Monday record review 3/12/2012: Unsane, "Visqueen"

March 12, 2012  /  Michael T. Fournier  /  Source

1. In a Las Vegas dive bar on Friday night, Noah and I talked to this guy wearing a Mason hat. I told the guy about my one experience with the group: Rebecca and I went to an open house, and the guy giving the tour wouldn’t look me in the eye when we shook hands.

“You didn’t go back?”

“No,” I told the guy wearing the hat.

“So you quit.”

2. After years of hearing about the man’s work, I finally made my way through some of Cormac McCarthy’s stuff last year. Notice I didn’t say “read.” That’s not the right verb. It’s not light, or, often, pleasurable. It’s a slog. Completely dispelling all ideas of myth, all thoughts and glamour by rubbing the reader’s face in a ridiculous, unsentimental body count, the codified Hollywood system of badges, and white & black horses. There’s a convincing argument to be made that, like Kenneth Patchen’s Journal of Albion Moonlight, the rough ride is inherent: if you want to live what it was like, no easy read will suffice.

Last Man Standing

3. I was so smitten with Unsane’s debut LP—one of Matador’s first handful of releases—that I hung a picture of the band in my high school locker. It wasn’t until after I graduated that I got a chance to see them, except I didn’t: the Middle East had changed their age policy from 19+ to 21+. So, despite driving down to Boston from New Hampshire, I didn’t get a chance to see Unsane play (Terry G went around the corner to TT’s, intent on seeing a show if it killed us, and caught an insane Engine Kid / Crain / Grifters / Codeine show instead). The band, miraculously, was parked in front of the club, so we went to talk to them, kinda hoping they’d invite us in. But they didn’t offer, and we didn’t ask.

4. For years, the production on Unsane albums was—what? Not lo-fi, exactly, but muted in such a way that their sound made sense. Like being covered with a blanket in the back of a car trunk being taken down a bumpy backroad. Vocals were—and are—hoarse but articulate, distant, high-pitched over the band’s no-frills riff din. So the expansion of the sound on Visiqueen, the band’s 2007 album, was a bit surprising. After all, their overall aesthetic hadn’t changed since my high school days. Their b-movie gore branded them visually, and the music fit right in with the look.

But better production values help the band. There’s more space to hear everything that’s happening. Vocally, Chris Spencer is still as pissed off and hoarse as he’s ever been, but his lyrics are more discernible throughout. Everything’s a bit crisper, but still sludgy and chunky.

Against the Grain

5. I didn’t check in with Unsane for years, so, in catching up on their back catalogue, I was surprised to hear slide guitar and harmonica in their work. But, like the enhanced production, it made sense: the band has been doing their thing, visually and musically, for a long time. They’re not interested in jumping trends or kowtowing in any way. The addition of odd, seemingly non-brutal instrumentation is both a “fuck you” to fans who think they have the band pigeonholed, and an extension of their aesthetic: they sing about the miseries of everyday life in the city—heavy a la the best stuff on AmRep, toe to toe with their ‘90s pigfuck peers. What is this kind of music if not an irksome howl? It’s no stretch to call this stuff, with its occasional Western swing, the blues.

6. I buy way too many tee-shirts. Ask my wife: my dresser drawers bulge under the weight of all these shirts I don’t have the days to wear. But even though Unsane’s designs should be right in my wheelhouse—black, sparse—I won’t wear a lot of their designs. Like their new one, in the ubiquitous album release bundle: a meat cleaver. Can I wear a shirt with a cleaver that says Unsane above it? I’m not sure I can pull it off. The Masonic one, though, definitely.

—Mike F.



Read more: http://365aay.com/y3d146/#ixzz1ovlokGC9

tags / Unsane, punk, nopise rock, albus, record reviews, writing, music

Monday record review 3/5/2012: 1.6 Band's self-titled LP

March 05, 2012  /  Michael T. Fournier  /  Source

The most intense part of any moving day is inevitably couch-related: this familiar object, one whose multiple functions revolve almost solely around relaxation, becomes a monument to futility as its arms and feet transform into hindrances as a bunch of poor, exhausted saps try in vain to stuff the damn thing up (at least) one flight of stairs, muscles straining under both weight and unnatural angles. Then the process is forgotten until the next move. But afterwards, the requisite pizza and beer are awesome because the calories have been earned lugging and hefting and haggling and positioning—carbs be damned!

Legacies are like that: ultimately rewarding, but heavy, and largely divorced from process. Rather than concentrating on the process, how the current destination was reached, there’s a tendency to sit still, ignoring the twists and turns inherent in any stylistic trajectory.

