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We are Wolves perform Magic.

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August 24, 2007 in prerelease hype, glamless, dirty, indie, montreal and tunes. 0 Comments

Montreal’s own We are Wolves are pretty damn notorious. Whether we are discussing their frigging awesome live sets, their minimal yet sleek web-site, or their debut album - the inimitable Non Stop Je Te Plie en Deux - that still gets constant rotation around here… To put it bluntly: I am dying to hear their next album, Total Magique.

The good news? We don’t have long to wait… as it drops September 4th from Dare to Care Records.

But! I have even better news: a sampler for the album has started making it’s rounds to the media featuring two tracks off the forthcoming album. And, it must be said, they are definitely on par with anything on Non Stop. These songs are, quite possibly, the best shit the band has ever recorded.

And so, I am ridiculously proud to present to y’all the dirty dirty dance, scream & drinkin’ tune “Fight & Kiss” alongside the title track off Magique. Love it.

We are Wolves - Fight & Kiss.
We are Wolves - Magique.

(you’ll be able to order the album here.)

The Heads are Heavy.

Published by

matt.

August 5, 2007 in dirty, lo-fi, glamless, doomy-gloomy, uk, psych-freakout, fuzz, shit-faced, destruction and tunes. 2 Comments

After first putting on Dead in the Water & doing some preliminary research, I was embarrassed for not having heard the Heads sooner. That is, until I came to realize that they neither have a web-page (that I can find), that they have one of the least Google-friendly band names ever & that their albums are released in such small quantities (the latest album was initially only given a 100 copy release that sold out overnight) that it really is no wonder that this is my first exposure to them.

But still… now I have to live in regret about all the time I’ve spent not listening to the glorious train wreck noises of the Heads.

Not that the band is easily accessible or anything. From the second you put the needle on the record, the band make it brutally apparent what you are getting into: the most dirty, fuzzed-out, psychedelic space sludge rock you’ve never heard. Repetitive riffs build into epic solos. Drums crash like it is their business to destroy any hint of silence during the double LP’s hour long duration. The band definitely deserves a spot reserved next to Acid Mothers Temple or Comets on Fire at their most crazed in terms of sheer abrasive badassness.

Dead in the Water.

As it turns out, Dead in the Water is a rerelease of previous material, distributed by Invada Records, compiled of mostly improvised album outtakes, jams & rehearsal recordings by Heads’ singer/guitarist Simon Price. I’m guessing, considering that they have been together for over 10 years now (having released at least eight full-length releases), that Simon had more than enough material to work with. And it shows: the album doesn’t have the patchwork quality one usually finds with such compilations. Songs fade & grow into each other, leaving the listener breathless & exasperated.

Many tracks start out with sped-up vocal samples, which I don’t really find add much to the tracks except for contrast. Yes, portions of the album sound tinny or fuzzed out. And yes, some tracks sound more like sonic experiments, in the vein of Faust, than actual songs. But just listen closely (headphones are ideal) to how the two sample tracks back-to-back & try to say that this isn’t the heaviest shit you’ve heard in ages.

Definitely recommended.

the heads probably don’t care if you like this or not:
~~The Heads - Prologue/’69 Shakes of the Tail.~~ (bad rip)
~~The Heads - Mystic Healer (Suck My Tailpipe).~~ (bad rip)

Dead in the Water is now available from Invada Records or StonerRock.com.

UPDATE:
Huge thanks to public image who sent me an e-mail regarding this article. As it turns out, the rip I found of the record is, unintentionally, in double-time (played back in 45 - not 33). So, for the time being (until I can do or get my hands on a proper release), I’ve posted a couple of public image’s recommendations from the band’s 1998 release, The Time is Now!. These tracks are just as awesome for sure:

The Heads - Delwyn’s Conkers.
The Heads - Spliff Riff (Roached Out…).

public image also gave me the link to the band’s web-site! So, for more information about the band, check out their digital home over at http://www.theheadsrock.com/.

The Black Lips are dirtier than you.

Published by

matt.

