Review :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: King Tuff

Brattleboro, VT's Kyle Thomas aka King Tuff spreads himself way too thin. Between this project, Witch, Happy Birthday, Feathers and who knows what else, he seems to be in a state of perpetual distraction, and it's a fucking tragedy that King Tuff has only released one record. He serves us mashed potatoes, fried okra, and cornbread, but all I really want is the meatloaf. To tease us, he's offered up some leftovers here, like a cold meatloaf sandwich where the grease has turned the color of mother of pearl. Iridescent and chalky, fairly bland until you let the bacteria on your tongue break it down into a fatty syrup that coats your insides. "Hands" is a re-recording of an old demo from the Mind Blow CDR, dating back to the early 2000's. Dig the choked-up garage guitar. Dig the slap-back nasal commands. Dig the vaguely muppetesque background vocals. The brilliant Scion AV has kindly included the track in its garage 7" series, along with Austin's Hex Dispensers. It's good to know that King Tuff is still cooking, but it's time for a new entree. Liver delivery.

Hands

Review :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: Washed Out

Let's talk about me for a minute. More specifically, let's talk about my funeral. It's inevitable, unless of course I'm completely forgotten and perish face down in a flooded ditch on the side of the road, which seems comfortably natural to me. But, if I were to die and some assembly claimed my body upon their lazy Sunday afternoon with nothing else to do, I guarantee they'd find a mixtape somewhere on my corpse. You know why? It's because I keep a tape labeled "Songs I'd Like Played At My Funeral" in my pocket every day. That's how morbid I am. I don't want an epitaph scribbled into my headstone... I want a goddamn iPod docking station with my Funeral Mix forever glued into my grave.

Washed Out already holds a place in this mix to end all mixes, and this cut from the forthcoming LP Within and Without (July 12 on Sub Pop) is a strong contender. If by the off-chance there's a lofty heaven, and the further unlikelihood that I make it there, this is the sound of the clouds breaking. Cheesy enough? Try spending a day in my shoes.


Washed Out :: Eyes Be Closed

Review :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: Craft Spells

Craft Spells
Idle Labor
Captured Tracks


Craft Spells :: After the Moment


Spring's in the air and pretty soon it'll be time for a bunch of navel-gazing kids to rent their tuxes, hire a limo, and convince the toothless dude on the curb at Snappy Mart to buy half a dozen bottles of the Boone's. But, wait, you don't need the sweet, sweet shitty taste of Strawberry Hill to make you feel like you belong, little man. Got some prom rock right here for you. Bonus: it won't puke on the pool table or knock you up the week after you get your admission letter. Just don't stare at the album cover for too long.

Idle Labor is diced, strained and canned nostalgia, sure, and I like it. Who needs drums when you've got a drum machine? And who needs actual memories from high school when you can just buy Idle Labor?  Vallesteros will hold your hair back, rock you gently to sleep, and not even muss that Country Kwencher stache you've been working on. Remember: it's just a different, far less satisfying brand of manhood you've attained there.

Like Wild Nothing and Washed Out before them, this Stockton, CA band seems to lurk in the same morose, wall-papered attic world with only a laptop and a stack of Thoreau novels to keep them from going all Emily Dickinson on the neighborhood cats. In case you slept through American Lit: Emily Dickinson didn't do anything to cats.  Led by singer/guitarist Justin Vallesteros, Craft Spells are out on the road now, and they're sure to be hitting mixtapes nation-wide by summertime.

When you finally check the Rock and Roll Hotel's page to figure out that a venue smaller than the backseat of your girlfriend's Prius managed to pack the house for Toro y Moi/Adventure, crack open a High Life or stub out a smoke on your arm, whichever one helps you feel like an achiever, then roll downhill to DC9 for the doubleheader: Craft Spells open and label mates Beach Fossils close.

Hear/here most of the brand new album at this blue/then gray word. Now I just can't wait to hear their G.G. Allin cover.

Review :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: Dignan Porch

Dignan Porch
Deluded
Captured Tracks

There's enough swerving guitar rock here to keep my eyes forward on the road. The singer's stair-step vocal rhythm has plenty of hook to it. And the occasional harmony just plain creeps me out the way two people who know each other way too well do. Dignan Porch hail from the UK, the land where our better-mannered cousins crouch in a thick fog, dreaming of beaches. And perhaps that explains the beauty this band builds from simple means, never really over-reaching or stepping into the unfamiliar. I feel like I'm getting soft in my age just listening to them. Makes we want to go out in the street and kick over a baby carriage or wave my knife at an old lady just to rekindle what I lost listening to this album.

Captured Tracks deserves a pat on the back for inviting these guys across the pond. They released the band's first album in 2010 and this slightly higher-fi follow-up shows even more promise, proving that with clear eyes there's more guts and glory to behold.  Go to your record store, or why not give them a week, and then demand Deluded.

Dignan Porch :: Stream

Review :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: Brown Recluse

Brown Recluse
Panoptic Mirror Maze
Self-Released



I woke up way too early this morning so I could toss my Vox Jaguar organ into the trunk of my dad's VW and have him drive me to a repair shop in the palatial suburbia of Kensington, MD. Kensington, MD, as it turns out, is the shittiest place on earth. I shut my eyes and dozed off as my dad pointed out the veterinary clinic he worked at when he was 16, now entirely swallowed by monolithic slabs of concrete that lifeless people buzz in and out of. I had a nightmare, then woke as the gurgle of the diesel engine quit, yanked the organ from the back, and knocked on the door of the windowless storefront. After a moment, Merlin opened the gate and welcomed me into his castle, a giant warehouse space filled wall to wall with vintage keyboards: Farfisa, Wurlitzer, Hammond, Rhodes, Arp, and now my Vox; I wanted to hear all of them playing at once.

