Asobi Seksu - Strawberries 2x7" (+ live at Crawdaddy, Dublin 11/02/09)

(inside of the gatefold. All artwork by Sean McCabe)

("Limited Edition Red Vinyl With Strawberry Scented Sleeves" - yes, really. Subtle enough, but in a sugary-sweet flavouring sort of way. As one might expect.)

'Strawberries' - Edit (3:29)

'Strawberries' - CSS Remix (3:19)

This double 7" came out in November 2007, a month before the Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) single, both in support of their second album, Citrus. Currently they're touring their third, Hush, which officially comes out on February 17th, on Polyvinyl Records. Obviously I'm more familiar with the songs from Citrus, of which there were a few played at the gig - notably 'Strawberries', 'Pink Clouds Tracing Paper' and 'Thursday'. The songs from Hush sound very strong though.

First thing that hit me about the band was the sound of the drums - absolutely pummelling, a piercing bass drum - which makes a lot of sense given the drummer's previous work. Actually it reminded me, in a live setting, of a favourite Irish band of mine, Ham Sandwich (though I would make the comparison more generally anyway), who have a heavy rhythm section, shoegazy guitar and a female vocalist as well. Though there can be few modern comparisons with the vocals of Yuki Chikudate, which are simply stunning (and surprisingly audible in the context).

The show drew to a close with the My Bloody Valentine-clone of 'Pink Clouds Tracing Paper', and for an encore, a transcendentally distorted version of 'Red Sea'. Thankfully it didn't reach the sound levels or duration of MBV's recent "holocausts", but it's always a good thing when, in a gig, the visual and auditory inputs from the stage cease to appear to be 100% experientially, in-the-same-room real. Now that's shoegaze.

Other reviews here and here. It also was Gig of the Week in the Irish Times too, with a nice photograph, but only it seems available in the print edition.

Friday Video: Grails - Acid Rain DVD Trailer

I got an email today from someone at Temporary Residence Limited about a new video from Grails promoting their new DVD, due out in April. I had been planning on posting the new-ish live videos of Dan Deacon - w/ ensemble - from Pitchfork, but this is probably more useful for me to post. Grails have the whole visual and sonic art combination down quite well (see this post), so their videos are usually a joy to watch. The 'commercial' for Doomsdayer's Holiday was a great idea - though I'd love to see the television channel that interrupted its programming for a Grails video - and this is the same concept, except for a DVD rather than an album:

"Grails - Acid Rain DVD [due out April 7th]

Following up their widely acclaimed and most successful album, Doomsdayer’s Holiday, Grails unleash their first-ever DVD, the career-spanning Acid Rain. Centered around a half dozen mind-altering music videos from their last few albums, Acid Rain also features nearly two hours of live shows from the past several years. Packed full of bonus material and special treats, Acid Rain is as bizarre, eclectic and otherworldly as their albums, with the added spectacle of debaucherous activities, vicarious cult obsessions, and street preachers on rollerskates."

'Acid Rain' happens to be my favourite track from Doomsdayer's Holiday, the epic, surf-drenched and slow-moving finale. It's a good title for a "career-spanning" DVD; as it is a culmination of the varied and progressive post-rock styles of Grails, and also distinctly different from most of the rest of the album. It's impossible to predict where Grails will take their sound next, which is great for a band in an otherwise often repetitive genre.

Since another TRL band, also broadly in the post-rock genre, Envy, produced an excellent DVD - Transfovista - not too long ago, I'm assuming this release will live up to a similarly high standard.

New Dan Deacon Cover Art (+ new track)

(via egoeccentric)

The new Dan Deacon album, Bromst (out March 24th on Carpark), one release I'm very much looking forward to this year, has been revealed to have this rather beautifully - and unconventionally - autumnal cover art. Given that Dan Deacon is part of a multimedia art collective, I guess it's no surprise that it looks good (see the cover to the previous album, Spiderman of the Rings, here). While speaking of the new album's "promise of a thematic and aesthetic shift", Stereogum sums it up rather nicely:

"The Bromst stuff offered hip-hop glints with scratched vocal-samples in the mix and deeper, more deliberate dance beats than Spiderman, while retaining some of the album's quirk and whimsy at its core. This album cover is very true to that."

It also reminds me of the secret Skins episode, but that's probably just me. And no, that's not a bad thing.

UPDATE (via Thrill Pier): A track - the last - from the album is now streaming on Pitchfork. It's very, very good. Key phrase from their description: "Deacon somehow manages to keep the densely packed midrange just this side of a headache"; but read (and listen) to the whole thing, it's great. I think it sounds oddly and momentarily quite like U2 at around the 5-minute mark, but apart from that it's a really interesting denser, slightly darker reprise of the Spiderman of the Rings sound.*

What is curious, though, is that I can't think of anything from 2008 that made a major impact on me - or appeared to have impacted on the wider critical consciousness - in the same way that Spiderman of the Rings (and to a lesser degree, Battles' Mirrored) did. I'm not one of those people who say 'this year was disappointing in music' because, well, it wasn't, and I don't see how you couldn't find some stimulating art somewhere in the world - but at the same time I don't recall meeting anything as interesting-sounding as Dan Deacon in 2008.

Potential candidates? Vampire Weekend or Fucked Up, to take two oddly connected groups: both interesting and accessible sounds, and although I react to the hype(/backlash) surrounding each band quite differently, I still don't see either as revolutionarily novel. I'm talking popular non-mainstream albums here, aka 'indie' - the stuff that gets picked up by Pitchfork and other, worthier publications, and not obscure post-hardcore/screamo/regional artists that actually made my Best of 2008 list ahead of, or nearby, the aforementioned Vampire Weekend.

Also, 'ahead' of Spiderman of the Rings in 2007 I placed Arcade Fire's Neon Bible and Dinosaur Jr.'s Crumble, not because I though either were particularly challenging and new-sounding, but just because I liked them so much. However, I still rate Dan Deacon as an artist who opened my ears and eyes that year to fantastically good music, as well as joyously action-packed live show. Perhaps it is too much to expect that every year, but why not be ambitious about living in a global network of music enjoyment and discussion?

Of course, I already have a few areas of interest in retrospectively exploring the 'new' music of 2008 via some of the Best of 2008 lists spread across the internet, particularly those featured in this earlier post. Fennesz's Black Sea, as noted in josephlovesit's Best of 2008: Pop Art list and in several other locations, seems an interesting, intriguing, out-of-my-usual-listening-orbit choice, but then again that's probably why I haven't actually listened to any of it yet. Dan Deacon also originally appeared to lie at a similar distance from my usual listening habits, but crucially it had - in 'Crystal Cat' at least - a certain punky aesthetic and accessibility.

