(A RANDOM SAMPLING OF) MY BANDCAMP COLLECTION
I had this great idea to just shuffle my Bandcamp collection and have that be the subject of this next “(A RANDOM SAMPLING OF)” column, essentially a self-administered blindfold test of music I don’t always know particularly well because it’s still relatively new to me. My Bandcamp collection is now up to 68 digital albums (in many cases with a physical counterpart), a combination of my own purchases and digital promo copies generously sent here to HQ as a free download code. I think it’s a very interesting cross-section of music, skewing more recent than my vinyl/cassette/CD and tech-giant streaming-platform listening habits tend to go, and also with a distinct guitar/noise/electronic/underground edge compared to that 60’s-80’s progressive/professional folk/jazz/soul/rock/hiphop/etc comfort zone that I inevitably seem to get algorithmed or dollar-binned into. Let’s take a listen, shall we?
“The Tongue of St. Anthony” by Brandon Lopez from Juneteenth: A Catalytic Sound Compilation in Support of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund by Various Artists (Catalytic Sound, 2020). Killer thrashing solo cello or double bass improvisation, and the player is moaning along like Sunny Murray, so yeah, in a zone. The artist is Brandon Lopez, who I’m aware of but not sure I’ve heard; either way, this killer track feels like a full introduction. I think Lopez does just play double bass, so I was wrong about that cello. Gotta say, love William Parker forever but I’m 0 for 2 when it comes to even getting through the first track on his 1995 solo bass 2CD gauntlet throwdown Testimony. Granted, that track (“Sonic Animation”) is 23 minutes long, while this Lopez track is only about 5, but the latter really does have the fresh sound of the younger generation charging in. Not a dis on someone as goated as Parker, just an observation, and as far as data goes, Parker was 43 when Testimony was released and Lopez was 32 when this Juneteenth comp was released.
“405 28 Jun 89 (Walking Fish Session, Atlanta, GA) (TLS Mix, 15 Jun 89)” from Surrealismus: Paris Prag Rockville (Karl Schmidt Verlag/Adult Contemporary, 2017). This is cavernous distant-whirling-dervish noise-improv evincing the old standby ‘strange ritual in progress’ trope, but as far as standbys go, sounding pretty damn legit, with the distant male vocal moaning perhaps a little too tropey, but still unsettling, and most unsettling of all is the inexplicable primary sound, which is sort of like . . . I don’t know . . . the world’s largest retractable tape measure? Whipping violently from the flue of a huge industrial chimney bellowing veritable cloud-rivers of fiery black smoke? Blindfold removed to see that the track is by . . . Peach of Immortality, Tom Smith’s primary musical project before he founded To Live and Shave in L.A. in the year 1993. This particular Peach track was recorded in 1989, wherever they were. Maybe D.C.? And/or Atlanta? Oh, there’s Atlanta right there in the typically long-winded yet obtuse Tom Smith song title. I still have no sense of Peach of Immortality as part of the larger post-TG noise/industrial movement of the 1980s, except that they came along intriguingly late in the decade, and perhaps were the primary American Deep South proponent thereof. I’ve listened to their music off and on for years, and never really found a way in, but I think I’m finally starting to. They were so uncompromisingly out there, with nary a single stray micro-sampled cheese-metal lick or close-miced Tom Smith-exaggerates-Bryan Ferry croon to break the spell.