1.6 Band doesn’t have a huge legacy—this LP, a few singles (including the excellent “The Checkered Past of All Things Present,” released in tandem with some recent shows [all of which I missed, dammit!]) —but what they left is indicative of this love of process and positioning. The music they play is instantly identifiable as hardcore punk, but that identification carries with it some stagnant signifiers: it’s a genre largely more interested in the post-move relaxation than getting the couch up the stairs. The tropes can be heavy and obvious.

Adult Hitler

What 1.6 Band does on their lone LP is take the hardcore signifiers and twist them in such a manner than their music, though familiar, becomes entirely their own. The most “traditional” member of the band is Kevin Egan, whose shouts throughout are strong and sustained. His lyrics, though, are much more sparse / way less didactic than the average Youth. Crew offering, leaving listeners enough space to plug in their own concerns over the provided framework. It’s impossible to discern what he’s talking about, specifically, when he sings, in “Plastic Bags” “who planted the seed? / inside my brain? / It’s gonna take a lifetime / I didn’t have to feel all this pain,” but that’s the point—specificity dictates, and dictation dates. Egan’s lyrics, because of their open-endedness, manage to evolve over time, maintaining relevance through their open-endedness.

There’s a subsect of folks who don’t listen to heavy music for the lyrics, granted. Luckily, everyone in the band is great musically. There isn’t a simple way to explain the band’s music because there’s no one blueprint that they follow. Guitarist Mike Yanicelli often leads with atonal stutters and bends, hiccups full of purposefully placed wrong notes, shrill harmonics. On “Threads,” his quick three-note progression sounds almost metal in delivery before yielding to a more traditional power-chord chorus before the bridge slows and groans under its own weight. Meanwhile, virtuoso drummer Vin Novara (who later played with some ex-Hoover dudes in the underappreciated Crownhate Ruin) puts on a clinic of 32nd notes, fills and rolls which expertly spackle the space left by bass player Lance Jaeger, whose gymnastic playing sometimes drives the song forward and sometimes adds color. Again, there’s no set pattern: at the onset, “Keeping Me From Killing You” is Jaeger’s bass’s show, just as “Threads” was Yanicelli’s. But songs like these, in which one guy seems to be driving, there are shifts—no bogarts here!—and spaces for argument.

The songs are largely in four or eight, but are sufficiently mathy to tilt heads in the pit and, after a few listens, induce new rhythms. In other words, the 1.6 Band wants listeners to be aware of the twists and turns in their heaviness before settling into them. In other words, get ready to do some work before you eat your pizza.

—Mike F.



Read more: http://365aay.com/y3d139/#ixzz1oGpcKDKO

tags / 1.6 Band, punk, punk rock, New Jersey, Gern Blandsten, record reviews, records, hardcore, unk rock

From 'The Noise,' 3/1/2012

March 01, 2012  /  Michael T. Fournier  /  Source

GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
A Review of Hidden Wheel A novel by Michael T. Fournier
 (Trade paperback; Three Rooms Press, 2011.)
 By Francis DiMenno

This is an intriguing fiction by the author of the 33 1/3 series monograph on the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime. It is a short novel which is, in essence, a mock biography of two artists. Of course, nearly all fiction is a form of mock biography. But, ultimately, a novel is also a machine for explicating a philosophy. Hidden Wheel might be of particular interest to fans of Philip K. Dick, and/or Don DeLillo (not that the two are mutually exclusive). Devotees of Dick’s dark, dystopic works such as The Man in the High Castle and A Scanner Darkly would be likely to relish the author’s narrative strategy, a series of brief, skillfully arranged, quasi-documentary chapters in which the story of an eclectic arts scene is reassembled from the point of view of a chronicler writing centuries hence. Admirers of DeLillo novels such as Great Jones Street would likely find an affinity in the subject matter of Hidden Wheel, with its wide range of arts world characters, each one concisely sketched.

Protagonists include the dipsomaniacal Max, a half-reformed graffiti artist turned gallery pro, and Rhonda, a semi-reclusive chess prodigy with a sideline as a dominatrix-for-hire who spends her life assembling fewer than a dozen enormous, autobiographical canvases. The side cast includes a tax-dodging old-money gallery owner and “micro visionary” named Ben Wilfork; a scene-making editor of an arts magazine who calls herself Lara Fox-Turner; Bernie, a drummer reduced to taking some very odd jobs in order to buy a new kit; and Amy, a fading bass player still trading on her one-time affiliation with a widely revered (and wildly reviled) novelty act called Dead Trend.