On that last basis, I'd nominate So Cow's very accessible, very - if tangentially - punk rock, and very interesting album I'm Siding With My Captors - plus a great live show, even if only as a supporting act - as my Dan Deacon of 2008. Especially as Karl of Those Geese Were Stupified has written a brilliant review of it for the latest instalment of his year-end list (#7 of 10-7). A more novel or worthy album to fill the 2008-shaped mental gap in Dan Deacon-like indie music excitement, I can't think of.

* Now, I just need a translation for "8-bit euphoria" into the frantic, ska-happy sound of the So Cow album.

Friday Video: Mogwai - 'Batcat'

Apparently tonight is some sort of pseudo-pagan festival, so here's a scary video for you.

Okay, it's not really that scary (this video "made out of an old 70's music video with a Danish dude doing a cover of Apache by The Shadows" for 'The Sun Smells Too Loud' is probably more unsettling) but it's a great song, and the video with its camp horror is pretty good too. Initially, I didn't think so, chiefly because I came in around the 2:00-minute mark and children dressed in folk clothing running around a forest to heavy guitars somehow reminds me of a lot of nu-metal and 'post-hardcore' videos from the early-to-mid 00s. Plus, as I had already discovered 'Batcat' as the awesome instrumental post-rock/metal track that it is, I didn't feel like it needed visual exposition. There's a self-contained quality to the music - like that of Slint - that fills up your headphones with sound that is both curiously mechanical and organic.

However, the video has plenty of technical and aesthetic merit to it, creating a gloomy environment (aesthetic, but perhaps not very creative), and the glistening, visceral image of the 'batcat' at the end is quite impressive. Having seen the full thing, the opening shot of the girl's hooded face, with a very painterly effect, is brilliant - as is the foreshadowing juxtaposition of the visceral, sci-fi cliche of pulsating, inhuman flesh. Man, this rocks!

More on this (and Slint) later:

Frankfurt School vs. the Culture Industry

á la Lex Dexter:

"….More generally, the Frankfurt theorists contended that, quite contrary to the optimism of such liberal-pluralists as Edward Shils, the media made the world of serious culture made widely accessible only at the price of depriving it of its critical substance. For the media, by bringing culture into everyday life, wrenched it from the tradition which had guaranteed it its separateness just as the techniques of mass reproduction deprived the work of art the ‘aura’ of its uniqueness on which alone its critical function could be predicated. Marcuse argues the point with force and clarity:

The neo-conservative critics of leftists critics of mass culture ridicule the protest against Bach as background music in the kitchen, against Plato and Hegel, Shelley and Baudelaire, Marx and Freud in the drugstore. Instead, they insist on recognition of the fact that the classics have left the mausoleum and come to life again, that people are just so much more educated. True, but coming to life as classics, they come to life as other than themselves; they are deprived of their antagonistic force, of the estrangement which was the very dimension of their truth. The intent and function of these works have thus fundamentally changed. If they once stood in contradiction to the status quo, this contradiction is now flattened out. (Marcuse, 1970, p. 64)

It is this aspect of the Frankfurt critique which has been taken up most frequently by cultural theorists on the left. In particular, mention should be made of Walter Benjamin who argued that the development of techniques permitting the reproduction of works of art on a limitless scale, depriving them of their ‘aura’, the uniqueness of their singular existence, had created the technical preconditions whereby art, in being freed from the sacredness of its singular presence, was able to enter the domain of politics in a form in which it could be both produced and appropriated by the masses (Benjamin, 1970).

This was decidedly not the perspective of the Frankfurt theorists. Art, they argued, could fulfil its oppositional function only by refusing any compromise with reality. But, by the same token, it was thereby unable to have any impact on the consciousness of those whose minds are forged in the midst of a compromised reality. If art did compromise so that it might be made available to the masses it would, by the same token, lose its oppositional value. Adorno summarised this dilemma as follows:

The effect that they [works of art] would wish to have is at present absent, and they suffer from that absence greatly; but as soon as they attempt to attain that effect by accommodating themselves to prevailing needs, they deprive men of precisely that which they could.. give them. (Cited in Slater, 1977)

- Tony Bennett, p. 45 (1982) "Theories of the media, theories of society" in Gurevitch, M. et al Culture, Society and the Media (London: Meuthen). Emboldens are my own.

(0.) Punk set out to be, or should have achieved the status of, the ultimate oppositional form of art, and post-punk was a recognition of the failure of that agenda. Or that Adorno’s remark could be used as a brief history, rise and fall, of punk rock in the 20th century.

In this previous post I mentioned Nicholas Rombes's statement in his essay on the Ramones' first album for the 33 1/3rd series of music books that “Ramones is either the last great modern record, or the first great postmodern one”, and then I drew a comparison to ex-Mclusky Shooting at Unarmed Men's Triptych from this year. Postmodernism is a tricky subject (= can be a load of shite), but a valid one nevertheless, and absolutely crucial to understanding the (current) relationship between art and reality.

1. The Wire as a realist, but not realistic, show. This was dealt with I think somewhere on Heaven and Here, and it's important to use in answering the (minority) critical backlash to what is seen as a sycophantic consensus on the Wire's status as televisual art and its literary honesty. While the Wire reflects reality - in multiple levels of political, economic and social injustice - it does this in the process of producing not a documentary, but a drama and a novelistic work of art.

2. Lungfish as an obscurantist band. If they are indeed separate from the punk/post-punk/hardcore/post-hardcore division of intellectual labour in Western alternative music, and really represent a rock group that transcends even the concept of transcendence in rock music; does this explain why the metaphysical, utterly vague yet heavily image-centred lyrics and repetitive, reproduced sound expresses so simply a certain rawness and uncompromising reality of their art?

3. Shooting at Unarmed Men as a postmodern take on the ‘reality’ of punk rock. Triptych takes layers of garage punk rock and post-punk experimentalism, the directness, urgency of lo-fi and the expansiveness, ambience of post-rock; and it melds them all into a three-part album which expresses both the archaic coherence of the 'album' or record and the fragmentation of progressive art after the modern era. Triptych may be the most exciting punk rock album I have heard this year, and the most novel but also the most rooted in the fluid, constructed truth of that musical genre. The oppositional art in the postmodern world of politics.

Shooting at Unarmed Men - 'The Cock-A-Doodle-Doo of Democracy'

Reasons to be Emo(core) #150: Hot Water Music – Moonpies for Misfits

'Moments Pass’ from Moonpies for Misfits (EP), No Idea Records 1999.

Choosing A Flight and a Crash as one of the standard bearers of punk rock in the 21st century didn’t go down too well, but by and large I stand by my choice. However, I am a bona fide fan of old school Hot Water Music, and yes, I could see Forever and Counting (vinyl repress in the mail!) as my favourite too, or Fuel for the Hate Game, or No Division. Moonpies for Misfits is a four-song EP that fits, musically, in between Forever and Counting and No Division (it was released on the No Idea label in the same year, 1999, as the latter album was on Some Records).