“Composition: One For Basquiat” by Ken Vandermark from Juneteenth: A Catalytic Sound Compilation in Support of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund by Various Artists (Catalytic Sound, 2020). Avant-garde post-new-thing solo sax improvisation, and I bet we’re back on the Catalytic Sound label’s Juneteenth comp as released on June 19th, 2020, same as the Brandon Lopez track. And it might be bass clarinet, as I keep listening. In fact, I’m almost sure of it. And I was already thinking it was probably Ken Vandermark (on that Catalytic Sound tip), but now that it’s deep into this long extended-technique lip-popping percussion section around the 3-minute mark, well it’s gotta be KV. And indeed it is. I’ve probably seen him play live over ten times here in Chicago, many of them not even on purpose (such is his presence on the scene), and throughout those gigs the lip-popping percussion technique, well . . . it’s kinda like being at a Van Halen show. You know he’s gonna play “Eruption,” you just don’t know when. By the way, if you think I’m jesting, I’d like to make clear that I think Ken Vandermark is an extremely good musician and composer. He’s constantly working, composing and playing and making his distinct brand of post-jazz new-music, and it almost never lets you (the listener) down. Last time I saw him was with the Luke Stewart Exposure Quintet at Hyde Park Jazz Fest 2023 and he and the whole thing was scorching.
“Bass” by Abriss from Approach to Fear: Regeneration (Karl Schmidt Verlag, 2017). Intrigued by this one. Dark raw synth bass dive-bombed by metal catastrophe soundscrapes. Everything is way off the one, but it funks regardless. I’m starting to think it might be Wolf Eyes, from one of their many expanded Different Messages drops. But it’s not! It’s someone I’m not very familiar with called Abriss, with a track called “Bass” from another Tom Smith/Karl Schmidt Verlag release, the awesome Approach to Fear 2CS compilation from 2017. This was my last real correspondence with Tom, when he generously sent me a review copy from his adopted home of Hanover, Germany and thanked me for what I ended up writing about it over at blastitude.blogspot.com. It was great to hear from him. Sad that he’s gone. (And btw, this just in - Palilalia Records is reissuing Tom’s 2002 To Live and Shave in L.A. magnum opus The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg as a 4LP box set! Taking preorders now.)
“We Can Touch That Way” by Kathy Leisen from “Proof” (Syncro Sound, 2021). Loving the sound of this one, one woman reciting a gentle smart rant about taking selfies while another woman (or the same overdubbed) sings haunting teenage melodics in the background. The recitation falls into a chant “in the body, in the mind, we can touch that way” and it’s kinda heady. Blindfold removed: oh, of course, solo music from Kathy Leisen who was in Soft Location, a great late-aughts band from Detroit. I have not one but two of her solo albums in my Bandcamp collection, “Proof” and Dub.
“Dark Light” by Blood Quartet from Approach to Fear: Regeneration (Karl Schmidt Verlag, 2017). More thrashing post-punk post-jazz improvised music from the 1990s and/or 2000s! Wild saxophone, alienated industrial seagull guitar, and trap set drumming that alternately skitters and crashes. Kinda cool how my Bandcamp seems to have a lot of this kind of music, which in the 1990s, as I say in another newsletter, was my Sex Pistols, or more accurately my No New York (INXS:Dead C::The Beatles:Mars), and is still a primary interest even if I don’t put it on nearly as often anymore. Last time I listened to this comp I went down a brief Blood Quartet rabbithole where I realized they were Mark Cunningham from No New York legends Mars, now living abroad in Barcelona, joining an extant local trio called Murnau B to become a new quartet. I found all of that out, and then completely forgot it until now when I’m hearing the same track again and going down the same rabbithole one more time.
“Remote Viewing Case #80787” by Pod Blotz from Zum Audio Vol. 4 (Zum Audio, 2021). Unfortunately I snuck a peek at this one before being able to write about it. I’m telling you, these self-administered blindfold tests aren’t easy! But they are lots of fun. Maybe they’re even half as fun to read as they are to write, and if so, I’m glad you’re enjoying. Anyway, this track by Pod Blotz? It’s so good. So many elements I love: deadpan post-punk femme vocals, making it sound like some weird lost underground synth-pop 45; deadpan post-punk drum-machine grooves; crude deadpan quasi-keyboard electronic hooks and riffs throughout. What can I say, there’s just something about deadpan electronics that does me right. Pod Blotz was in Chicago for awhile back in the 1990s and I think even into the 2000s. I never did see her play live, and I somehow believe I own zero records under her name, but every single time I’ve bumped into a recording by her, like on extremely weird comps like this one, I’ve loved it.