The broad theme of the novel seems to be the evanescence of artistic endeavor in a digital age–and the central narrative revolves around the respective fates of Max, the prolific and obsessively self-promoting minimalist, vs. Rhonda, the prodigy-genius whose lifespan-encompassing works take place on a far greater canvas. Max, the artist who floods the market with lazy, derivative work, considers himself a trendsetter to the very end. Rhonda, the capital-A Artist, is an ideological purist who is imperious and cold. The methodology of the novel partially mirrors its theme: the story is told with an ingenious collage of narrative techniques which in part replicate the subject matter.

Yet for all of its narrative inventiveness, this is also a novel which is grounded in the real world. Particularly interesting is its exposure of all manners of scams: self-promotion in the digital age; the marginally scrupulous business practices of arts promoters; the inside machinations of the media and its star-making machinery; and the venal strategies employed by corporate majordomos to promote dubiously “hip” brand extensions. But this is also a philosophic novel which gives the reader insights into the nature of the creative impulse; as such, it ought to be required reading for that class of artisans who also consider themselves cognoscenti, members of a select tribe known to marketers as “influentials.” This novel would also be of interest to those who want to know more about how such people operate and what really makes them tick. Hidden Wheel is not so much a hipster manifesto as a dissection of hip–we might even be talking about a new genre here, “meta-hip.” Three Rooms Press is an eclectic publishing house which has made a shrewd investment in what may well become an influential and pioneering literary work.

tags / Michael T. Fournier, art, fiction, hidden wheel, novels, press, review, science fiction, writing, Boston, The Noise

Monday record review 2/27/2012: "Four Cornered Night" by Jets to Brazil

February 27, 2012  /  Michael T. Fournier  /  Source

Punk dropped. Like fell, from a plane screaming overhead, and when it detonated, the mushroom cloud of sneering attitude blocked out the sun and all its light. Sometimes this was beneficial—the symbolic destruction of everything that came beforehand allowed for a plain, flat playing field, at least for the first little while—but after a point the ground-zero dismissal of everything before D-Day (wherever you place it; whichever side of the argument / ocean you’re on) is just plain ignorant.

I was guilty of it for a time; other people in “the scene” were, too. It’s all part of the process, the rebellion against the foundations and rudiments which gain value upon returning to them.

So maybe, kids of yore, it’s time to return to Jets to Brazil’s Four Cornered Night, a record unfairly maligned by obsessives and fan-boys / gals for not sounding like __________: like singer Blake Schwartzenbach’s late lamented trio Jawbreaker, like the debut JTB rec Orange Rhyming Dictionary.

More than anything in the Schwartzenbach catalogue / canon, the record is maligned for what it’s not, rather than discussed because of what it is. This is due based in large part in his shift from guitar to keys. Lyrically, the same smart, clever ‘tude steeped in nostalgia is apparent throughout. “In the Summer, You Really Know” is indicative of this non/change: balladry masquerading as emo (or is it the other way around), with heartstring-tugging lyrics and gentle arrangements building to a sensitive crescendo. Had the song been guitar-based, it would’ve appeared as the last track of hundreds, if not thousands, of mix tapes.

Pale New Dawn

If the album can be said to suffer, it’s because of its sequencing: the aforementioned “In the Summer” bleeds into the tame, quiet “Empty Picture Frame,” glutting up and bogging down what’s otherwise an up-tempo record. But “Little Light” quickly sets the record straight, with its rimshot beat and pleasant melody—initially, anyway, it feels like a Mentos commercial before the chorus, which is not so heavy as much as it is arranged.

This is the real reason for the shift—and the real reason why “4CN” initially went over so many heads. With the possible exception of “Dear You,” which was more of an overdub record than one concerned with arrangement; Four Cornered Night was, up to that point, the most complex display of Blake Schwartzenbach’s songwriting chops. In the past (and even recently, with Thorns of Life and Forgetters), the loud-soft bombast was a common trope of Jawbreaker / Jets songs—a good trick, one Blake made work countless times. The added emphasis on piano—and on guitar in the background—caused a shift of both songwriting and production style.

Little Light

J. Robbins was, and is, an excellent producer, up to the task of using the studio as an instrument (what was the name of that band that did that? You know, before Year Zero? What were they called again? I can’t remember, man). Take “Pale New Dawn” as an example: sure, there’s bombast in the back, during the chorus, but in previous incarnations—“rock band” instead of “songwriter,” say—there would have been nothing but. Nor would the bass during the bridge be so prominent: they give you a food stamp for the air-sucking wound in your chest. Nor strings after that part, before the emphasis shifts back to the guitar before the outro, where backing vocals are added to the song’s weird drawly Dylan rip (pre-Year Zero, sorry).