It may not be the very best HWM record (for that, see above) but it’s still almost perfect in its own way. I found this review on Amazon which sums it up pretty well:

“The little DIY outfit from Gainesville that could. Hot Water Music have kept their integrity intact throughout their rise from Florida emo-core legends to mid-major label rising stars. This EP offers 4 songs from an era when the band was just blooming and realizing the extent of their artistic ability...”

Or, more generally, consult the emo non-bible that is Fourfa, which says (in reference to Finding the Rhythms/Fuel For the Hate Game, which is a few years earlier, but still the old Hot Water Music style):

“Takes the best of the Fuel/Fugazi twin vocal/twin guitar drive and adds a sweaty Avail pop-punk pulse, with scratchy, gruff singing that doesn't need to be beautiful to get the point across. This band positively embarrasses bands with only one singer.”

If you want a great overview of the Hot Water Music sound from Finding the Rhythms up until No Division (and including a brief diversion into the Blacktop Cadence’s Chemistry for Changing Times), head over to Music for the Working Man and download the two podcasts available there. Mostly, he lets the music speak for itself, but adds in some of the story too and - best of all – isn’t afraid to say the word ‘emo’ or ‘emocore’.

____________________________________________

’Moments Pass’ opens up Moonpies for Misfits with a relatively unusual, for Hot Water Music, sideswipe of feedback - and then kicks, or rather chugs, into life. Sometimes earlier HWM sounds too dense, too full of weight, to be easily accessible – and this might turn a lot of people off – but what this song demonstrates is the melody suffused into the hardcore drive, a legacy of the ‘emocore’ genre in general and of the album Forever and Counting in particular. ‘Moments Pass’ is a song about seizing life as it comes, or as the liner notes to Live at The Hardback say: “this song is about taking advantage of the time we have with our friends or loved ones now. Mainly because we never know what tomorrow will unfold.”

“and up to yours to sit down for a fucking cup of coffee and shoot the shit.”

‘Another Way’ is one of Hot Water Music’s personal/political songs, like ‘A Clear Line’ from A Flight and a Crash. “Say what’s wrong with this way, beside the fact it’s not in the book you read”. Independence, tolerance, plurality and “no division” are all elements of the Hot Water Music philosophy; but it’s personal too, a way to live one’s own life in co-existence and in community with others, despite all the difficulties inherent in that approach. E pluribus unum, and all that. I’m not sure if I should really mention Obama (again) here, but from what I see the US has immensely polarised politics – compared to a broadly social democratic Europe, at least – and this is something punk hasn’t often helped with. Often with good reason, of course, but I’d much rather see an emergence of Obama (left of-)centrism than a re-run of anti-Reagan (and anti-Bush) punk rock with McCain as presidential hate figure.

"Day by day we all change. Systems change.

So why can’t we accept other ways, in respect

to learn for our own?"

‘Where We Belong’ is a relationship song, a “song as a story of a crucial turning point in two people’s lives. Two people who found a peace through love they thought they would never know and learned how to keep it… from rooftops then, to rooftops now we’ve seen why we’re still here and who we’re both about…” (Live at The Hardback liner notes.) A lot of this song sounds more like Fuel For the Hate Game, a rawer, rougher sound, before it moves into a meandering, melodic passage straight out of Forever and Counting. Climbing and building, ever upward and rhythmically.

“Start now. Start right. Stay strong. Stay tight.

And we can rise side by side."

'Moonpies for Misfits' is another song that tells a story, of change from youthful arrogance/indifference to similar but more mellowed adulthood, still as strong and as forthright but more lastingly so: "face to face here we stand strong, but this time we stand for good". It's the quintessential post-hardcore song, the sound and the attitude from after the heady excesses of punk. Just as heavy - though a slower song than the other three - and fundamentally moving, it also has that profound sense of repose, of position, of difficult calm, that inhabits Hot Water Music's best work.

"...We used used to tear it up reckless.

Moonpies for misfits with no cares.

You got that right, I said.

We're still here.

Scarred, but here.

But, then again, we were invincible then.

We're still here.

Just not like then."

____________________________________________

Moonpies for Misfits*

1. Moments Pass

2. Another Way

3. Where We Belong

4. Moonpies for Misfits

Live at the Hardback

5. Moments Pass (live)

6. Where We Belong (live)

Download

Moonpies for Misfits is out of print at No Idea, but plenty of copies are still available on Amazon. Live at The Hardback is still for sale on vinyl or CD from No Idea.

* Moonpies, for non (Southeastern?)-Americans, are a trademark type of biscuit (‘cookie’) consisting of two round Graham crackers sandwiching a marshmallow and dipped in chocolate. The English translation of ‘Moonpies for Misfits’ would essentially be ‘Wagon Wheels for Wankers’.

____________________________________________

(Click to expand & read liner notes)

____________________________________________

A final note on the cover artwork. Just looking at it on the screen now, it's amazing. There are equally good Hot Water Music covers, such as the discombobulated man on A Flight and A Crash or the bellicose mutants on the front of Fuel for the Hate Game. In fact, all their album covers are of superbly high quality - because they are all done by the same artist, Scott Sinclair (SINC, as you can see in the corner.)

It's a pity, because of the high quality, that there isn't much on the internet about Sinclair's work - although he is a professional artist. He has a Myspace and a website in construction (there's nothing there at the moment, other than a damn cool title picture). I remember he used to have a site where one could look at a variety of his work, HWM and non-HWM.

I'm no art critic, but I guess I could describe SINC's style as a sort of modernist, semi-cubist form. Although it has evolved just as much as the band's sound, it has always matched Hot Water Music's vibe: hard edges, muted colours, but a whole lotta feeling and pathos put into the image. 'Moonpies for Misfits' has the one central figure, a man stripped to the waist and apparently carrying a pick-axe. In its stance, it could almost seem like a Socialist Realist tableau - but the figure appears just as skinny and emaciated as it does muscular - more Picasso-like. SINC's artworks, particularly his skeletal, awkard male forms, often put me in mind of Picasso's The Old Guitarist - although it's a Blue Period painting, not (directly) a Cubist one. Either way, there's that sense of physical tragedy, of the conflict between the weaknesses and strengths of the human form.

SINC's figure stands against an abstract background of back-and-forth arrows, all except one bright red arrow painted in muted colours. But they are not so abstract as to be unreal - the figure casts a definite (and harsh) shadow against them. All surfaces exhibit the same coarse painted texture, except for the figure's trousers and the upper block of the image, which are scoured rough, lending the whole a tactile but indistinct feeling. In front of the other elements, white shapes fall from the sky, their identity ambiguous - they could be raindrops, feathers or leaves. Finally, whatever they are, they reflect the same pallid white glow as comes from the bare torso and head of the figure, and the understated but by now emblematic rough lower-case text of 'hot water music' in the upper left.

The link above to 'The Old Guitarist' includes a modernist poem, possibly inspired by the painting, and written by American poet Wallace Stevens, 'The Man with the Blue Guitar'. The first six lines:

"The man bent over his guitar,

A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, “You have a blue guitar,

You do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are

Are changed upon the blue guitar."

