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04 November 2005

Bullet Train to Vegas We Put Scissors Where Our Mouths Are (Nitro) Rating: 6
To be honest, I initially had it in for these guys. Naming your band after one of the best Drive Like Jehu songs takes a big set of brass ones. It will inevitably open your band up to comparison to the legends of avant-punk and you will also inevitably found to be undeserving of the moniker. So let's just get this out of the way -- Bullet Train to Vegas neither sound nor will ever be close to as awesome as Drive Like Jehu. Once I reconciled myself to that fact and listened to the group's debut with fresh ears, I was surprisingly pleased. Granted, the band is doing nothing new, but what they do it well. If you like angular guitars, glass-eating vocals and songs that are out of your hair in about three minutes you'll be a happy camper. Though there are a seemingly endless amount of bands doing this thing, the Alex Newport produced disc finds strength in its brevity. A half hour long and that's it. That's just long enough to get your hardcore screamo fix and get on with your day while keeping the "these guys are not Drive Like Jehu" thoughts at bay. [Amazon]
      — Kevin Jagernauth

Various Artists, Autonomous Addicts (The Designed Disorder) Rating: 7
Normally, this kind of compilation is dead on arrival. Instrumental electronic music? Coldly geometric artwork? Glitchy sounds so current that they're automatically dated? These are ingredients for instant bargain bin status, yet Autonomous Addicts, the inaugural release for Los Angeles label The Designed Disorder, transcends its limitations. The label does a fine job of A&R, stocking the compilation with both marquee names and rising studio boffins. Nearly every track is full of the crushed, stretched, and otherwise mutilated audio so popular with plug-in jocks today. But there's surprising variety here. Noted sound designers Twerk turn in a Richard Jamesian beat workout with icy, wispy melodies. Anon's "String Theory" sounds like a 23rd century Kronos Quartet, replete with drum machine kicks and large chamber reverb. Tipper contributes his signature tweaky breaks and mammoth low end, while Richard Devine's "Per-Cer" wreathes emotive pure tones around unruly shuffling beats. The compilation's best moment is its most difficult; Hologram's "Earthsong" begins almost unlistenably, with hyperspeed beats and synths triggering heart palpitations before succumbing to celestial ambience. Don't let the tech-y facade here fool you -- there's soul in these machines. [Amazon]
      — Cosmo Lee

Self-Evident, Epistemology (DoublePlusGood) Rating: 4
Heavy metal this, but so heavy -- in one sense of that word -- that it is really informative to read that "Lyrically introspective songs like 'Neither Quarrel nor Agreement' and 'The Disguise' question the direction life has taken." Fortunately my hearing was examined not so long ago, though not on account of any suspicion of deafness, and I needn't worry about deafness in being unable to make out the words on these or any other songs which Conrad Mach obviously shouted in the studio. Perhaps something went wrong between October 2004 and March 2005, in the processing? There's no problem hearing the guitars and bass and drums, which keep up a driving thrash in a 10-track set the blurb claims is all of a piece. Well, contrary to the blurb, each track has a fairly individual beginning. There seems to be some variety in the individual performances, with little vamping passages of Compared with the distortion and overload with which the title track begins, "(you must be an) architect?" starts quietly before there's more emotionally stirring and very competent playing. The sound reminds me of an experience when only one channel of my old stereo was functioning, and I put on a record some idiot had engineered for maximum separation between the tracks. The same balance comes out of both channels from this, and while I suppose something might have been made of the words printed in the liner, well, they ought to be audible to the point of intelligibility. At least if any claim's to be made as to their significance. The little snatches which get out through chinks in the wall of guitar-playing seem distinguished by good diction. So it's the instrumental work that renders them inaudible. The singing is thus a distraction when hearing the guitar-bass interactions, have some intended meaning beyond that of the words? Frankly the text isn't up to much, but does Mr. Mach manage to rescue it? I cannot tell. Long ago, the late Gerard Hoffnung satirised the avant-garde composer's marking Pensando (which means: don't play these notes, merely think them in the course of playing the other parts of the score not so marked!). Perhaps the words could have been thought here (or maybe just felt) without distracting effect on the music. It is intense, passionate, committed, but also sounds like stuff which by being played too loudly has been known to damage the ears of people moving to the surging and driving rhythms. The publicity blurb did intimate an imminent tour.
      — Robert R. Calder

Textbook, The Great Salt Creek (Playing Field) Rating: 6
Basically recorded off the floor, this album and side project of former Not Rebecca singer Dave Lysien picks up where Blink 182 left off for the first three minutes, minus the cornball teen jokes on "Better Late Than Never". Generally however, this is excellent Midwestern rock throughout, especially on the crunchy and lean Southern rocker "Railroad Ties". The fine roots-filled "Dear You, Dear" brings to mind the Jayhawks or Slobberbone with a rough-around-the-edges jangle. Three songs and three shifts in focus as "Take What You've Been Given" sounds like it had been created in some Midwestern small town garage. The same can be said for the meaty, roadhouse influenced "Find My Way Back Home", resembling an early BoDeans ditty. Other notable tunes is The Replacements circa Tim feeling pouring from "You Were Beautiful" and also "When It All Went Wrong". Fortunately, there is very little wrong with this record.
      — Jason MacNeil

.: posted by Editor 7:47 AM