This isn’t the only song on the album which does this—far from it—but it’s the most egregious, the one which teaches you, three tracks in, how to listen to the rest of the record. So get (back) to it: dig the bleed of “Mid-Day Anonymous” into the creepy chorused “*******,” the call-and-response of “Milk and Apples.” It’s the same stuff you loved before, just, you know, different. Especially now that you’re allowed to get around that Year Zero bullshit and admit that the Beatles existed



Read more: http://365aay.com/y3d132/#ixzz1ncOYptaD
tags / Jets to Brazil, Jawbreaker, music, writing, record reviews, Schwartzenbach

West Coast tour update:

February 20, 2012  /  Michael T. Fournier

Dates keep coming in:

3/9: Las Vegas, with the amazing doodz in Coastwest Unrest. Blackbird Studios. 7 pm.

3/12: Los Angeles CA. Stories Books and Cafe. 7-ish.

3/13: Santa Monica CA. Track 16 Gallery. 7:30 pm.

3/14: San Francisco CA. Sub-Mission Gallery. 7:00 pm.

More to come. If you live in the Bay Area and have the means/interest to host something 3/15-17, get in touch.

tags / tour, books, reading, fiction, Hidden Wheel, Michael T. Fournier, punk rock, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Monica

Monday record review 2/20/2012: "Moustache Eye Patch" by Great Western Plain

February 20, 2012  /  Michael T. Fournier  /  Source

It used to be that part of the apprenticeship process—whether it was writing, painting, or playing music—was plain aping: finding something you liked, then trying, often vainly, to reproduce it as accurately as possible. Ninety-nine percent of what emerged, of course, was complete shit—that’s why they call it process—and then on to the next influence.

There are several artists that have gone a great way towards ruining this practice: Bukowski and Pavement spring immediately to mind. There’s plenty to ape in both cases, but what gets lost is the discipline. It sounds odd, I know, but bear with me: Bukowski was a guy who got bombed every night, who blacked out and cranked through fifteen poems he wouldn’t remember writing the next morning every day for forty years. The ones that we read are a tiny slice of what he produced: of the crap he produced, to play percentages / be brutally honest. And Pavement made legions of notebook-slinging, Pynchon-reading kids think that it was easy to fart out nonsequitors genius in their disjointedness, missing the point that the band worked hard throughout. Look to Gary Young’s dismissal, if nothing else: if they were really as slack as the press spun ‘em, they would not have kicked out a guy who lived in a tree and did acid every day for a goddamn year, dig? The problem was that the imitators, in both cases, swiped the poses without reflecting on the process or substance.

Photosynthesis

I know the members of Great Western Plain. They understand it ain’t worth a hill of beans if there’s no substance underneath. That’s why they have intensely studied the idioms which inform their own listening choices, managing to capture the golden one percent the apprenticeship process begets as their tastes and interests shift. They work, dammit, pounding away at ideas as they come without worrying about a “core audience” or an image or a brand or how to most effectively utilize their Twitter feed /Facebook / whatever to harness the most listeners or any of that non-music bullshit that music has devolved into. And as much as the Internet has made the way we listen to and record music more immediate, the band simply cannot keep up with its steady string of evolving ideas. By the time you see them live, they’re likely to be playing a new batch of stuff. Hüsker Dü was famous for this sort of incessant progression in the ‘80s; so wasBlack Flag. Great Western Plain’s perpetual musical curiosity and intense vetting process make their live sets exciting: get familiar with a record and you can hear what comes next right away. For Great Western Plain, the future is now.

Moustache Eye Patch, their sophomore effort, picks up where 2011’s Noise left off. “Intricate Textures,” the album’s debut track (and first single), acts as a harbinger of what’s to come: a blast of feedback-drenched distorto drone followed by acoustic strumming. Throughout the album, the band walks easily between both extremes, seamlessly mixing and matching bits and pieces from their ever-increasing quiver of tricks with ease. “A Guthrie Tune” would’ve been at home with the best of melodic indie rock circa: mid-‘90s—think Superchunk, Versus, Helium—with rhythmic propulsion driving pure infectious pop chords. “Greenwich” finds the band pushing boundaries, with bassist Mike Powers affecting a drawl over a heavy pop that fragments and rearranges itself into a more jagged and discordant dialect, à la Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 or Polvo. Powers is also at the helm for “Photosynthesis,” in which the band’s patois shifts heavily to Massachusetts as chords dissolve into shards that would make Mission of Burma proud, and his drawl shifts to a Mascisian slur.