I'd like to think that the painting and the poem both reflect something of Hot Water Music. What exactly though, I'm not sure.

in lieu of real posting - 'desk tattoos'

You may have noticed some subtle changes about the blog recently. With my newfound knowledge of CSS templates along with the usual Blogger interface, I've indulged in a bit of tweaking. Partly to revert some changes that happened a few weeks ago, and partly to shake up the aesthetics of the site a little. A very little - mainly brown hyperlinks. Anyway, I though I needed a fresh header to top it off, so here it is.

The drawings are all my own (it's a drawing board I use) but none of them are original, so this is the list in case you don't recognise them all:

(clockwise from left)

- The Ramones, 'Hey Ho, Let's Go' banner/eagle with baseball bat crest, designed by Arturo Vega. The chevrons in the centre are very sloppy for some reason I can't remember, but hey, it's not my national seal of office. And I actually don't have the Ramones shirt with this logo, somewhat out of principle. I have a different one, of course.

- Hot Water Music, flame logo. Not only are they an amazing band, but they have a great, great logo too. I'm not sure if it was designed by Scott Sinclair (sinc), who does all their album art; they also had a less stylised version on their first releases.

- The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico Andy Warhol banana picture. And yes, I do have the 'peel slowly and see' tag written in above. Such a great album - which leads on to a bunch of other stuff which is just as good, but is still one-of-a-kind.

- AFI, Art of Drowning demon drawing (just the tail of it, and a bit of wing, are in view). That album is good, along with the ones on either side of it. Everything before that, pretty much, is too punk - at least for my tastes - and everything after it nowhere near enough. I remember having serious goth issues when I first decided to buy this album, but really, it rocks.

- Black Flag. Duh. After (or possibly before) HWM, that's one of the best punk rock logos ever. I don't even listen to them that much, and at the risk of heaping opprobrium upon myself, I'd be a Rollins-era kind of guy.

- The Bouncing Souls, the 'bouncing soul'. In real life it's half black, half-white, but since the former (the left-hand side) is difficult to do in outline, I just left it to the strength of the lines to tell the story. That's from one of their earlier albums, but the version on the cover of How I Spent My Summer Vacation really defines the image for me.

- Operation Ivy, 'ska man'. With porkpie and weirdly-fingered hand. I've hardly ever mentioned Operation Ivy on the blog, but Energy or the Op Ivy discography CD are a real must for anybody's punk record collection. It's ska without horns, as well as fierce early Bay Area punk rock. Tim Armstrong (aka 'Lint') and Matt Freeman from the band went on to perform in the more widely recognised Rancid, while Jesse Michaels released several excellent records in Common Rider, which had much more ska feel.

(Also on the board but out of shot are the Pennywise logo, Husker Du 'Metal Circus' logo, the flower from Green Day's first album, and the skull from Rancid, Life Won't Wait. As you can probably tell, most of this comes from my younger days; but what the hell, they're all still important bands to me even if I have to remind myself to listen to their albums from time to time)

New Blog! Images Made Beat

A third blog has been added to my portfolio, along with Hardcore for Nerds for music and Steady Diet of Books for literature. Images Made Beat is for some of my own artwork, which is generally drawings made from my own photographs. The name is hopefully kind of descriptive, as well as expressing my love for Kerouac-type culture.

You might recognise a couple of the images from posts here on this blog, like Oi Endoxos Necros: A Mixtape in Tragedy and Mclusky Singles - Pt. II. At the moment the design of the site is pretty sparse, just a bit of basic information on each artwork. And apart from a bit of better graphics, I intend keeping it that way. There are only three sets of two and three works each up at the moment; more will be added periodically.

In the meantime, be sure to check out some of the 30-45 minutes, via YouTube, of combined visual and auditory awesomeness of Battles live in Dublin in the post below...

Ampere & Sinaloa - Split Recording

_________________________________

HFN101.5 - teaching you about the amazingness of the split release. (technically, a .5 in a number means a split release between labels, not bands; that's the first thing you've learnt!) Following on from this and this.

_________________________________

_________________________________

"To the seven of us involved in the creation of this collection of sounds, images and words, it is more than just a record. It serves us as a individuals as a creative and expressive output, but more importantly this is an attempt at communication and a sharing of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. We have all been moved by records before, whether it be by a progression of notes, the strike of a drum, words to sing along to, writings on an insert, or better yet, all of the above. As it is a medium we can relate to we use it in attempt to continue the conversation, from record to record, and from person to person. In the end perhaps this will fall upon deaf ears, but hopefully we can spark further communication and continue together to create a shared space for discussion and growth."

There are so many amazing elements to this record, it's hard to know where to begin.

Just look at the pictures above, for a start: the rich fall colours, layered across the CD case, with artwork (by Sinaloa member Pete Zetlan) bearing more than a little resemblance to Scott Sinclair (Sinc's) work for Hot Water Music, especially that of the superb A Flight and a Crash; the case itself made of beautifully textured, woody paper, slightly glossy to the light and to the touch in parts, an inch too wide for an ordinary CD case; and on the back, the characteristic buzzsaw stamp of Ebullition Records.

If that seems a little superficial, then read the quote above. "more than just a record". To risk being clichéd, it's an experience. Primarily a sonic one, of course; it doesn't fall short in that regard. But there is also the multiplicity on inserts; lyrics sheets with, on Sinaloa's side, detailed explanations of each songs (as on all their releases, it seems); a little white booklet with writings from each band member, from each band - two of which are reproduced below.

The simple fact is, this is one of the most crucial records I've ever heard or bought (it came out in 2006 - same year as La Quiete, below - and I downloaded it from Zen and the Art of Face Punching in 2007, buying it not too long afterwards). So I'll skip straight to the sounds:

Ampere is a band I'd hesitate to call screamo, though not (I hope) for the usual inward-looking definitional reasons which characterise modern hardcore. I associate screamo with an epic sound, something that Ampere completely lacks except in a weird, totally compressed sort of way. They remind me more of early-to-mid 90s hardcore emo bands like Mohinder or Swing Kids, only more technically advanced; but at the same time, they have clear links to the later 90s screamo sound via Orchid. Confused? Don't worry, I don't know what I'm talking about either. Blend sums it up pretty simply in two sentences: "Blazing fast chaotic bursts of noise and frantic hellish screaming with unintelligable lyrics that are guaranteed smarter then you would ever be able to tell without reading the liner notes. Small doses of melody and harmony appear only to be wiped away clean by a complete hurricane of noise." Judging by the syntax, I'm guessing he might have been listening to the band as he was writing that...

Ampere and Orchid guitarist Will Killingsworth also founded the utterly brutal and conceptually amazing Bucket Full of Teeth, which is a bit like Pig Destroyer for '00s emo kids. Ampere did another excellent split with Wolves (who in turn did an excellent one with Sinaloa...), who are the closest thing to a second coming of the Swing Kids as I've ever heard. In general, you don't want to listen to this stuff for too long - a point I've made several times before - so half of a split album is almost perfect. Play this to anyone who thinks emo is for pussies (it still is, but it's for pussies who can rock out!)