“Box-Eyed Man” by Don Fleming from Approach to Fear: Regeneration (Karl Schmidt Verlag, 2017). Whoah, what’s this post-Van Der Graff Generator band with its Hammill-esque erudite sneering vocalist and lyricist? This is the rareified and scorchingly ironic and hyperskilled territory that The God in Hackney and few others work in (I mean, late-period Scott Walker is the grandaddy of them all, basically the Roald Amundsen of this territory.) Oh man, this is Don Fleming! Also on the Approach to Fear comp. Did you know Don Fleming is a boyhood friend of Tom Smith’s, also from humble Valdosta, Georgia? I can imagine the two of them blasting Van Der Graff vinyl in their suburban bedrooms, precocious teens geeking out over “Man-Erg” etc.
“Alan’s Intro” by Blind Owl Wilson from Blind Owl Wilson (Mississippi Records, 2021). Gonna guess this is Emily Robb, maybe a short solo guitar track from either of her two great albums so far, How to Moonwalk (Petty Bunco, 2021) or If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection (Petty Bunco, 2023). Robb is one of my favorite solo electric guitarists these days, which is kind of a rare category (and that’s solo electric guitar, as in unaccompanied, not electric guitar soloist). It’s not about virtuosity or musical genius or anti-virtuosity or anything like that. It’s just raw solo electric guitar that feels good, and I can’t quickly think of too many others. Jeff Parker does it very well, of course, on albums like Slight Freedom (Eremite, 2016) and Forfolks (International Anthem, 2021). There’s also Mary Halvorson solo records like Meltframe (Firehouse 12 Records, 2015) and the great You Win by Sandy Ewen (Gilgongo, 2020), but kinda drawing a blank beyond that (here’s where the internet lists every solo electric guitar record ever made to “help me out,” thanks everyone) . . . and lol, btw, this isn’t Emily Robb at all, it’s Blind Owl Wilson of Canned Heat, from the crucial if quite possibly unauthorized Blind Owl Wilson comp LP that Mississippi Records put out back in 2021. (Yes dear reader, I just mistook Emily Robb for Blind Owl Wilson. Happens to the best of us. To my credit, they are both electric guitar minimalists!)
“Blood on the Floor” by Wolf Eyes v/a from Difficult Messages Two: The Clock Box (Lower Floor, 2021). A one-bar loop of funky 80s electro hip-hop trip-hop, over and over and over and over, and that’s the track. I like it. It’s only 2m22s long and it’s already over before I even had a chance to guess the artist.
“I.” by Sarah Clausen from Sarah Clausen Solo at Experimental Sound Studio (No Label, 2020). More solo reeds. Might be clarinet, might be . . . alto sax? Tenor sax, but the player is staying in the higher range? I used to be better at telling various reed instruments apart while listening to recordings, I swear to you. I’m also getting that vibe I get from most modern “shuffle all” tools, like Spotify, or back in the iPod days, that the shuffle is favoring 4 or 5 albums at a time. This has gotta be another one from either the Catalytic Sound Juneteenth comp or the Approach to Fear: Regeneration comp . . . and indeed it’s . . . neither! OMG, this is a local Chicago artist I really dig, Sarah Clausen, with a solo album she released way back in 2020. Speaking of Emily Robb, I saw Clausen open for her in October 2023, on a wonderful little early evening bill at the Tone Deaf record store, and while this music is excellent and entrancing solo acoustic music, that 2023 set (also solo) incorporated keyboards and tapes to world-beating effect. At the show, Clausen told me she was in the process of recording that material for an upcoming release. Hope it’s coming soon!