Elian Gonzalez

Great Western Plain is just as adept at rumination as they are at pogoing. “Three Four,” with guitarist Tim Berrigan on vocal duties, takes a wistful, mournful verse and drenches it in echo and treble before erupting into sheets of feedback so adroit at amplifying both—the wist and the mourn—that the song becomes a puzzle whose unraveling happily bears repeated listens. All the while, Tony Bitetti drums away with power and precision, riding what sounds to be about eight cymbals with as many arms. He’s no slouch at vocals, either: on “Elian Gonzalez” he croons an ode to the onetime Cuban child refugee as he generals the band through an offtime bridge with characteristic ease.

Of course, the band, despite the release of Moustache Eye Patch, is already beyond the album musically. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t check it out, though. Quite the contrary: Great Western Plain’s blueprint of their immediate past becomes a document of how far and fast they travel from record to record—sometimes from show to show. Their ceaseless apprenticeships at a variety of musical altars, musical chops and willingness to take chances in the name of self-betterment, all with a sense of humor, make them a crucial act, both live and on record. My favorite album of 2012 thus far.

—Mike F.



Read more: http://365aay.com/y3d125/#ixzz1mxiOFqwZ
tags / Great Western Plain, Moustache Eye Patch, indie rock, Massachusetts patois, writing, records, record reviews

Monday record review 2/13/12: "First Four EPs," by Off!

February 13, 2012  /  Michael T. Fournier  /  Source

I got home last night at five—less than 48 hours after leaving for New York—and was stunned to see the detritus of my trip planning scattered around the office: book boxes open, drawers, spindles of CDs yet to be burned. It wasn’t the mess that surprised me as much as what comprised it: again, less than two days before I had been prepping for my trip by packing my courier bag full of stuff. And I was back to see the remnants of my post-work haste scattered about as I had left them.

It seemed much longer than two days was the thing.

Sure, I had only spent two nights away, on a couch in a Greenpoint loft which offered an amazing view of the city and a cache of fanzines, of both the paper and VHS varieties. But the relatively glacial pace of the pastoral blurs the time and the perception of it. In the two days, the frantic race to see everyone and do everything taxed me with its pace. Okay: gotta hit all these spots, visit x number of people—and not just hey how’s it going, but like spend quality time—and get from place to place with a minimum of fuss and /or getting lost. Which I feel, largely, was a success, even though a) I completely understand why everyone in the city had an iPhone now—to maximize effectiveness / minimize inefficiency, because efficiency and effectiveness are the dual nature of the beast, even if there’s no art or project of any kind at stake, no career-minded networking, active or passive, and b) the perpetual juggling of priorities and engagements is enormously taxing and takes up a great deal of energy and headspace, despite the fact that everyone around shrugged when I mentioned it and was like “well, that’s how it is.” There was an innate sense of pace, of timing, from my friends in town: a thorough investment with an immediacy dictated by the demands of the calendar: we’ve got two hours, so step on the goddamn gas, man, and fast! There’s ground to be covered before the next engagement!

It’s an immediacy I appreciate, but one that takes a bit of time getting used to.

Which is why I’ve been listening to Off! since my return home.

Panick Attack

Scene fans rejoiced when the band started playing: Keith Morris—Black Flag’s original singer, the frontman of the Circle Jerks—has never had time for bullshit or idiocy. The form—raw, stripped of all pretense and fat—has always been a perfect vehicle for his bilious attacks. And his musical compatriots, no slouches themselves, have only been too happy to provide a musical background for the man’s aggressions. Off!’s stuff has been released incrementally on 7”, the perfect medium for such bombast. The perfection of the medium is emphasized by the collected work, which doesn’t sound like it’s going to be much—under a half-hour—but is: In the same way that my two days were so packed that it feels like I’ve been away for longer, the honesty and anger that shines so intensely in each of the band’s songs, when listened to as a lump sum, makes the appreciation of the band the more remarkable. In addition to feeling all this, and recording all this, Off!, live plays all this, night after night. They sustain their incredibly potent and direct attack, without devices or effects to aid them: incredibly honest, forceful and in-your-face, a rewarding but exhausting experience that feels much longer than it is in the best way possible because so much is packed into so little time. Morris has been at it for longer than many of his fans have been alive, and remains one a touchstone of how it’s done. He sure as hell doesn’t need an iPhone, that’s for sure.

