Links:

• Swilson on Soundcloud
• Swilson on Facebook

Listening to Swilson’s Demonology is like clicking on that video that you know you shouldn’t, but you do anyway. And half way through it all, you feel dirty and ashamed that you depraved your peepers on such lucid porn filth. You are not sure if you should celebrate the act like you would making it out alive in a survival horror film or you should hate yourself for stooping so low.

William Burrough’s famous philosophical tract implies that you have to be in hell in order to see heaven. This album is a modest example that demonstrates that.

“Polyester Shirt Polyester Pants” is no Limp Bizkit in terms of enunciated sing alongs, but it comes close to being engraved in your brain with no meaning as to what the hell it all means. Maybe it’s when he sings, “I’m in the lavatory wracking my brain” when any form of “what the hell’s” get overruled by a “what is this guy on?”

And with “Electric Aborigine,” the most fortified rocker thus far, turns into an “Ew, I just jammed to that” when the lyrics, “Take your clothes off little girl,” is sung.

To add a Twin Peaks element to this UHF of an album, the music as a whole has a coolness factor to it that you instantly bond to if you consider latching on to something like Jesus Lizard or Rapeman, just not auditory in your face like the brazenness of the ‘90s noise scene. Extract the dirtiness of the style and you have Swilson.

That being said, “Planet of Sex” sounds like an homage to The Fuggs. A lackluster attempt at french pop with “La Diosa Verde,” where sarcasm is not as effective as say the hippie communal campfire rant “Dealing With Death” and the simple folk-laced title track.

What just happened? One side of the album is not like the other. Where we were beaten over the head with blatant strangeness, the back half tries to justify it all with poetic similes and sincere societal rants. Well, about as sincere as Swilson will get on an album like this.

Link: Graveface artist, The Marshmallow Ghosts

As a child, Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of The Haunted House was a staple soundtrack in the house. Not just for Halloween, the spooky sounds and ghastly groans would echo throughout the rooms. “The Chinese Water Torture,” “A Collection Of Creaks,” “The Birds,” “Things In Space,” this Disney album delighted and frighted many kids in the ‘70s so much that it became an inspiration to many, including the Graveface collective. And luckily for us, this is third in what is now an October tradition for the label.

The Marshmallow Ghosts is a self-titled release in coordination to a feature film they call  Corpse Reviver No. 2. The album spins like the Chilling, Thrilling Sounds, even with “Shrieks” paying homage to the immense ghastly ghoul that howls in the dead of the night (if you know of this album, you would be able to decipher exactly which sound effect that is from my description).

The self-titled album features the best in collaborative efforts including Graveface’s Black Moth Super Rainbow, Lady Lazarus, Casket Girls, Hospital Ships, and Dreamend. As the album unfolds, you hear distinctions by the bands, but a cohesive trend of strange noises and ethereal soundscapes work together to conjoin it all into a strange aura of horror movie soundtrack freak-outs and abysmal haunting. What really pops out in the album is the estranged dissonant pop the label is known for as we transcend from creepy background music to the forefront and its ‘60s wig-out on “The Hearse Song.” It’s as if Herschell Gordon Lewis made ‘60s pop with David Lynch, while “The Attic” sounds more like Shoegaze loveliness converted by ‘70s existential realities than simple horror movie fodder.

“Trick” may be striped with bouts of spookiness, but “All Skin And Bone” is more ethereal in a Love and Rockets breathy montage. It does not bode well for the horror element of the album, but songs like this are nonetheless a good thing. By adding in these pieces, or avant-garde ambient noise collages like “Shall I be ‘anna’ or ‘anna’ be I?,” you can enjoy it beyond the witching hour.

The Marshmallow Ghosts present Corpse Reviver No. 2 Trailer from Graveface Records on Vimeo.

Link: http://www.thehumansofficial.com/

More often than not, when a band has an interesting back story to tell, the music suffers. But for The Humans, both the journey and the output is both fascinating. Not a megagroup in any sense, this trio is mega in proportion, consisting of Chris Wong, Bill Rieflin, and Toyah Wilcox. Together with Rieflin’s studio mastery, The Humans is Wilcox’s brainchild.

The model behind The Humans is to take a song and deconstruct it down to its core. With two bass players (guest guitars are used as filler and drums as baseline punctuation), instead of reconstructing the song, they pair it down to its raw form. That does not mean that the album is a bedroom project or burns through like a handful of demos. Sugar Rush is as slick and full as any album with a full roster.

The two bass lines have to be creative with one another, exploring the low-end while the other carries the melody. There is nothing sloppy to what this band creates and you can thank Wilcox for that progressiveness; on one level treating her voice more like an additional instrument and on the other, using lyrics to further the goals of the band – all of this comes together to present the human experience.

It’s like Yes, Tangerine Dream, Talking Heads, and the essence of Can all wrapped together in little four-minute packages. “Sea Of Size” does this best with interesting bass lines fluctuating like an electronic instrument while the other bass goes deep.