If that description is completely useless and has left you dazed and confused after listening to fifteen minutes of grind/hardcore/insanely noisy punk, don't worry, Sinaloa is both a lot easier to explain and to listen to. Calmer, softer, but still passionate screamo and hardcore, they hark back even more so than the previous band to the 'origi-emo' sound; blend again -

"Sinaloa, on the flip side, are a much calmer brand of punk and hardcore. They more closely resemble the mid 90's brand of emo pioneered by bands such as Moss Icon and Native Nod. Dont get me wrong, they still inject their own dose of chaos, its just not a full on assault on the ears as much as Ampere is. They use a more tuneful approach, using jazzy signatures and solid rock drumming to make a perfect "Yang" to Amperes "Yin"."

If I was to also try and describe Sinaloa's sound in a more prosaic manner, it would be that they are a band that play their own unique style of surprisingly laid-back and yet impossibly anxious screamo, combining sonically some of the Lungfish churchbell heartbeat, the Moss Icon exposed bank, and even a little bit of the Drive Like Jehu aloha, luau. They are the kind of band which inhabit some kind of space between their own notes, so that every moment of their songs can be a sort of ephemeral, preternatural bliss. And so on.

Now, open your ears.

_________________________________

"We all have opinions and personal politics that tend to guide our lives and the decisions we nake. these are the ideas, concepts, or methodologies that we hold close. some we come up on our own, while others we may have adopted from other sources like books or people we respect. whether it is a seemingly minor decision like adopting a pet from a shelter; or something that you can carry with you daily, like pursuing a career for a non-profit organisation, these ideas have purpose at the time we incorporate them into our lives. as with anything else, over time as we learn new things and gain life experience which eventually changes our views. i feel that often times we don't go back and revalidate our personal politics as our views and goals change. it is important that we go through a revalidation and question why we do the things that we do. if someone asks you why hold an opinion close, you should be able to answer why with confidence. if you can't answer, then why do you feel so strong? maybe your view are dated or they were never truly yours to begin with. it doesn't make you a weak person if you decide to pull back on something that you previously felt strongly about. we all need to ensure that the decisions we make contribute to our ultimate goals and what we want to accomplish. take time to think about what you are doing and the impact you want to make. make sure that you exerting your energy in a way that is constructive in helping you accomplish these goals. we all have the power to accomplish a lot if we keep ourselves in check."

brendan campbell

_________________________________

"so much time is wasted. time is flying. days are passing like seconds, and months are passing like minutes. before you know it the years are passing you by... where did all that time go?

Make the most of the time that you have. Make every second count.

"And I guess that's what growing up really is, not the continuous aging or learning or movig on, it's the loss. It's forgetting exactly what made you a kid in the first place. It's the realisation of good things used to be..." - Mike, in Abandon #4

It's time we redefined what growing up is.

"It's not how old I am, it's how old I feel" - Minor Threat

I think at a young age an element of fear gets put into our heads about getting older: the fea that you are just getting closer and closer to death, that things start to go downhill, that the best years of your youth are the best years of your life. why not make each year the best year of your life?

Stay inspired. Stay motivated. Be your own inspiration

You are in control of your own life

Let's live our lives the way we want.

Have fun, stay punk.

Love, Meghan"

_________________________________

Ampere/Sinaloa - Split (from ZAFP)

Ebullition - Ampere, Sinaloa

Ampere/Sinaloa, Split at Interpunk

_________________________________

"Sinaloa is a state. Everybody sings"

Hooray for Humans - Already Sleeping 7"

Who said emo couldn't be colourful?

Hooray for Humans are best described by their name, and by the list of influences on their Myspace page which is as follows:

"The Anniversary, Robocop Kraus, Fugazi, Mates Of State, Lali Puna, Braid, Why?, Supersystem, Les Savy Fav, Q And Not U, Think About Life, Daniel Johnston, The Notwist, Paul Simon, American Football, My Bloody Valentine, Small Brown Bike, CFTPA, Subtle, Dismemberment Plan, M83, Stereolab, The Get Up Kids, Mercury Program, Matthew Dear, Hot Cross, Dosh, La Quiete, Dischord Records, lots of other amazing stuff"

How can you get better than that? Dischord Records in their entirety as an influence; and I actually see new bands that I like every time I look at the list again - for example, the Mercury Program, which I didn't notice before and who are one of my favourite post-rock acts; as well as particular key touchstones such as Q and not U, MBV and La Quiete.

Of course, the band has to actually put these influences into practice, but happily they do this quite well. The sound is somewhere between quality electro-emo-indie, La Quiete sans screamo, and Q and not U exuberance. Like the name suggests, Hooray for Humans are 'splendidly upbeat', and infectiously indie-pop.

Safekeeping is their CD album from 2006, and one of the best Irish releases that I got around to buying last year. So I've been sitting on this for a while, waiting for their blue vinyl 7" to come out (it was due in March, but was held back for a while due to line-up problems in the band I think). It was well worth the wait, however, because for the reasonable sum of €5.50 you get two quality tracks, limited edition coloured vinyl (always a good thing!) and some totally amazing artwork by Cork artist Marianne Keating.

(I especially like how they have kept the pink/blue colour scheme of the previous album; consistency is always good in album artwork)

(front, back and inside; click to resize)

After about the tenth time listening to it, I'm realising just how sweet the intro to 'Already Sleeping' is. It works best after listening to No Kill Beep Beep for the umpteenth time. That's not to say that it doesn't sound different, but there's a spiritual connection in the sound.

There's a strong electro feel to the track, with the beats and electric handclaps, but it works as a straightforward indie song too. Add to that the subtle Dan Deacon-like synth explosion towards the end (I'm not sure if they use analogue equipment if he does, but I sure do like a bit of the electro-acoustic sound) and indie-emo gets, if nothing else, a neat little encapsulation. The b-side, 'Hidden Hands' opens with more of a wall-of-sound style - think La Quiete more than Q and not U - and then follows up with a short Epit-phat guitar squiggle (if you've ever listened to late-90s punk you'll know what I mean), and repeat. Later in the song, the male/female vocals really start aping Ham Sandwich, but that's not a bad thing either.

If the 7" has taken a little while to register in my head, it's not to say that it doesn't sound really good. But I've added two of the best and most immediate of the tracks from Safekeeping for good measure. That album is very strong, keeping up its energy and containing in it some absolute moments of emotive bliss. The sound of the 7" is a little more subtle, not too different in composition or style from the album but still requiring the latter I think to fill it out.

