the of mirror eye

So, over the years, I’ve collected some strange, random songs from the interweb. I decided to share some of them with you today.

* Yat-kha: Love Will Tear Us Apart (1.5 mb)
According to their website, Yat-kha are a “Tuvan throat singing punk band.” Here, they throw down on a great Joy Division cover. If you’re intrigued, you can hear more samples on their website. These guys kinda blow my mind a little bit.

* Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Matt Sweeney: Ignition (4.0 mb)
I believe this is an R. Kelly(?) cover. And if it isn’t, it should be. This is fantastic, listening to alt-country superstar, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy try and get through this without laughing (with joy, that is).

* Eyeball Skeleton: Spooky Mummy Case (3.0 mb)
From their myspace page:

Maryland’s Eyeball Skeleton are eight-year old JJ Brown, ten-year old Charlie Brown and their Dad. The band met at a hospital in the mid-1990s.
…
Each song begins with an image and title drawn by JJ or Charlie. JJ and Charlie write down ideas and lines for the lyrics, then work with Dad over waffles and coffee to organize the lyrics to fit their music.

* Bobby And Betty: Space Diary Interview (1.0 mb) | Rocket Launch (1.5 mb)
This is totally “spacey” and futuristic. A couple of kids take a space trip to the moon in 1985! Betty says: “…the girls, heh, just don’t seem to take to the engineering courses…”

* Patience And Prudence: Tonight You Belong To Me (0.5 mb) | A Smile And A Ribbon (0.5 mb)
Two sisters sing beautifully, beguiling pop songs in 1956.

* the church animals: Up There In Outer Space (3.5 mb) | Empire Strikes (3.5 mb)
* blanketarms: All I Got (2.5 mb) | Heartbreaker (2.0 mb)
From A Breakfast Show!!! : cdr

This past week was one of “goods” and “bads”. For the past three years or so, I’ve had the same work schedule. I work Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday (we work 13 hour days). But this past Thursday, I totally tweaked my back and could barely walk, let alone get up out of bed. Generally, I just work through the pain, but this time it was really bad, so I decided to take it easy over the weekend and I hoped that it would “heal itself” and I could go back to work on Sunday. But no such luck.

Although my back was feeling much better, I still couldn’t really move without any pain. It was so bad that I actually took ibuprofen to try and ease the pain (this is actually pretty monumental, because I haven’t taken an over-the-counter pain killer in over fifteen years). The pain was so bad that I almost considered going to the doctor (haven’t been to one in over ten years). But instead, I just decided to take Sunday off and relax.

And part of that relaxation was going to a breakfast concert hosted by the church animals. I first saw this band awhile ago at a Salon Minuscule, hosted by Lord of the Yum Yum, and was immediately enchanted by this husband and wife duo. They have a sweet, simple pop sound that is just absolutely wonderful to listen to.

And opening the show was blanketarms. I had no idea what to expect with this group, but was pleasantly blown away by their songs. The lead dude played with such sincerity and enthusiasm, that they quickly won me over to their side. The songs were anthemic and catchy, with Isaac on vocals, acoustic guitar and ukulele(?) and Leila on vocals, hand claps and other noises. Needless to say, I totally enjoyed their show.

So, even though my back was killing me, I had a totally enjoyable sunny Sunday morning, listening to two great bands.

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* Suicide: Ghost Rider (3.5 mb) | Frankie Teardrop (15.5 mb)
From First Album : Mute Records

I’ve been sitting here, racking my brain, trying to come up with a write up worthy of this band, and am failing miserably. In fact, I don’t think that this band, Suicide, really needs any description at all. But rather, the audience needs a warning about what they’re getting into when they start to listen to them. I mean it all sounds so benign, with a band line-up of Alan Vega on vocals and Martin Rev on synths and drum machines. But you definitely need to let go of any preconceptions of what a vocal/synth and drum machine band could sound like. Released in 1978, this album still sounds revolutionary and their apocalyptic sound still blows my mind everytime I listen to it.