July 25, 2007 in tongue-in-cheek, dirty, indie, 70s, glamless, bang bang, loungers, freak folk, punk-revival, sleaze, shit-faced, 60s, fuzz, destruction, whiskey, summertime, gleeful and tunes. 0 Comments

The Black Lips. As anyone who, even casually, follows independent music news should know, the band is, at this point, pretty renowned in the scene for their crazy live shows. Like the Iggy Pop (when he was still with the Stooges before getting, you know, ancient) or GG Allin’s of old, the Black Lips’ shows are rumored to be a spectacle in every sense of the word, in which attendance can mean anything from stumbling home, battered & bruised from a skank pit to having to weave around, feebly attempting to dodge everything from vomit to urine and fireworks. A little heaven, a lotta hell.

All that being said, I’ve personally never seen them live. Nor have I really paid much attention to their previous output. They have been on my radar but I just never found the time or the interest to turn my gaze. But, having now listened to their forthcoming release, Good Bad, Not Evil, I can honestly say that, if their other albums are like this one, I’ve definitely been missing out.

The band mixes punk with country, blues with doo-wop… to produce, in essence, the dirtiest Rolling Stones interpretation I have ever heard. It sounds like a party rollicking in a Mexican whorehouse at 3 am. It sounds like if more modern folk artists, like Devendra or Golden Animals, put more emphasis on drinking whiskey straight & rocking the fuck out.

And even when they take a break for their country balled, “How Do You Tell”, it still remains ballsy. An almost traditional country song, until you clue into the lyrics: which is all about telling children about the people around them dying. Morbid, tongue-in-cheek, but hilarious at the same time. And then they pull it right back with some of the best tracks on the album (a few being the completely nostalgic “Step Right Up” and “Cold Hands”, which you can preview below).

Really, the Black Lips have stepped right up to the plate with this one. It makes all the right points of reference, coming together to be such a cohesive package that I cannot help but declare it a very real contender for album of the year. My only complaint? My speakers just will not play the record loud enough.

this is dead leaves and dirty ground, not that icky thump shit:
The Black Lips - Cold Hands.
~~The Black Lips - Veni Vidi Vici.~~ (removed by request)
~~The Black Lips - Step Right Up.~~ (removed by request)

The Black Lips will be releasing Good Bad, Not Evil this coming September. Possibilities for distribution include: their own Die Slaughterhaus Records, Vice Records or on In the Red Records, but I’m leaning towards this being a Vice release. Whomever releases it, it would be in your best interest to pick it up, alongside another bottle of liquor, of course.

Hacked Guitar Hero is SERIOUS BUSINESS.

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matt.

July 19, 2007 in guitar heroes, hack'd, glamless, shit-faced and tunes. 0 Comments

So, I figure… if Tyler can get away with posting things like this, I’m totally justified in postin’ the following.

‘Round these parts, Guitar Hero is serious business. Whether it is the annual Poutine Rock 4 Life tournament (with mic’d announcers, hecklin’ & audience rating the performer’s performance as much as their score) or just the late nights spent trying to five star Misirilou on Expert (it is impossible, I tell you), many, many hours have been spent perfecting the art of imaginary rock stardom.

the following kid is never invited to our party:

That being on the table, you have no idea how excited I am to be testing out the free custom Guitar Hero 2 hack which was meticulously put together by another Guitar Hero devotee named kariodude. The guy went through the entire disk, removing all the built-in songs and replacing each track with a new one (including a ton of hand-picked tracks as well as all the 360 exclusive songs that PS2 users weren’t able to play). On top of that, he was able to hack all the text in the game so it displays the song’s proper names as well as just general humour (i.e. the difficulties now range from LOL to INSANE).

By itself, this isn’t really new news… as there have been other Guitar Hero hacks in the past but they tended to be sloppy - the button timings never really felt “right” in regards to the song you were playing and they just weren’t very well put together. Kariodude’s hack fixes all that - supplying, in essence, a fully functional Guitar Hero 3. So, despite not really digging a lot of the songs, the magnitude of the project is impressive. Plus, regardless of how much I dislike Korn or Mindless Self Indulgence, the tracks are new to me and, hey, new shit is always fun to rock out on.