“Mercy on Thee” by Nihar from Zum Audio Vol. 5 (Zum Audio, 2023). Lol, this could also be from the Approach to Fear: Regeneration comp, as it sounds like excellent deep global 2000s/2010s NOISE MUSIC. It could also be Different Messages-era Wolf Eyes v/a. But I don’t think it’s either. It has a broken-ish drum machine groove, but it’s not quite as broken as Wolf Eyes/Time Designers, a little cleaner, like 10% or 15% more club-friendly. While at the same time, the harsh-noise grinds that create a rhythmic noise hook over the top are, if anything, even harsher than Wolf Eyes’ own noise-grind moves. It is in fact an artist I don’t recognize called Nihar, and it’s from the Zum Audio Vol. 5 various artists comp on the Zum Audio label. First of all, I take back what I said about the Bandcamp shuffle favoring just two or three comps; I’m actually loving the focus onto just two or three incredible post-noise 21st Century compilations of post-noise music, each of them filled with so many different artists and sub-avenues. This is true 21st C. Blastitude, the legacy of this magazine, the shit that kickstarted me into writing about music back in the year 2000. Once again, it’s my Sex Pistols, my No New York, blasting away any pre-packaged American Revolution 3 our capitalist superstructure could foist, all your Lollapaloozas, your MTV Real Worlds, every one of the thousands of minor rages against the five or six major machines. And it’s not just streaming away as part of the endless decentralized digital cloud, it’s actually bottled by a label and a curator with a specific vision. Underground comps like these are the truth.
“A Kiss” by Emily Robb from If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection (Petty Bunco, 2023). OK, now my Bandcamp shuffle is indeed playing music by Emily Robb. I haven’t looked yet to confirm that, but I know that when I do, it’s not going to be Blind Alan Wilson from Canned Heat, it’s going to be Emily Robb. Yep, this is “A Kiss” from If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection.
“Wolf Eyes Phili Halloween h” by Wolf Eyes v/a from Difficult Messages Two The Clock Box (Lower Floor, 2021). And this is definitely Wolf Eyes v/a from the Different Messages era. God I loved that v/a era of Wolf Eyes, just the perfect opening up of a mostly quite cloistered sound and approach. Such a good LP. Regeneration, am I right? A brave and often powerful approach to fear.
At this point, after I had random-sampled 14 different tracks, Bandcamp had removed any way for the user to hit “shuffle all” on their whole collection. Using this tool is not only essential for this random sampling concept, but is indeed my preferred way to listen to my Bandcamp collection, as if it were an amazing radio station. This was rather frustrating, so I decided to close out this article with flash reviews of a few more-or-less randomly selected records from my Bandcamp collection instead. Those appear below, although now, one hour before publication time, I can confirm that Bandcamp has restored their “shuffle all collection” function. Thank goodness! Now I can start working on part two.
HUMAN ADULT BAND Castle Armadillo CS (ALREADY DEAD) This band is nuts. Every time I listen to an album by them it sounds like total shit, in a way that’s completely interchangeable with the last album by them I listened to, and I absolutely love it all. I really think it’s always just a bass/guitar/drums power trio jamming, maybe even a quartet with two guitars, but it might as well be ten cows in a hurricane. Either way, I can say with some confidence that the band and their sound is led by the bass guitar and its huge thick sludgetone, and the way the drummer locks into it, but again it’s all recorded very roughly, and again I love it anyway because they might still be the heaviest band in the world. To use the perfect words said on air by the college and/or community radio DJ and excerpted towards the end of side A: “[Human Adult Band] is a treat. A turgid, turgid treat.”
CORSANO BAIZA WATT TRIO s/t LP (YUCCA ALTA) Well these are some elders at work. Even Corsano could be called an elder, with over 20 years strong on the scene, so what does that make Watt and Baiza now, at well over 40 years strong and counting? Grand-elders? Either way Watt and Baiza have certainly played together before (saw ‘em together very memorably on Watt’s 1997 Sticking the Head Out of the Hatch Tour, October 17th to be precise, at the legendary Ranch Bowl of Omaha), but I’m not sure they’ve ever played with a drummer as volcanic and explosive as Chris Corsano, even if he sounds pretty reigned in on here, which is actually a great thing, especially on the smoldering penultimate track “Spasmodic Appointments.” I have to say Watt’s style has changed since the more snappy Minutemen and fIREHOSE days — the bass here strikes me as more low-end, turgid, and dirged-out — but he still gets into these distinctive slurred ostinatos that Corsano and Baiza can dance in and out of. Baiza probably sits out the most — he remains a very tasteful player, even when more than half of what he plays is spiky, spindly, and atonal, laying down his own brand of avant-garde Beefheartian desert blues.