—Mike F.



Read more: http://365aay.com/y3d118/#ixzz1mI3Sw1kB

tags / punk, punk rock, hardcore, off!, Black Flag, Keith Morris, Circle Jerks, record reviews

Monday record review 2/6/2012: Rudimentary Peni, "Death Church" (1983)

February 06, 2012  /  Michael T. Fournier  /  Source

Rudimentary Peni: “Death Church” (1983)

The irony of appreciating crust punk academically is not lost on me. Here, after all, are a bunch of bands striving to smash the state and put the power back in the hands of the people, minus an overarching system…. and the cycle of criticism which we use to comment on and critique their work is that system they’re railing against. But honestly, the example set by Crass, the most significant of those bands, resonates through punk, whether or not you agree with their politics or even like their music. There’s a direct line to be traced from Crass’s ideology—do-it-yourselfers to the extent that they lived in a commune and grew their own food, f’r chrissake—and Fugazi’s, meaning that any number of acolyte post-punks, with their low door prices, benefit shows, and anti-big business record / CD prices, have made the stances and attitudes their own. It’s funny to think that some of those bands did so only because it was hip or trendy or whatever—the blind belief in any system, even one with such good intentions, was and is anathema to the original notion.

Not that, you know, I spend a lot of time listening to Crass. Again, my appreciation for them was, and largely is, academic: those records are hard to listen to. Which I suppose is part of the point: their album Yes Sir, I Will., for example, is a deeply rewarding listen—a concept record expressing their outrage at the way Margaret Thatcher handled the Falkland Islands in the ‘80s. There would be little point in putting out an anti-war record which was easy to listen to. Like Kenneth Patchen’s Journal of Albion Moonlight, the record is both a commentary on the atrocities of a war and a dare: you’re not anti-war? Get through this simulation of one. It extends beyond the war-related specifics to the work at large: Wanna be part of an alternate system? It’s going to be way harder to deal with than what you’re used to, as evidenced by our _________.

So with all this said about the genre and its form-as-function applications, it’s nice to have recently stumbled across Rudimentary Peni, a band whose feet are solidly in the same political ring as Crass and the rest, but whose music manages to transcend some of the arena’s staid musical conventions.

¼ Dead

Sure, a lot of Death Church is ugly—again with form following function—but in addition to the standard sheets of metal-on-metal guitar and cymbals dissolving into a trebly morass, Death Church is driven by the bass playing of Grant Matthews. His lines cuts through the noise and give RP’s music a structure which is often absent in the music of other crust / anarcho- bands. By 1983, San Pedro’s Minutemen were close to their apex—part of their sound, in the words of singer / guitarist D. Boon, was a “political” decision to separate his trebly guitar from bass player Mike Watt’s low end. I don’t know whether or not the Peni folks were aware of the Minutemen, but the modus operandi is similar: by allowing both bass and guitar to be heard on their own, a sort of pocket is formed, in which the vocals are audible, and perhaps more effective as a result.

Crass and their ilk are instantly recognizable visually: their stencils, whether on album covers or subway walls, were effective branding. Similarly, Nick Blinko’s intricate artwork give the band a visual brand, connected to but not exclusively crust / anarcho-by-numbers. The same goes for his lyrics and vocals: he rails against rock stardom and the meat industry—standard stuff, to be sure—but also discusses the schizoaffective disorder which drives his visual and lyrical work.

Vampire State Building

Take “Vampire State Building” as an example. Blinko sings, in his tortured yowl, “What’s that fumbling grotesque over there in a wheelchair / stifled in a straitjacket /self-inflicted safety pin wounds /is it punkoid? / devoid? / schizoid? / mumbling? Vampire state building is crumbling.” As he does so, another voice—more basso, seemingly saner—repeats the shouts. These self-professed “delusions” make the record a challenge: as listeners, aware of his condition, the question of validity comes to the fore: how much of Blinko’s anger is based in reality? How much, then, isn’t? His self-awareness and paranoia become a critique of the genre at large, an invitation implied throughout: we should be questioning rather than simply accepting them. Whether or not the forum is “appropriate,” Rudimentary Peni, like the best art, invites questions and critique, rife with contradictions, pushing you away as they hug you and pull you into their pocket.



Read more: http://365aay.com/y3d111/#ixzz1ld9arOox

tags / Rudimentary Peni, Punk rock, record reviews, crust, anarcho, Crass, music, writing