[jico.]

We wrote a while back on the New Jersey underground gunk n’ roll noise and rawk scene as represented by the Bone Tooth Horn [geocities.com/bonetoothhorn] label and the bevy of bands like Human Adult Band, Ladderwoe, Asps et al. Like most outside-the-media-eye towns and cities, the members of these outfits tend to play in each others’ sandboxes. We just found out about Trevor Pennsylvania’s new one. He’s the guy from Human Adult Band and it’s called Trevor Pennsylvania & Th’ Enforcers [myspace.com/humanadultband] — total grey sky, smoke and beer, skum-club guitar/amp lost boy psychosis core. We were psyched to get their new 2-song tape “Teenage Parking Lot” b/w “Skeletons in th’ Closet.” Good muddy squall sound the way we like it. A perfect listen while working on our cycles in stinked-up Mutha Records t-shirts.
Monte Beauchamp has long been one of the most interesting editors working in the field of underground comx and graphics. The annual he does, Blab!, is the most solid anthology of its type since the glory days of Raw, [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAW_(magazine)] and Monte has just edited a couple of books for Fantagraphics [fantagraphics.com] that are ripe with everything he holds dear. The Magic Bottle by Camille Rose Garcia [camillerosegarcia.org] is a berserk fairytale about pirates and waifs and turtles, blending a dreamlike story with Garcia’s hallucinatory visuals to maxist effect. Old Jewish Comedians by Drew Friedman [drewfriedmanart.com] is just what it says. Friedman’s draws darkly loving portraits of the elder statesmen of American comedy, shown in the years after the limelight had passed. Friedman’s great love of his subject matter is plain, and the full page portraits (while sometimes grotesque) are brilliant liver-spotted tributes to a generation now departed. Nice.
Los Angeles label Anarchy Moon [anarchymoon.com] scored big a while back with the Redglaer [myspace.com/redglaer] American Masonry 10″, which was a wicked ride through high force audio death wind. The label has a local connection to Il Corral [ilcorral.net], a venue catering to the most extreme forms of L.A. sput and has released a somewhat mouth-watering double LP documenting the night of Friday the 13th January 2006 there. The acts are powerbook sound jammer John Weise [home.earthlink.net/~johnwiese/], electronic junk and spirit head duo Dead Machines (John Olson of Wolf Eyes and Tovah O’Rourke Olson) [myspace.com/tovaholson], low end cement-mix slabber Damion Romero [poweracoustics.org/discography/] and a collaboration of all three – each to a side. Each joint gives you a real time glimpse into each of these people’s noise emission world and anyone familiar with their catalogues may think it’s certainly not their most killer takes. The interesting thing though, and this holds true for the genre in which they’re active, is that the process of reaching for personal epiphany is as rewarding as hearing an artist’s chosen best effort. Weise spends time with comparatively quiet stations, Dead Machines deal with a more fractured pace than is expected, and Romero really just sits on a deadzone of drone, although three-quarters of the way through his piece starts to glow in a subtly remarkable fashion. The get together on side 4 comes across as any jam out in any one of these budz basements and therein lies its charm. All these cats have stronger sides out there, but these performances are the sound of them in true experimental style, seeking, prodding, checking in and checking out and back again – everything that makes this scene so goddamned great in the first place.
Also on Anarchy Moon is the split LP betwixt Roman Torment and Feed The Dragon. Roman Torment’s side is as good a place as any to hear the current state of American power electronic harshness. Not a full rectal blare nor a squiggle fest these boys, Jeff Witscher (Impregnable, Deep Jew) and Evan Pacewicz (Moth Drakula [swamplandnoise.com/mothd.htm]) ride the flaring noise gush in an almost compositional style taking the listener through a harsh yet meditative drive. Feed The Dragon is another nom de plume, like aforementioned Redglaer, of Bob Bellerue [halfnormal.com], a Naropa Institute graduate and a man who has spent jugs of time exploring, thinking and creating all sorts of transmissions of noise humanism. His side is typically jake and another cog in this cat’s excellent life.
Another label risen phoenix-like from the forgotten kingdom of noise is Amphetamine Reptile [amphetaminereptile.com]. Tom Hazelmyer has stopped focusing exclusively on barkeeping and art production and has unleashed a batch of new 45s, that are up to the label’s exquisite standards in every way imaginable. The first two are part of some project called A Purge of Dissidents and are some kinda soundtrack to a book or something. What the exact story is, I’m not sure, but the sonics are nice art-grunge molestations with guest vocals by David Yow, Shannon Selberg and Craig Finn. Sweet and scuzzy is what they are. But the real revelation is the new one by a more-or-less reformulated Halo of Flies. H.O.F.’s “FTW/Maggot Is” includes two of the original three members, and is a fully face-smashing reinvigoration of the Halo’s massive grunge ethos. They sound like they never left, actually – this is crippling, full-throttle guitar rip with a new art-stutter present and a genius you’d have to be a half-pint to deny. Yikes.