Tracks:
1. 360 Exclusive Set One
* Billion Dollar Babies - Alice Cooper
* Dead! - My Chemical Romance
* Hush - Deep Purple
* Drink Up - Ounce of Self
* Kicked to the Curb - Noble Rot

2. 360 Exclusive Set Two
* Life Wasted - Pearl Jam
* Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo - Rick Derringer
* Salvation - Rancid
* Possum Kingdom - The Toadies
* The Trooper - Iron Maiden

3. Slim Pickins
* I Believe in a Thing Called Love - The Darkness
* Don’t Bring Me Down - Social Distortion
* Pain - Three Days Grace
* Coming Undone - Korn
* Land of Confusion - Disturbed

4. Stairway to Zeppelin
* Straight to Video - Mindless Self Indulgence
* Hells Bells - AC/DC
* Dashboard - Modest Mouse
* Seize the Day - Avenged Sevenfold
* Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin

5. Energizer or Duracell
* Seperate Ways - Journey
* Last Resort - Papa Roach
* Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers
* Pirates That Don’t Do Anything - Relient K
* Rock You Like A Hurricane - The Scorpions

6. Hardwood Floor
* Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy - Big & Rich
* One Winged Angel - Advent Children
* The Kids Aren’t Alright - The Offspring
* Jane’s Roll Call - DJ Kingpin
* The Dragon Lies Bleeding - Hammerfall

7. Gut Wrenchers
* Kickstart My Heart - Motley Crue
* Lonely Train - Black Stone Cherry
* Whiskey in the Jar - Metallica
* Blood of Ganon - Virt
* The Final Countdown - Europe

8. Ball Busters
* Crazy Bitch - Buck Cherry
* Welcome Home - Coheed and Cambria
* Sonic Adventure Song
* Bat Country - Avenged Sevenfold
* Through Fire and Flames - Dragonforce

Moar Sawngz
* Buddy Berkman’s Ballad - Buckethead
* Sick of You - Gwar
* Black No. 1 - Type O Negative
* Holy Orders - Daisuke Ishiwatari
* Northern Comfort - Children of Bodom
* It’s Not Over - Daughtry
* End of Heartache - Killswitch Engage
* Du Hast - Rammstein
* The Pylons are Trap Balls
* Shine - Collective Soul
* Smooth Criminal - Alien Ant Farm
* Rust in Peace - Megadeth
* Concerto - Cacophony
* Jesus of Suburbia - Green Day
* Bring Back Truth - Soldiers of Jah Army
* Selkies: The Endless Obsession - Between the Buried and Me
* In Regards To Myself - Underoath
* The Frayed Ends of Sanity - Metallica
* Sandstorm - Darude
* You’re The Reason I’m Leaving - Franz Ferdinand
* Don’t Stop Believing - Journey
* Those Who Cannot Speak - Shadows Fall
* Wholelottacrap - Wholelotta People

The Guitar Hero 2 hack can be downloaded, for free, using bit-torrent from the most piratey of sites. Of course, you will need a modded PS2 to play the game and Guitar Hero controllers. Note that the project was distributed prematurely (due to all sorts of community turmoil which even I don’t really understand), so most tracks are only mapped for Expert. Amateurs need not apply.

The Horseheadedfleshwizard-Dimension of Folk

Published by

tyler

July 15, 2007 in freak folk, glamless, summertime, 60s and tunes. 1 Comment

[golden animals]

Dirty, rustic, and warm. If there’s any way to describe what it is the illusory, turn-of-the-century “freak folk” genre entails, this is it (that, and the mangy hair). Devendra Banhart swept through the nation in 2004 and then again in ‘05, leaving behind a dusty trail of surreal, hypnotic folk on subjects that even a dozen listens later are still hard to wrap your head around. No surprise there, I realized it’s just something about the way his mind works.

Freak folk has so little restricting it, like an easy-breezy commune on the outskirts of Ithaca it will open its arms to anyone, so long as you mean nobody no harm, and Golden Animals is just one new member to the gang, with a name seeming to suggest some casino-romping dress-up cover band (or, maybe I’m alone on that). They do have the dress-up part going for them, although that element dawdles on some fine line of hobo-victorian for Tommy. Ms. Beecroft, on the other hand, captures some of the same stern innocence that Meg White has, but be weary of any White Stripes comparisons: they end at the drumming.

As of yet there’s only this one hard-to-find 4-track EP of scarcely 12 minutes, but if you can find it, place it on repeat and it’s surely enough to whet your appetite. The 60s blues vibe that emanates from this duo joins at some fourth-dimension where free souls roam and only Horseheadedfleshwizards are permitted, like some distant, spiritual & glam-less Stripes. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also, if this excites you as much as it does me, you’ll be happy to hear they’re already working on an LP with Happy Parts Recording! I can’t wait.

mp3:
Golden Animals - Take Me Home
Golden Animals - Do The Roar

(see also: Theirspace & this YouTube Video)