Album opener 'Signature' is energetic, fuzzy punk-pop, combining shout-along vocals with harmonies and a driving rhythm section. Radio single '06 Forever', which introduced me to the band, flips the punk-pop guitar with a lengthy, dance-style intro (complete with whistles!) and just boils over with energy, passion and youth. It may not scream your head off - it's considerably sweeter than that - but it'll definitely get you moving.

Hooray for Humans.zip

- Already Sleeping 7":

1. 'Already Sleeping' b/w 'Hidden Hands' (one file)

- Safekeeping CD

1. Signature

5. '06 Forever

Hooray for Humans - Myspace

Hooray for Humans - Already Sleeping: Road Records

Hooray for Humans - Already Sleeping: Digital download from 7digital Indiestore

La Quiete - s/t

HFN101 - learn all you need to know about how awesome screamo is in three tracks and 7:08 min:

This is originally from Zen and the Art of Face Punching (I don't even own it, and sadly it is now out of print according to the Pure Pain Sugar label website which I just checked. My luck not to have a record player when it came out first). I listed it in this statement-of-intent post from last month, along with a bunch of other stuff which is closer to what this blog originally started out posting. Be sure, if there's anything else on that list that you particularly want to hear, let me know and I'll keep your priority in mind. For the moment, I'm about to start into a week of exams so don't be surprised if there isn't anything up between now and next weekend.

This post is also in preparation for posting the new limited edition 7" from Ireland's own Hooray for Humans (yes, the name is a reference to that band). The similarities aren't perhaps all that deep, but they do sound a bit like La Quiete sans screamo. Also, they're awesome.

La Quiete are a screamo band from Italy, and in my opinion are the best of the 'modern' screamo bands (just surpassing Sinaloa, and taking Envy out of the equation because they aren't really screamo anymore). All of their songs are superlatively passionate, even for the genre; and the music, although at times harsh, at times unrelenting, can only be described as genuinely beautiful. These three tracks are almost a distillation of their sound: at first, because they were so short, the whole passed me by as somehow slight - but as I said at the time, "wow, once you let it sink in, you can really appreciate the melodies and see how it builds on the La Fine... sound. Fantastic". This is what blend wrote in his review:

"The self titled 7" is from 2006 and is the bands latest recording and see the band exploring the melodies that made La Fine non é la Fine so butter. At first I was thrown a bit, but I have to say, these three songs are so freaking good I listened to them over and over and over....So many melodies and so many tempo changes...At first it seems really complex (and it is to some extent) but the songs flow like water and have such amazing energy. All this while still remaining positive and not falling into the typical angry or depressed school of hardccore thought. (Don't get me wrong, they make for some amazing songs too) This is powerful emo hardcore music that actually makes you feel good"

Right from the start, La Quiete are the opposite of what their name might suggest. The first song, sweetly and percussively anxious, is painfully brief, a fact which the second builds on to introduce a driving, highly melodic mid-segment which eventually crests sharply onto the renewed assault of the last song. Disembodied yet mellifluous screaming is counterpointed with cyclical, rhythmic melody and finally a slow bit which you'll have humming under your breath. The passion in the indecipherable lyrics is still clearly evident, as is the softness and the sublety in the angular and aggressively played guitars.

In short, La Quiete is pretty indescribable, and in many ways quite irregular from what you might expect in a screamo band. This 7" does the same job as the La Fine non é la Fine full-length, simply more pointedly.

The three tracks are as follows:

1. Sulla Differenza fra un Sorriso e una Risata*

2. Giugno

3. Era Quella La Mia Prigione di Carte

La Quiete - s/t 7", 2006

* '[On the] difference between a smile and a laugh'; I don't really need to know Italian to work that one out, it's very similar to the French (souris/ris). Thanks to Giulia for extra translations and spelling corrections.

The cover, at top, is somewhat of an approximation. The real thing is supposed to come in a card, gatefold sleeve. I found photographs of the design from the artist(s?) at Amiam .org which were better quality than the picture on Zen, but they were cunningly skewed and sort of small, so I had to do a bit of messing around to get the picture above. Here are the originals:

The same page has the artwork for Xiu Xiu's La Foret (a very interesting artist, shortly to do his first show in Ireland which I might be persuaded into attending; I like some of his stuff - mainly A Promise, the cover for which thankfully this graphic artist isn't responsible for), La Quiete's amazing cloth-covered Tenpeun collection, their floppy disk/CD 3", and La Quiete action figures (the last one is just plain weird).

Luckily, the amazing artiness doesn't stop there. The 7" came with a specially commissioned video CD featuring music videos from various Italian animation/video artists, one for each song. They used to be on La Quiete's MySpace, and are now on YouTube:

Sulla (by blu)

Guigno (by erica il cane)

Era (by emanuele kabu)

La Quiete.org

MySpace - La Quiete

'Oi Endoxos Necros': A Mixtape in Tragedy

(as usual, click to enlarge. All artwork done by myself)

I

_____________________________________________

Introduction -

OI ENDOXOS NECROS (ΟΙ ΕΝΔΟΞΟΣ ΝΕΓΡΟΣ), if I remember correctly, was an inscription on the set of a play I saw on Saturday night, Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes (itself an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone). It was written in the stone over the wreaths laid for the fallen brothers Eteocles and Polyneices, the first of what would be many dead bodies over the course of this Greek tragedy.

'The Glorious Dead' is, as far as I can make out, what Oi Endoxos Necros translates to; but the exact meaning isn't that important here. This isn't meant to be a macabre mix, or over-occupied with death, but rather a collection of songs that could be reasonably described as 'tragic' in some aspect.

It's a little more than that though - it is a reaction to my first proper experience of Greek tragedy. The Burial at Thebes was, undoubtedly, an excellent production; a fascinating political drama up until the second half, when people started dropping like flies (and yes, I know that's meant to happen. And it was executed [sic] extremely well). The themes explored in the first half - conflict between religious and secular demands, the exercise of authority, the duties and bounds of citizenship - seemed to be abandoned to dramatic despair and drift; no redemption, no real statement, not even a recognizable acknowledgement of nihilism. Just death (one suicide, an attempted parricide, another suicide, and another) and dramatic necrophilia.

So the non-essential purpose of this mix is not just to illustrate the soundscapes of darkness, tragedy and human doom in the first instance, but to project forward into some hardcore songs that actually have something to say about the tragic in life.

But most of all, just some powerful tunes.