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* Daniel Johnston: Devil Town (1.5 mb) | Some Things Last A Long Time (7.0 mb) | Funeral Home (4.5 mb)
From 1990 : Shimmy Disc Records

Well, I got a chance to see a preview showing of The Devil And Daniel Johnston, and boy am I ever glad that I did. Directed by Jeff Feuerzeig, this documentary about Daniel Johnston (look here) was totally fantastic. Daniel was totally compulsive about documenting his own life. So, Mr. Feuerzeig had, what amounted to, an all access pass to Daniel Johnston’s life. And what a fascinating life it is.

The cool thing about this movie showing was that the director was there and held a question and answer at the end. During this time, he mentioned that this album, 1990, the “gospel album” was one of his favorites. So naturally, I had to track it down and give it a good listen and it’s a total stunner. The album has some studio tracks and some live tracks (including a sing-a-long), all recorded in New York City (where Daniel initally spent time with members of Sonic Youth and then ran away and ended up in a homeless shelter).

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Also, I would encourage you to check out Stress Records. There, you can find cassette tapes of old albums, rarities and live concerts. The man who runs it does it as a labor of love, hand dubbing and assembling all of the orders.

* Boris: Ibitsu (4.0 mb) | Ano Onna No Onryou (8.0 mb) | Akuma No Uta (6.0 mb)
From Akuma No Uta : Southern Lord Records : sunn41

Akuma No Uta, by Boris is an incredible sonic thrill ride. Hailing from Japan, this power trio of Takeshi (Bass, Guitar & Vocal), Atsuo (Drums & Vocals) and Wata (Guitar) have been blowing heads open for more than ten years now. This trio likes to stretch out and play everything from stoner doom drones to hard hitting psych workouts to groovy head nodders.

Starting off with a Earth-esque drone-metal intro the record then slams into the riffed-out, noisy stormer “Ibitsu”. Distorted, manic, tear-shit-up stuff. After another song in the same Hendrix meets the Stooges style psych-punk rawk vein, Boris switch gears again, for the album’s centerpiece, a twelve-minute opus entitled “Naki Kyoku” that begins all super languid, quiet and pretty before building into a soaring psychedelic jam. The jams continue on the next track, another in the red Garage stompin’ blow-out. Finally, title track “Akuma No Uta” winds things up with a return to the immense sludge grind of track one, melded into a headbanging groove, ending the disc on an adrenaline high.

(from Southern Lord's Boris page)

But honestly, even if this album weren’t any good, it’d still be worth picking up simply for the brilliant art work. Paying homage to Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter album (look here), Boris perfectly replicates the album cover, except for the addition of an electric double neck guitar/bass instead of the acoustic guitar that Nick Drake uses. Absolutely brilliant.

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* Akron/Family: Awake (3.5 mb) | Moment (7.5 mb) | Future Myth (11.5 mb)
From Akron/Family & Angels Of Light : Young God Records : YG30

For awhile now, the Akron/Family has been one of my favorite bands. I first heard about them because they were the current backing band for Michael Gira’s Angels of Light (look here) project. I loved the sounds and sonorities they brought to the project.

But hearing their group work was a revelation to me. Though they are often lumped in with the “New Weird America” movement (they veer easily from free noise freakouts to delicate folk guitar to ragged 4 part harmony vocal chants) they seem to be approaching music much differently than the other groups and are much more rock ‘n’ roll based.

Akron/Family are four extremely nice, sincere and well-mannered young men from rural America who came to NYC (in 2002) to make music, hoping to find a thread of real magic still winding through this city’s music scene. They certainly did just that, but they did it by retreating into a tiny Brooklyn apartment, where they made their own world instead, in complete and stubborn isolation. They proceeded (while simultaneously growing alarmingly long beards and developing a playful but hermetic quasi-religious/sonic worldview/creed known as “AK” or sometimes “AK-AK”) to make several albums worth of recordings on crude home equipment – the material compulsively chopped, spliced, and orchestrated into fractal jewels of song and schismatically opposed atmospheres.

(from the website)

I finally got a chance to see them play the other day and it was totally great. They have an infectiously fun characteristic to their music and actually have senses of humor that seem to be sorely lacking in most other bands of the genre. And while they sometimes veered a little too much into aimless jamming territory, there were able to pull it off simply because you could see their joy and commitment and belief in what they were doing.

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