Teen Heat” with insane lyrics like “promageddon pit, smash hit… your song is gold like the color of piss.”

After that there’s some… mixed stuff, but at least the song titles are all winners? “Rats And Rats And Rats For Candy” is a great song title and a crazy concept.. but ends up being a big swing and a miss of a song (the BBs LOVE writing songs with waayy too many words in the choruses), “My First Kiss At The Public Execution” is a great song title with an ok song. That said, the tracks “Celebrator” and “Devastator” are total jams & I was too harsh on them as a teen.

Overall, I can’t help but feel vindicated that I prefer their follow-up, Young Machetes — an album that they hardly toured on before breaking up. All of the experiments they tried on Crimes benefitted from the guiding hand of Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto as a second producer. The songs feel like they go somewhere quicker, or at least don’t repeat themselves as much. Maybe I should have written about Young Machetes instead, but I didn’t — Crimes is celebrating a 20 year anniversary so it gets the write-up. Take it up with my editor.

Garbage Corner:

I haven’t had a single interesting thought in my head for this section this month — whoops you get what you pay for. Once I settle into a routine with the new gig, I’ll have a lot more time to focus on stuff that’s important, like this free newsletter about weirdo music garbage that my friends read.

Scene Report:

Boris - Baltimore Soundstage (10/24)

Boris so sick, they played all of their first(?) album Amplifier Worship. Crushing, heavy, absurdly loud and so full. My ears rang for hours afterward. The 4 piece had a total of 6 amplifiers and 2 drum kits, with drummer Atsuo performing lead vocals as a frontman (and dressed like a kabuki bondage bird). I try to catch Boris live every time I can because it’s an experience like nothing else — your blood vibrates to the frequency of the instruments. It’s fucked. See below for more.

November upcoming shows

This is really lame, but I didn’t have time to do a deep dive on shows coming up, so these are all just a roll-up from last month’s issue. I’m not sure if the show calendar is long for this world, it is easily the most time consuming part of writing this blog. Issuing a write-in campaign to save the Genius Dot Com Show Calendar — if you use the show calendar, please get in touch and let me know. As of now, it feels like a futile and stupid exercise for no one’s benefit.

Baltimore:

• 11/19 (Tue) Chat Pile, Mamaleek @ Metro
• 11/23 (Sat) Blood Incantation @ Baltimore Soundstage
• 11/23 (Sat) Meth Rats @ Metro
• 11/24 (Sun) Horse Jumper of Love @ Ottobar

DC:

• 11/1 (Fri) Touché Amoré, Soul Glo, Portrayal Of Guilt, @ Black Cat
• 11/15 (Fri) Ed Shrader @ Comet Ping Pong
• 11/16 (Sat) Hayley Heynderickx @ 9:30 Club
• 11/17 (Sun) slowdive @ The Atlantis
• 11/19 (Tue) Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Alan Sparhawk (of Low) @ 9:30 Club
• 11/21 (Thu) Body Meat @ Songbyrd
• 11/23 (Sat) Adrianne Lenker, Suzanne Vallie @ The Atlantis

Philly:

• 11/2 (Sat) Touché Amoré, Soul Glo, Portrayal Of Guilt @ Union Transfer
• 11/15 (Fri) Chat Pile, Mamaleek @ First Unitarian Church
• 11/15 (Fri) Slowdive @ Franklin Music Hall
• 11/15 (Fri) Haley Heynderickx @ World Café Live
• 11/19 (Tue) Cortex & Nels Cline @ Solar Myth
• 11/25 (Mon) Adrianne Lenker @ Union Transfer
• 11/26 (Tue) Adrianne Lenker @ Union Transfer

Further ahead:

• 12/8 (Sun) billy woods & Kenny Segal @ Union Stage (DC)
• 12/10 (Tue) The Blood Brothers @ Union Transfer (Philly)
• 12/13 (Fri) The Blood Brothers @ Irving Plaza (NYC)
• 12/13 (Fri) The Jesus Lizard @ Union Transfer (Philly)
• 12/14 (Sat) The Jesus Lizard @ Black Cat (DC)
• 12/15 (Sun) The Jesus Lizard @ Black Cat (DC)

Cheers,
LM