Joplin Rice - Low Hum (2015)

Practice Records, the label started up by our blogging collogue over at the Modern Folk, has a new release. The first cassette issuing, as a mater of fact. It is an album I would unabashedly hype regardless of its affiliation with another blogger I respect. What he have here is a wonderful lo-fi folk/rock musician out of Lexington, KY called Joplin Rice.

There is something immediately familiar about Low Hum. Especially upon getting to the third track, "know it's not," with the acoustic guitars matched against the piano and organ playing. The songs bear wonderful song structure, brilliant lyrics and sweetly soft vocals throughout, with some being lo-fi rock nearly approaching psych-pop. Switches between the more folksy numbers and the faster and more amplified rock tunes, making for an overall album that's somewhere between Elliott Smith and a band like the High Water Marks. It isn't short of charms and I wish I could do a better job at conveying that in this post. You'd imagine I'd have gotten better at this over the years but it always seems like I'm groping for the right words. So you'll just have to trust me and the Modern Folk.

To be had here:
Joplin Rice - Low Hum

No Babies - S/T (2011)

Life throws curve balls, there's no doubt about that. There's no sense in trying to brace yourself for this beforehand, however, just be on the look out and take things as they come. Without getting into specifics (because you come here to find out about music and not be burdened with someone else's dirty laundry) let's just say the irony of studying a chapter on muscle contractions the same week a good friend has an unexpected grand mal seizure in your living room... that's an irony of life you can not only keep but you can shove it far up your ass.

Seizures aren't even train-wreck-level of interesting to watch, just plain fucking scary. Though, as it turns out, relatively harmless (refrain from putting something in between their teeth! See a doctor!)

Read more about seizures here.

So, in these times, I turn to chaotic music to give my inner chaos a sounding board by which it may have a partner to dance with. 

Thank you, Oakland's No Babies. 

Noisy, disarticulated skronk. A perfect soundtrack for the moments when you get cut off in traffic by some shitmonger driving a hummer with a license plate that reads "Free Tibet". When the universe throws shit into the fan you innocently used to cool yourself from the heat of the daily grind. The bee in your beer. The ice in your underwear. You get what I'm saying? Ugh, I need to sleep. If there are bedbugs in your sheets, No Babies are the perfect lullaby.

10 songs, name your price.

No Babies - S/T

Scenes of a City, Vol. 9: Montréal, QC

Since relocating to the Pacific Northwest over 10 years ago, I've gotten soft about winter. The shortest days of the year are mild here, albeit a bit soggy. During the rare snowfall, even if it only amounts to an inch, I join fellow Portlanders as we collectively throw our hands up in the air and shout, "Fuck it ...can't drive!" And the city immediately shuts down (except for bars, of course).

That said, if I were mysteriously handed an opportunity to live anywhere tomorrow, I would likely choose cold and snowy Montreal. This is for a number of reasons. First off, I love maple syrup. I put that shit on eggs and pizza. Hell, I love eating food in general, and Montreal has the highest number of restaurants per capita in all of Canada, and is second only to New York City in all of North America. I've always said, if I were mysteriously handed an opportunity to be buried by a food, I'd want that food to be poutine.

Aside from going out to eat, I love going to shows, and Montreal seems to have no shortage of great rock bands at the moment. Some Montreal bands, recently covered here on Spacerockmountain, have ended up being my favorite things to listen to. These include Each Other, Jesuslesfilles, Small Teeth, and even though they're from Ottawa I'll throw in Grime Kings. It's an impressive roster and proves to me that Montreal is currently undergoing some indie-garage-psych rock renaissance... so let's dive in and see who else is in the mix.

Dories - Stripped
The breed of guitar-based indie rock that Dories master is not uncommon to other Canadian bands, I've found, particularly in Montreal and, perhaps, Calgary. Listeners might notice two, almost
meandering, guitar lines picking single notes over bass lines. The effect is almost wind chime-esque. And while overall songs are consonant, they are peppered with bits of disharmony. Dories play sophisticated and humble indie rock songs that eschew easy classification but do bring to my mind guitar-strong indie bands of the 90's like Polvo. "Small Circles" and "Caspar" are highlights.


