Friday Video - Betamax Format, 'The Knife'

"Betamax Format are the video dead"

www.myspace.com/betamaxformat

"...with a name that suggests both the 80s and a taste for the alternative, [Betamax Format] played a great set from beginning to end"

hardcorefornerds.blogspot.com/fight-like-apes-live-village

You might have seen me writing about this band in my piece about the Village on New Year's Eve, where they were one of the support bands. Apparently they also played support for the Liars in 2005, which as good as FLA are, probably makes it a step down. Anyway, on the night that I saw them, they were very impressive. Not least, for their visual show.

Somewhere between 'Electro/New Wave' (their Myspace description), 'electro-emo' (Unarocks in the Tribune) and "Sallynoggin Psych" (again from their Myspace), Betamax Format play moody, downtuned electronic rock with actually quite a nice line in melody. The song from the video below, 'The Knife', isn't as strong in my opinion as 'You Are Welcome in My House' which you can hear on their Myspace as well. In fact, Betamax Format I don't think have put out anything physical yet, although I think they are in the process of recording an EP.

They have released their T-shirts, though, the design of which you can see at the top of the post, by Artur Arbit (http://www.twistedrobot.com/) a NYC artist who also does work in Berlin and Dublin. (The actual shirt, which I haven't got, only comes in black... naturally)

Random atmospheric photograph...

(Sallynoggin Church, Dublin, March 2007)

Killian Broderick who edited the footage (from Quentin Tarantino's Deathproof) for this video, also directed and edited the videos for Ham Sandwich's 'Keepsake' and 'St. Christopher' (see end of the post here). Not that there's much musical similarity between the two bands, but it's nice to see some semblance of a 'scene' in Ireland.

Finally, it is mostly for the purpose of self-indulgence that I post about local/national bands, but it would be interesting to know what the readers of my other posts think about this stuff:

A.V. Club Blog: Vinyl Retentive

VINYL RETENTIVE #1: PINHEAD GUNPOWDER

"First, a note: I received a USB turntable for Christmas. After a couple months of software hassles (which continue), I finally started ripping some of my dormant old vinyl. My collection is small to moderately sized and overwhelming dominated by obscure ‘90s punk, but there are noteworthy gems hidden in there—and in the collections of my fellow A.V. Clubbers, covering all genres. Here’s the first write-up of what we find while crate-digging in our own houses…"

Just when I think things couldn't get any better, a new feature at the Onion A.V. Club turns up this morning. The A.V. Club Blog is where a lot of the really interesting stuff on the site turns up: Permanent Records (see my previous post here), Noel Murray's Popless.

This feature reads actually like an amalgam of those two, with an in-depth description of the band and the scene it came from, a sample track and at-a-glance descriptors ("File Under: The sound of a dam about to burst"). A cool thing is that he puts in the 'Vinyl Inscription', which is something I've only found out about since I started buying vinyl. I am definitely looking forward to more of these.

As for Pinhead Gunpowder, the only release of theirs I have is the album Shoot the Moon. This sounds a lot more hardcore; and I guess linking it makes up for leaving the band out of my top Mike Kirsch band poll last year. The winner of that was of course "the popular melodic post-hardcore band" Fuel. And also, I'm a major Green Day fan, in case you didn't know.

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Talking of other cool things that happened today (and this fits in very well with the rest of the post) I found a package from 3819 Beecher St. NW waiting on my doorstep. So far I've bought mailorder from Polyvinyl (they put in a candy bar) and No Idea via Interpunk (that was coloured vinyl, so it was cool in itself... and the inscription on Fuel For The Hate Game was pretty funny) but this was the first thing I got from Dischord so far.* Two Crownhate Ruin records, the Intermediate 7" and Until the Eagle Grins. The package was brown cardboard, rather than the white stuff I got the other times, and the address was handwritten (and the return stamp had a name written above it too). And inside there was a little handwritten note, which I scanned in above (it kinda had my name on it, but I blanked it out before posting it onto the interweb).