BONG WATT Collab #3: If It Works, It’s Obsolete (PUBLIC EYESORE) Extremely avant-garde improvised music, what sounds like a woodwind instrument played by a camel’s nostril duetting with spindly auto-generated 1970s computer electronics, and I absolutely love it. Despite the vintage nature of the electronics, this was probably recorded in the 2020s, and actually, there’s three instruments — how could I have not included the agitated close-mic’d crinkle-crumple going on, someone scraping away indiscriminately, when it was right in front of me the whole time? To my credit, it’s not immediately clear how many instruments there are, or who is playing what, or what “what” might even be, or what “playing” might even mean. It’s a trio called Bong Watt, or actually called Bong Watt Collab #3. One of the members is Al Margolis on those “spindly auto-generated 1970s computer electronics.” He’s the guy who ran the Sound of Pig noise/industrial cassette label throughout the 1980s, and as far as I know still does. Apparently he has a duo with another guy on here, Walter Wright, and they call themselves Elka Bong. On this cassette release, they become a trio with the addition of “Watt” on “bass guitar,” so Elka Bong + Watt equals Bong Watt. I can’t help but think this must be Mike Watt, which means I’ve randomly sampled two albums in a row from my Bandcamp collection that both have Mike Watt on bass. If it’s him, and I do think it is, he’s playing against his character and style here (even the “turgid ostinato” style referenced above). Doing a real avant thing with soft noise and long silences. Truly weird music!
LESLIE KEFFER Veiled Matter (NO PART OF IT) You might remember Leslie Keffer on the 00s noise scene and as a long-running Laundryroom Squelcher, but if you were wondering why you hadn’t heard from her in awhile, it’s because she took a good 12 years off, starting around 2010, due to complications with epilepsy. But she returned with many new releases starting in 2022, including this one from September 2023 called Veiled Matter. Keffer does a lot of singing on this album, and in many ways it could be described as a dark synth-pop album. A highly abstract one, but most songs really do have riffs, changes, beats, and vocals. Still quite sui generis, if comparable to the darker end of Chris & Cosey music and certain other 1980s post-industrial cassette-only barely-knowns. Track three “In Tongues” is a bit of centerpiece, 10 minutes of slow-burn electronic thud/trance over which abstract synth-pop dirge-vocals wail. Track four “Mineral Cloak” is an instrumental, and a banger. Track five “Silicify” has vocals again, and it’s kind of a monster, as in actually somewhat terrifying. I mean, I watched both The Substance (2024, d. Coralie Fearget) and Nosferatu (2024, d. Robert Eggers) this week and, well, “Silicify” is scary like that too, and possibly a better feminist score for some of Lily-Rose Depp’s more involved physicality in the latter (Eggers’s film, despite what I think are many flaws, is a profoundly feminist work). “Silicify” is one of the more abstract tracks on here, almost back to the full-bore noise of Keffer’s early career, but not that either, something new. And then track eight “Energetic Code” is a killer instrumental with a groove so hard and honestly funky that it’s probably my favorite track on here.
EMILY ROBB Live at Jerry’s (NO LABEL) Might as well full-circle this Bandcamp sampling by closing with a quick review of the latest from Emily Robb (not Blind Owl Wilson), a digital-only release of one 24-minute track which I interpret as a complete live set at that Philly staple venue Jerry’s On Front. I mean, damn, despite rough sound quality it’s as good as she’s ever been, and dare I say sounding more ‘VU boot’ than ever, using a loop pedal to be both Sterling and Lou?