Where “Small Town Psychopath” is a little too repetitive for its taste, the title track is intense in an industrial sense. And “Fragment Pool” is a great alternative number that bears similarities to the mystery of early ‘90s dream pop.

The overlying context of The Humans is otherworldly, while the inner subtext is deeply in tuned to life. The stories that there to bring everything together.

Link: http://www.ritualproductions.net/tag/bong/
If the National Geographic Channel used Bong as a soundtrack, what a strange trip NatGeo would be. Space combusting within itself, planets forming, bursting, turning into an interstellar sex orgy of stars and a seance of science.

I don’t think it was Bong’s intention to create Beyond Ancient Space in this vein. The mediative doom rock sounds like an opium den of ‘60s psychedelic acid films and Asian sex orgies who were buzzed out on a night filled with the rumblings of Earth albums.

Put away your ADD because there are only three songs on this album, each around 25-30 minutes long. Sounds like something Spaceman 3 would do, and with the sitar on “Onward to Perdóndaris,” it sounds like The Doors’ “The End” spiraling backwards around the apocalyptic sewage sound of a deep rumbling E chords. If you are 20 minutes into this song and not lost in some strange hypnotic trance, then you are listening to it wrong.

“Across The Timestream” is more of the same just with more growl and a better emphasis of the drums.

“In The Shadow Of The Towers” is more of an out of body experience, mainly because it sounds more raw in a demo sense than straight up noise. The same concept persists, yet the special effects are more exploitive.

I could tell you what all of this means for me, but it’s best if you take that journey.

Link: http://skeletonstv.bandcamp.com/
What a lovely sound. The way the guitar melody flutters around in acoustic delight. It’s really quite calming and serene.

“Lil’ Rich got his face shot off. For three full days, the cops didn’t clean it up.”

What! Oh, how horrible! This is the attention grabber you get with “Lil’ Rich,” the opener to Skelton’s People. It’s as stark as any Xiu Xiu song. And much like Xiu Xiu, Skeletons are keen at making you feel uncomfortable. Despite its grizzly story, you cannot help but lavish in the swirling electronics and lovely experimentation surrounding you.

If this is the beginning to the next eight songs, I hate to hear what they have to say in “Grandma.” Not as grotesque but just as sobering as we bore holes in Matt Mehlan’s brain. More than seven minutes in length, expect a tripped-out experience to say the least.

This Brooklyn band treats this album like an experience. It’s jarring where “More Than The One Thing” is like Death Cab For Cutie in an electric chair and “Walmart and the Ghost Of Jimmy Damour,” if Walmart was a mental institution.

You may not know exactly what to think when you dig into this release, but one thing is for sure, you won’t forget it.

People Like Us
Welcome Abroad
Illegal Art
Rating: 4.8 out of 5

Link: http://www.peoplelikeus.org/

My grandmother was born in 1898. She passed away 10 years ago. Ever since that fateful day I have gained an obsession to pair up film with the age she would have been growing up. For example, my grandmother would have been 16 when Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp came out. What was she thinking during that time? What was going on around her and what would have she done at the age of 16 in 1915? It’s one of the few ways I can keep a closeness to her.

For my parents, happy and healthy in their 80s, it’s music. I have been scouring the vaults of the ‘50s and ‘60s to see how that may have developed and became a part of their cultural surroundings.

It’s like another world; the past has turned into science fiction and the music that was once familiar and popular has become a strange far away galaxy embedded in a dream.

From Perry Como to Henry Mancini to the more accessible Beatles and Dylan, this is what People Like Us accomplish. By splicing together quickfire samples of things like the song “Downtown” or silky lounge crooning with vaudevillian escapades, it turns into a strange circus of the zany and strange.

And even while you recognize a Karen Carpenter, Paul McCartney, or even Bob Denver line; Tony Orlando about to tie a yellow rose around the big oak tree, or that whistle song, you know, the one that was used by someone dancing around while having a face painting on their belly and adorned with a over-sized top hat, it’s all spliced together.

Vicki Bennett creates this Disney-like, Zappa-esque feeling of displacement that swirls around in your head. It can be dizzying at times, and as much fun as it is to pluck out an “Oh I know who that is” or “I’ve heard that sample before,” it’s even more pleasant just how entertaining it all is.

People Like Us has created a new dimension in sound while giving us a history in pop culture. All of Vegas can burn down with every crooner in it and that will give you just an abstract piece of the pie.

This is one fantastic album!

Link: http://danielknox.com/

We have had our fair share of oddballs who have stuck out because of artistic fervor: Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Jim Carroll, David Bowie, and we can even say Iggy Pop to an extent.

Add Daniel Knox to this list because what he does is weird, but what Evryman For Himself results in is artistic gold. You could say he’s a copycat of all of the above, but as you give the album a few listens, you start seeing things that stand out as being characteristically Knox’s own device.

“…etc…” sounds like a sober Sid Vicious set to Casio-themed lounge, but only produced 10 thousand times better. That is until you get to the lyrics and when Knox sings, “Pornography found at the back of an arcade,” you cannot help but envision the song to be something Crispin Glover would put out.