_____________________________________________

Oi Endoxos Necros: Pt. 1 – Doom as a Non-Metallic Element

1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – ‘The Lyre of Orpheus’

2. Tom Waits – ‘Misery is a River of the World’

3. God Speed You! Black Emperor – ‘East Hastings’/“The Sad Mafioso…”

4. Envy – ‘Unrepairable Gentleness’

Oi Endoxos Necros: Pt. 2 – The Positive Force! Reprise

5. Hot Water Music – ‘Minno’

6. Leatherface – ‘In My Life’

7. Lungfish – ‘Descender’

8. Bad Religion – ‘Materialist’

9. Rancid – ‘Turntables’

10. The Bouncing Souls – ‘For All the Unheard’

11. buried track (s – ‘gm, c’)

_____________________________________________

Oi Endoxos Necros: A Mixtape in Tragedy - two individual files (Sides 1 and 2) [download this for smoother and snappier transitions between tracks (long form mp3) and also for vinyl rip of the last song :)]

Oi Endoxos Necros: A Mixtape in Tragedy - 11 tracks [download this if you want separate mp3s]

_____________________________________________

Albums and release dates:

The Lyre of Orpheus, Anti- 2004

Blood Money, Anti- 2002

F#A#[infinity], Kranky 1998

A Dead Sinking Story, Level Plane 2002

Forever and Counting, Doghouse 1997

The Last, BYO 2001

Talking Songs for Walking, Dischord 1995

The Process of Belief, Epitaph 2002

Life Won't Wait, Epitaph 1998

The Gold Record, Epitaph 2006

Touch & Go, 1991

_____________________________________________

II

1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, ‘The Lyre of Orpheus’ has an obvious connection to Greek tragedy, but updated to a very twentieth-century folk-rock epic. “Owwww momma” Cave sings, a plaintive cry which probably echoes Dylan’s Memphis blues but is also imbued with a tragedy all of its own. Add to this Warren Ellis’s needling guitar – I absolutely love the riff on this song – and you have a tense, doom-laden tale of mythological and human pride, arrogance and visceral violence.

The Bad Seed’s 2004 Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus double album is the only thing by Nick Cave that I listen to; the Birthday Party never appealed much, Grinderman is of peculiarly little interest, and the Bad Seeds catalogue I am content to leave as mostly a mystery. The A.V. Club review for their latest album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is a pretty good read, mostly for lines like “Lyrically, Cave’s dick is still hanging out of his pants” and “the ageing Cave, to his credit, can still eat his weight in sleaze”. Extra credit goes to the commenter who pointed out that in the video for ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!’ Cave looks like “one part Disco Stu and one part Fredo Carleone”. The worrying thing is, he looks more like John Cazale’s character from Dog Day Afternoon than either of those.

The film The Proposition is excellent, however. Now there’s a Greek tragedy, or at least what I think a Greek tragedy should be!

2. Tom Waits, 'Misery is a River of the World' - the same A.V. Club review mentioned above had a brief discussion in the comments as to whether Nick Cave is a 'boring and girly' imposter of Tom Waits. Or more prosaically (or even perhaps, more poetically):

"BAH by albtraum

Every time I read a review of a Nick Cave album, it sounds cool and Tom Waits-y.

Then when I buy and listen to a Nick Cave album, it sounds boring and girly. I won't be fooled [regarding Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!] again."

I don't think I've ever tried to rank the two artists against each other, although I do lump them together (as I have done here) very roughly in terms of style. I guess direct comparison obscures the different backgrounds they come from - Tom Waits from being a 1970s beat/gutter poet, Nick Cave from starting off in punk/post-punk nihilists the Birthday Party - as well as their obvious musical differences now. But yes, I do reckon the one goes quite well with the other.

This song is the first track from Blood Money, and it serves well as an introduction to the tone of that album. Semi-bestial vocals, in a childrens' sing-song rhythm over eerie carnival music it's pretty frightening as well as being utterly captivating. Lyrics like "if there one thing you can say about mankind/there's nothing kind about man" showcase Waits's dark view of, well, everything, and the incessant thick beat of the song combine to induce a peculiar kind of musical claustrophobia; and when the accompaniment is stripped down for the haunting call "Evr'ybody row, evr'ybody row", it's hard not to buy into the tragedy of the song, and of Waits's performance.

3. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, 'East Hastings'/"The Sad Mafioso..." is the second movement of the second track (East Hastings) on their debut album F#A#∞. This was (pretty much by coincidence) the first GY!BE release I heard, and it is still kind of my favourite. Partly for this song I could have used any post-rock band anything from Slint to Explosions in the Sky, for the beginning is just sparse but affecting guitar work, and later parts bring in the jerky, rhythmic strings for which you could listen to something like the Kronos Quartet, who performed the memorable score for Darren Arronofsky's Requiem for a Dream and latterly, along with Clint Mansell and Mogwai, his most recent film The Fountain (That never got a proper release over here, so I haven't seen it, but I have the soundtrack and it sounds really good - it would have been included here if there was space). But whichever compartment of their sound you are referring to here, it's undeniably affecting. To my mind, Godspeed are fairly unassailably the kings of post-rock.

What the specific title "A Sad Mafioso" was meant to refer to, I don't know. I can imagine some kind of a Scorsese character, looking out on a rainy street and pondering the validity of his existence while sadly and desperately smoking a cigarette. Certainly, that's the vibe I get from the atmospheric, minimalist intro to the piece; and the heavy strings of the rest merely add a crushing weight of emotion to the scenario. This being GY!BE, that existential dilemma probably revolves around his position in a capitalist society and its tension with his criminal exploitation of his own people in it. Just somehow, it's unbearably tragic.

4. Envy, 'Unrepairable Gentleness' is equivalently post-rock, just couched within the sounds of blindingly screamy hardcore rather than classical strings and composition. From the point of this album and somewhat before, Envy morphed considerably into a broad-stroked, layered and expansive post-rock act, disappointing many of their hardcore fans (in both senses of the word) fans from previous albums. Personally, I far prefer this side of Envy's sound (A Dead Stinking Story and Our Dreams Walking This Way onward), not least of all having followed their development from that point, via 2006's full-length Insomniac Doze and last year's EP Abyssal. The immediacy (comparative to some extent, absolute to another) of this release presents a good middle ground for those who tend to lose interest at their later works.

'Unrepairable Gentleness' forms an epic screamo song which, buried in its onslaught, contains a massively powerful sense of tragedy. It communicates tenderness in a way only that several tons of distorted guitar sounds and throat-shredding vocals can; an emotion and a melody that is all the stronger for being found in a place that it would be difficult to include, otherwise. When you hear the rise and fall of this song, it should be close to bringing you to tears. Any less, and you probably aren't ready for Japanese screamo.

"If you hear this, I hope it eases some troubles..."

5. Hot Water Music, 'Minno' is a song from the band's third album, Forever and Counting. Insofar as I can possibly rank any of their albums above on another, it is one of my favourites; there is just something extra special about the guitar composition on this one, the purity and the flexibility of their post-hardcore approach to a particular sound. Others may not find their most varied, interesting or original, but for me it's definitely one of the most affecting.

This song in particular, with its gentle, caressing intro is also one of the most meaningful and tragic of the band's whole output. As the band explains in the notes for their Live at the Hardback CD:

"In remembrance of an old friend who took his own life under the 13th St. Bridge. He left us for reasons that no one but him may ever understand. Though we were left uneasy and confused, we were left with the memory of all the good in him. This is for Minno. Rest in peace. We'll remember you."