I know this is the kind of thing you'd expect from Dischord Records, the greatest independent punk label ever, but it's still a very nice, personalised touch.

Thanks, Dischord!

* Dischord have, quite properly, released pretty much all their catalogue on eMusic, the independent download music site, so, pre-vinyl, I've never really needed to mailorder anything from them since buying Repeater + 3 Songs in a store over here.

Ham Sandwich - Live @ Whelan's, 23/02/08

Ham Sandwich are this year's Fight Like Apes, pretty much. That's despite the fact that Ham Sandwich have been around longer, releasing the single 'click... click... BOOM!!!' yonks ago, and the fact that Fight Like Apes were still playing two of their best live songs at 12.05am on January 1st, the band from Kells are taking the limelight now.

The show in Whelan's was the album launch for their debut release (aside from about four different singles over the last couple of years) Carry the Meek. I managed to catch their instore in HMV last Friday when the album was released, and from that intimate gig (well, in a basement with a lot of Xbox games) and from listening to that album over the last week, I knew it was going to be a great night.

Carry the Meek just gets better with every listen. It's a perfect punk-pop album in terms of length, with just 10 songs, and not an ounce of filler. That's not to say what it sounds like, though. Coincidentally I went back to listening to Green Day's Dookie this week, and parts of Carry the Meek replicate the honest intensity of that album. At other times, it delves into the shimmering beauty of post-rock and indie (mmm... Editors) hung together with the male and female vocals of Podge and Niamh. Those are the real secret of the band, the combination of the low and high registers; mostly it's Niamh singing. Since it's the usual topic of this blog, I guess it's a little bit 'emo' too: the opening to 'Keepsake' reminds of a Promise Ring guitar line, and if you don't think 'Click Click Boom' has wonderful dynamics, you're an idiot.

The short set in HMV ran through all the band's 'singles' songs: the opening pair of 'St. Christopher' (containing the album's title line) and 'Keepsake', 'Never Talk', 'Words', and I think 'Broken Glass', finished by 'Click Click Boom'. On purchasing the album, I was a little surprised to find all those songs heavily - that is to say, completely - weighted towards the first half of the album. Having the last four or so songs pass without recognition, it took a while to knowingly appreciate them but when I did, I realised they were less immediately poppy than the ones before and contained more space for the band to work in, creating what are all truly absorbing indie songs.

Ham Sandwich are a band both of complexity and of simplicity. Complex, because of the span and the depth of the songs as is evident on this album; and simple, because Ham Sandwich are still a catchy 3-minute-long-song band. Scroll down below for the acoustic performance of 'Click Click Boom' on The Last Broadcast show last year to see a perfect example of that combination, in a two-minute song. Dynamics!

www.myspace.com/eathamsandwich

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'click... click... Boom!!!' (acoustic): Live on The Last Broadcast

Promo video for 'St. Christopher':

Promo video for 'Keepsake':

Friday Video - Ultimate Reality (2007)

"A mandala projected from the third eye of suburban back yards, cracked drive ways, and dusty VCR's. The wizards of Baltimore and Wham City deal powerful magic, we'll need it soon, the dawn of this post-postmodern age is upon us." - J. Roche

TRUE LIES and CONAN psychedelic subversive conceptual Mash-Up

I picked this up by chance a couple of weeks ago; having read about it, seen this YouTube excerpt, and not expecting it to be widely available, it was immensely gratifying to just pick this up off the shelf as I walked by in Tower (to hell with purchasing a sensible amount of things at a time - this is special).

Ultimate Reality is a video collaboration between Dan Deacon and Jimmy Joe Roche, who previously created this video for Deacon's song 'Crystal Cat'. As far as I know, Dan Deacon's current US tour, if it's still going, is entirely this production rather than any of his other work. Before his gig in Dublin last year he brought his Ultimate Reality show to Sligo (think: Oregon, or maybe Seattle), to a modern arts centre there.