There are songs like “Slowly” that sound like somber film score, which his time in film school is no surprise as to why this album sparks cinematic imagination. Then there is “Debt Collector” that is vaudevillian in the most English of terms. “Smartass” feels like a Barry Adamson escapade. And “Armageddonsong” is a plea of artist to listener before he saunters off proclaiming his end of the world scenario and a la-di-da attitude about it all.

The world may be a stage, but Knox’s vision is aurally a cage into his twisted mind of misfortune and surrealistic realities in a personalized gothic approach that takes the familiar and twists it out of shape turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Screens
Dead House
What Delicate Records
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Link: http://screens.bandcamp.com/

What do you get when you combine members of The Apes, Medications, and The Mall together? You get something predictably bizarre as well as unpredictably oppressive. It is everything and nothing that you would expect from these musicians. With Dead House, you get a piece of the aggressive behavior buried down into a dream of what the former members once displayed, but an expanse into just how far they can push their sound together. Breath in those dusty particles from Harry Partch and cough up something that sounds like Les Baxter on an incredible amount of acid.

Fuzzy noise ambient constructure, this introduction uses an experimental approach with a piano and some sampling all sutured together with unsettling results. It still does not tell us much about Screens.

“Saturday” sounds like a return to “Baba’s Mountain,” the way those drums are beating and the vocals echo like they are in a glass box. It’s our first real look into what the Screens are doing. But does this define what Dead House is about? We are getting there.

“Shudder” is haunting post punk that bleeds subtle glitch into punk notoriety with “Pop Logic” almost being incomprehensible yet expressive with 8-bit sincerity. “Man Down” falls further down the trap of noisecore constructivism. If this band could set fire to sound, they would burn the whole damn idea to the ground and rebuild it the way they think it should be.

“Radio Tabaloapa” and “Hot Avenues,” begins a downtempo set for the band who now exchange noise for dark and burgeoning experimental pieces while keeping that sense of unease. And so thus the remainder of this album plays with sudden bouts of exuberance – “Cataplexy” takes indie rock to a completely different level while floating at the bottom of the cesspool waiting for its attack, which does not really happen in the end, but they will make you fear it is.

Does this describe who the Screens are? It’s a start that continues with every twist and turn on the album.

Link: http://www.myspace.com/strangleddarlings

What Oingo Boingo would sound like if they were a chamber orchestra led by a ukelele and a mandolin, ladies and gentlemen the Strangled Darlings.

Urban tales like 20-somethings melodrama in the 16th Century, this “Operetta” spins a danceable jig in bard like fashion. More whimsical than Tim Burton creepy, Strangled Darlings paint an oddball picture of reality. Listen to the waltz “Mousetrap,” you get a fairy tale perspective on daily life with Faustian vision. The cello cries a tale of weeping notes, while the band plucks out the bedtime story.

“Circus” is the band’s jam; about as jamming as this band will get. The Romanian-style jig is a funky get down of sincerity. It ramps up the ante of fun and intrigue this band will have you. The pseudo-rap will cater more to the quirkiness of Dan Zane fans. If you do not know who he is, then you will not feel the song, or album for this matter.

“Blue Sailor” drunkenly spins into the background sound of a body hanging from the noose of a tree (or the rocking of a rocking chair, I cannot tell the difference), but with a song title like “Angel” I would assume the contemplative falsetto about heartbreak would be the former.

Black Heart Procession for the street performer, Strangled Darlings capture a unique presence with their quirkiness as their destiny lies down the strange and rugged path of experimentation. And with a name like this band, don’t expect anything happy-go-lucky.

Link: http://www.earpwr.com/

What is that sound? What is that fuzzy haze emitting from the mountaintop? Why are these credits rolling!?! Maybe there are no credits and this is not music to a film, but all of these years having the analog buzz of ‘70s and ‘80s film score rattle my senses has scarred me enough to associate the low-lying hum of this intro song with mysterious paranoia. You know something is about to happen, but you are not quite sure what it is.

That otherwordly synth hum pulsating around and around is interrupted by analog bleeps like a strange science fiction awakening as toms roll and crescendos to the core of what EAR PWR is all about: celebratory like an Aztec human sacrifice. 20 seconds of the album, and you will want to consider the self-titled album a done deal.

If it was not for the tribal ceremony of drums pounding, “Mountain Home” would be poignant ambient and your flutter of a dance move would be non-existent. “We’re not like them, we can’t pretend. You think we’re dumb. Maybe we’re just happy,” Thank God!

That analog bleeping I mentioned earlier? It seems to dominate the songs in some way or another, whether it kick starts a song or comes into focus. “Melt” will satisfy any hipster who is too good to let the music get to them as it will those who choose to flop round like a fish out of water.

And if you do not conform to the later on “Gypsy Blood,” then you are dead. It’s the sense of natural law and identity that flows through the veins of this band. These people are proud of who they are, and it clearly shows in their music that remains challenging enough to captivate. A captivation that is as intriguing as those unexplained sounds that pop up around the world.