I said before when posting that CD that, in relation to lyrics, Hot Water Music "more than any other band I know, showed me how much words could truly mean". How that applies to this beautiful post-hardcore song is up to you to decide, but I think it's pretty obvious. And more broadly, it's about how post-hardcore is about really saying things - in this case, about the complex emotions of suicide - that other genres merely raise the issue of. So call this the reprise of the previous songs' explanation of tragedy, which was largely to convey the feeling in an artistic manner - not to actually speak about it. Both, of course, are valuable; but this way is more hardcore.

5. Leatherface - 'In My Life'; Leatherface and Hot Water Music go together, despite coming from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean (Florida and Sunderland) and not coming from musically the exact same kind of origins. I wrote about their BYO split before, which introduced me to the former band. But apart from their single masterpiece Mush, the effectively mini-album The Last is where it's at. The CD version from BYO Records collected together two sessions' worth of recordings, one of which was in fact a discontinued post-breakup project called Pope (and their album cleverly titled Johnpaulgeorgeringo) and wasn't really all that good ('Kingsane' is good though). But the first set which is The Last proper, from 'Little White God' to 'Ba Ba Boo' is gold. On request, I've posted it here.

Those six tracks have some of the most affecting, and most tragic, Leatherface songs. 'Little White God', for example, is a searing, slightly reggae-inflected description of drug addiction. A little left-field - and not to say left-wing, as well - is the balladic 'Shipyards' about (presumably) the Thatcherite and post-Thatcherite erosion of British industrial society in the 80s and 90s:

"Throw the fisherman lines

close the shipyards and mines

Leaving only water, we'll still have old wives tales

about the old days

deep lonely water

the old days"

In terms of tragedy, that would be the song I would want to have put on here, but it's an unusual soft piano song (no less, and in fact more, affecting for that in my book) and not the same as Leatherface's normal post-punk sound. 'In My Life', however, is straight-up Leatherface emotional hardcore right from the opening chords. The meaning of the lyrics isn't as clear, but you can feel the passion in the closing lines:

"In my life

In all of my life

In all of my fucking life"

6. Lungfish - 'Descender', another of the post-hardcore trio featured on my first mixtape (Hot Water Music, 'No Division', Leatherface, 'Gang Party', and Lungfish, 'Non Dual Bliss'). Some way different from either of the other two bands or their common ancestors, Lungfish are roughly 'Dischord proto-emo' (in the words of this eMusic dozen), laying down their heavy-rocking, hypnotic grooves since the mid-90s without much notice of what other groups have been doing, or almost what they have been doing themselves (to judge by the repetition of their albums!). I think it was this song or 'Samuel' which made me realise on first listen to Talking Songs for Walking that Lungfish were not just another Dischord post-hardcore group, but something much more exciting. To this day, I still prefer their first album over anything else, mainly because it plays the loudest and, as much as I dig their spacier sounds, I'm sucker for walls-of-sound guitar distortion.

'Descender' is one of the darker, and perhaps more direct, songs on the record. It's about, or so I've heard, an acid trip (hence the "churchbell heartbeat" of the final lines) but also about a tender, tragic story of youthful experimentation and misgivings:

"I took a look at her tattered shoes

I offered her mine but she refused

She said: I want these cuts on my feet, man

gotta be as sensitive as I can…

…The tiny cuts in your skin

They let a little fresh air in

You dilate your opening

And when it starts to gush

START TO SING"

That roaring, explosive climax is also kind of bone-chilling for the raw passion and emotion it exhibits, and the certain mysterious, tragic sense it reflects and which runs through a lot of Lungfish songs.

7. Bad Religion - 'Materialist'; from post-hardcore to what came before it, for me at least. The Process of Belief-era Bad Religion isn't hardcore for anyone who can remember the 80s (when, well, Bad Religion released Suffer and of course their first, s/t album) but it was punk for me when I was listening to it. First of all, it's loud and fast, a quickfire barrage of melodic guitar and rising vocals. That's Brian Baker from Minor Threat on guitar, by the way. Second of all, it's the hyperliterate, hyperkinetic lyrics which probably have most fans grasping for the lyric sheet and the dictionary: "incipient senescence" being a case in point. I'd been listening to this band for two years when I got an 800 on my verbal SATs. But it's the simple phrases that are often the most effective, and for this song it's the tragic turn of

"Mind over matter, it really don't matter

If the street's idle chatter

turns your heart strings to tatters"

that got my attention for this song, and grabbed for it a place on the mixtape.

8. Rancid - 'Turntables' is another one from my earlier appreciation of punk rock, and another one from the gabbatape where I posted the title track from the Life Won't Wait album. It's still my favourite of theirs, by the way, and still one of the favourites out of all my albums. There's just something about the combination of enthusiasm, attitude and diversity of sounds - not to mention Rancid's considerable pop-punk chops - that make every song on that album resonate with feeling for me. For this song, it's the semi-tragic take on social realism:

"When there's no more food on the table

What once was strong, no longer able

And an open mind, no longer stable

And it spins like a DJ's turntable"

After I picked this song out, it obviously occurred to me that maybe I should have chosen something from Operation Ivy - like 'Junkie Running Dry' or 'Take Warning' - but in the end I stuck with this. Less authentic, perhaps, but this is produced better and is still honestly just as meaningful for me. Their last album, Indestructible, is remarkably close all the way through to the sound of this song - and all the better for it.

10. The Bouncing Souls, 'For All The Unheard'; for the final (or, um, semi-final) song, this is the closer to the Souls' last album, The Gold Record. Mostly from reading and commenting over at Zen and the Art of Face Punching, I've found that a lot of people who were big fans of the early Bouncing Souls just don't follow their later work, finding it too 'anthemic'. I guess you aren't going to like this long song, then; but to me the band have found the perfect balance between driving, melodic punk rock and a Springsteenesque sense of emotion. Okay, so they've moved some way from their happy hardcore days (in which I'd include my favourite, How I Spent My Summer Vacation) but there is just so much to discover in their newer records.

I just found now that I inexplicably didn't put a Bouncing Souls track on my first mixtape, but there was no way I could have done this mix without including a song of theirs. The message on this song, not just in the slow, anthemic guitars and Boss-like "whoahs" at the end, is pretty affecting and cutting. Like the Bad Religion couplet above, I couldn't leave it out:

"Troubled youth spills over into

troubled life and times

We walk alone with our troubled minds

This is for all the unheard

all the music left behind"

11. Slint, 'Good Morning, Captain': this is a song I couldn't very well leave off a mixtape concerned with tragedy. Blend77 describes it as "a chilling ending to one of the most unique albums you will ever hear". For me, the whole "I MISS YOU!!!" thing never gets old, and that's the truth. I got to see this performed live last year, and as sweet baby jaysus suggested, it probably was the show of a lifetime.

If you listen really closely to the version on the long-form mp3, you might just be able to hear the record needle dropping down and picking up. Just because, like the band say, "this recording is meant to be listened to on vinyl".