Ultimate Reality comes in three movements (each about 10+ minutes long) and an epilepsy warning:

"These films may cause seizures, if you suffer from seizures or epilepsy, please show this DVD to your doctor before watching"

(Not to make fun of epilepsy, but I'd love to sit down with my advanced-in-age GP and watch this video! And I'm not sure if there's such a thing as aural seizures, but this production is as likely as anything to cause them if they exist)

I guess there's a delicious irony in the creation of a project entitled 'Ultimate Reality' using the distorted images of that monosyllabic and monolithic icon of American culture, Arnold Schwarznegger. Plus it's pretty fucking cool. Especially the bit in this excerpt where he stares at his clenched fist, like he's wondering what to do with it...

Guyver-1: The Bio-Weapon

I don't know all that much about this band, except that they were another good mid-90s screamo/hardcore band. And what more could you want?

Fourfa has Guyver-1 at the end of his list of the best 'hardcore emo' records for their s/t 7", which he describes with extreme concision as:

"a little late in the game, but still fantastically good hardcore"

The rest of that list, by the way, is made up of such other fantastic hardcore records as Heroin, Swing Kids, Reach Out and Mohinder. So whatever you may think of Andy Radin's arbitrary classifications, and interpretation of scene history (personally, I think it's a great resource and very excellently written), you should get a good idea of what the band sounds like.

It's typically abrasive-yet-melodic hardcore emo, yet with a certain twist. Here's blend's description of that 7" from Zen and the Art of Face Punching:

"Super frantic early screamo from none other than San Diego. Very similar to Swing Kids, Antioch Arrow, Clikatat Ikatowi and Heroin (theres gotta be something in the water there). The funny thing about this record is the Grandmaster Flash and Sugar Hill Gang records playing in the background of the recording... Very similar to the Indian Summer song Angry Son, with the Bessie Smith record playing... Funny, and then the band cuts your entrails out with a swift razor sharp blast and youre not laughing anymore.... until the next break when you can hear more old school hip-hop. Yay."

Download: Guyver-One - 7"

Now, while the 7" is an awesome record - "balls to the walls" to use blend's words again - Guyver-1 did also have a full-length record, entitled Obsessed With.... It's nowhere near as good as the 7", but I really don't think it's all that bad, and in fact it's quite good.

I can't say all that much about it now because - ironically - the burned CD copy I have won't play in my stereo at the moment, but trust me that it's worth a listen. I guess I intended writing a sizeable apologia for the album, yet for now I can't offer much more than a vague description

Obsessed With... lacks a lot of the focus and energy of the s/t 7", but that's not to say that it doesn't have its moments of viscera and punch. At times - and indeed, often - the abrasiveness gives way to a lot of quiet, instrumental passages, including, in one case I think, a piano. I rememeber listening to this a while ago and thinking that Obsessed With... represented accordingly the valuable progressive trend in hardcore - that is, the willingness to bring in different artistic styles to aid the expression of what, in essence, is a very singular, intense sound.

Unfortunately this occurs at the expense of Guyver-1's characteristic, and musically impressive, intensity. Maybe this particular of hardcore is best listened to only on 7"s - there are other albums which wander a little bit too, like Merel's s/t, or Clikatat Ikatowi's Orchestrated and Conducted.... The Swing Kids disco provides a kind of half-exception to that rule, as it works as an excellent, cohesive (albeit very short) album, but it is actually only a collection of 7"s and parts of 7"s. Equally, the lengthy Mohinder discography delivers the Guyver-esque abrasiveness in a long sequence of bursts. You can judge for yourself whether Guyver's attempt to translate abrasive and intensive mid 90s hardcore into a real album works or falls flat...

Download: Guyver-One - Obsessed With...

Edit: go here for scans of all the artwork from the 7"