Philly's psych-pop outfit Brown Recluse shares that same desire, but they have the means to make it reality. The fine folks over at Weekly Tape Deck recently posted a video for "Mirror Mansion," and I had to find out more. The song is available on Panoptic Mirror Maze, a free mini-LP offered on the band's Bandcamp page. This shit came out of nowhere for me; at times Martin Denny, other times BBC Radiophonic Workshop, or the Elephant Six, always technicolor and brimming with sugarsweet arrangements. "Mirror Mansion" pulls me straight off the couch and plugs me directly into the Ghost n' Goblins video game. I've always searched for that feeling. Fire-breathing ghouls knocking my clothes off, all pixelated and grainy. They take the warm hum of my analog dreams and paint murals with them.

Apparently, this release is a teaser of sorts for their upcoming debut LP, Evening Tapestry, out March 15 on Slumberland. If it's not pressed on glow-in-the-dark vinyl, I'm throwing it away.

Brown Recluse :: Mirror Mansion

Review :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: Young Prisms

I never get sick. I'm behind the times... I have no idea what a netty pot is (Neti?), and my idea of "holistic" involves a lot of bitching and moaning, looking for sympathy, and calling out sick. I never imagined I'd be rapping on a bulletproof window for a bottle of NyQuil, then carded twice for it. Of course I drank way more than is directed... that was my plan in the first place. I didn't plan on it fucking me up way more. The only way to appease the demons is this track from Young Prisms, from their debut LP Friends For Now, out on Kanine Records this week. Equal parts woozy and lockgroove, it's the undecipherable drowned-out vocals that turned my stomach, and the hard-hitting drums that gave me support as I exorcised the plague.

Catch the San Fran fivesome Feb. 1st at Rock and Roll Hotel with Radio Dept. I'll be there sipping on my Texas tea, trying to replicate last night's fever dream.

Young Prisms :: Feel Fine

Reviews :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: Anika

Any news of Geoff Barrow dabbling in new projects brings to mind what he's not doing with Portishead, but it also forces me to dig out my Silver Apples LPs to get back on his wavelength. Which is by no means a chore. That floating, droning, buzzing and generally busted vibe found its way all over Barrow's recent Beak> debut (not to mention Portishead's mega-gestated Third), so it's not entirely surprising to hear it resurface on his newest adventure.

Political journalist-turned-avant chanteuse Anika met Barrow while living between Bristol and Berlin. It's tough to determine how much of Anika's self-titled debut (out this week on Stones Throw) is actually hers and how much is a Beak> record fronted by a female vocalist. Either way, the results make me want to pump my fist for the revolution while coolly reclined in my comfy swivel-chair. Anika is a call to arms by a legion of spaced-out record geeks. And that's precisely why I'm able to get on board. Much better than watching Monday Night Football.

Anika :: Yang Yang

Review :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: Gang of Four

A band is only allowed one come-back album. I think that's a fair assertion... something everyone can agree on. Anything beyond that is no longer the valiant effort of the "band" - that being a solidified group of dedicated musicians - but really the privilege of a songwriter holding onto a name. Fortunately for Gang of Four, singer Jon King and guitarist Andy Gill have always been the clear core, and the torch is theirs to carry. In advance of their upcoming record, Content (due Jan. 25 through Yep Roc), the Gang (can I even say that?) have offered up a free EP featuring a re-recorded take of "Glass," from their agreed-upon classic debut Entertainment, along with two additional non-album tracks.

The necessity of a 3-song EP made up of one re-recording, one rehearsal demo, and one dance remix is entirely arguable. But it's free, so no harm there. Maybe I'm too classicist, but reviving a highlight from a landmark album for no particularly good reason (the original was "too busy" and "old-fashioned," according to Gill) seems gimmicky, especially 30 years later (!!) However, it's possible that revisiting that material in the studio primed the engine for the sessions that make up Content. High-fidelity aside, that could bode well for their proto-dance-punk perfection.

Download it for yourself here, and catch them at DC's 9:30 Club on February 9.

Gang of Four :: Glass (re-recorded)

Review :: Psychotronic Wiretap :: Atlas Sound

Atlas Sound

Bedroom Databank, Vol. 1

Self-Released




The event of a new one-off collection of home recordings from Bradford Cox is assuring news that Deerhunter's staggering Halcyon Digest hasn't sidetracked his prolificacy, nor his generous anti-ego. Not that the 11 songs included on the Bedroom Databank, Vol. 1 - posted this week free of charge on the Deerhunter blog under his Atlas Sound moniker - are brimming with universal genius... but that's obviously not the point. This is a keep-the-wheels-spinning daydream transmitted over the internet, straight from the synapses in Cox's restless brain. The result is a mixed bag of skittering instrumentals (including an elevator-meets-earworm wordless take on Kurt Vile's "Freak Train") and campfire space-jams. These songs sound like they crept out of a pile of dirty laundry in the corner of Cox's bedroom. The perfect soundtrack to this evening's trip to the laundromat.

Atlas Sound :: Freak Train (Kurt Vile)

Footnote: Mr. Cox has delivered a second installment of his Bedroom Databank series, less than 24 hours following the previous collection. Again, beautifully scattershot and a perfect soundtrack for scrubbing the dust-turned-rust muck off the shelving units in my bedroom. Fuck spring cleaning; this is a clearinghouse to prepare for the deep-freeze. In keeping with my habitual superstition, I'll start boarding up my windows now in hopes that Cox will supply an appropriate soundtrack tomorrow...

Download volume one

Download volume two