Telstar Drugs - Weather Underground
Telstar Drugs are another band who employ the two guitar plucking single note aesthetic. Originally from Calgary, they seem to carry with them thicker, emotive sound akin to on of the best bands of the past decade, Women, who were also from Calgary. Telstar Drugs entire catalogue is fantastic and worthy of download, and I believe it's all free. This, their most recent release, is two of their strongest songs. Probably the one band from this whole lot that I will keep the keenest of eyes upon.


Future States - EP
A 5 piece with members from both Montreal and Ottawa, Future States harken more to the past states of indie rock, with songs reminiscent of other eastern Canadian bands from that recently bygone era, like Broken Social Scene and The Unicorns. 10 years ago, that's what I loved to listen to, so I immediately felt a kinship with this 5 song offering. Very melodic stuff, with excellent vocal harmonies to boot. While it's representative of that icy and beautiful Canadian indie pop, there are also sips of a sunny and effervescent Californian daydream; a brief departure from your winter.

Un Blonde - Habit Anything
Un Blonde is the solo work of Jean-Sebastien Audet. His music is lo-fi, experimental pop. These songs were actually recorded during breaks from recording his more proper full length called "Tenet". He writes in the notes for this EP that they are "frames of immediate expression", which I like, having been a songwriter in a previous life and remembering how some of the most interesting things happen when you relax expectations, relinquish control, and piss against the wind. Not that this is free jazz... free pop, maybe. From what I can tell he's well respected in the community, and getting some good gigs. Always nice to hear an artist playing music.


EDIT: I didn't do my homework! Turns out that Dories, Telstar Drugs, and Un Blonde are all connected and on the same label, called Egg Paper Factory.

Remy Olandrusso - MPRSSNS F FRC (2014)

Tags on bandcamp are a funny thing. They can be anything the poster of the album decides naturally, and sometimes it they are as vague as can it can fucking be and other times they're beyond genre descriptors, to the point of substituting for a biography of the artist in a backward fashion. Remy Olandrusso has done just that by tagging this album with phrases like "growing up on John Carpenter" and "suspect cultural appropriation." In many ways they tells me more of what to listen for than any words like experimental or drone, though this album can be called both of those. The best tag by far is "unhealthy oulipo obsession," which for a reformed used bookseller and fan of Queneau and Calvino is a sediment I can relate to all too well.

On first impression I believed this would be a math rock album, as it was submitted due to the musician noticing his friends, fellow Chicago-based fellas of Imelda Marcos, were written up. While there certainly is some mathiness to the album it isn't an assault of the angular guitar, rather a step more out into the bizarre.  MPRSSNS F FRC very well could be the soundtrack to a creepy Carpenter-esque film. A weird arthouse one, but I'm sure you'll hear the cinematic quality in the mood of these songs. Equally surreal, anxious and hypnotic. It's incredibly hard to categorize all the different sounds he's layered upon each other, but they are woven in a entirely compelling way. To top it all of they've got the closest thing I can imagine to a ransom note cut out of magazine print I've seen for track titles, such as delightfully named "th3 h1v3 s3nt1n3ls r1s3 t0 sh4rp3n th31r bl4d3s." It might not be recommended to listen to it alone in the dark but I did it and felt fine.

To be had here:
Remy Olandrusso - MPRSSNS F FRC

Groms - Drowning (2015)

Here is another fine San Diego band to grind up and smoke in your pipe. Groms play fuzzy, lo-fi garage rock; the kind of stuff that we play extensively here and that requires little else in the way of description. What these kids do right is inject a fine dose of fun and playfulness into their set. Light and airy guitars with subtle synth lines and drunken, skuzzy vocals make this a winner.

They just put this out on cassette via Wiener Records and played a release show at the awesome M-Theory Records in San Diego. Bring this to the next Bill Cosby live appearance and blast it on your boom box.

Get it here:
Groms - Drowning (2015)

SODA lite - Slice of Life (2015)

Vaporwave is a genre/concept I am very much still wrapping my mind around. This isn't the first time I've had this sort of music on the blog, in fact I have had it on here long before I knew what it was all about. In fact, I don't think there's is, nor truly could be, a unifying artistic message in vaporwave. What is shared by musicians producing it is a knowledge of new age easy-listening radio songs, electronic dance music and nostalgia-provoked styles like chillwave/glo-fi. However, this can be a pastiche, a parody or some creative admixture of both these notions.

The Melbourne-based musician using the moniker of SODA lite surely has his own opinions on what he's trying to say with this album, but this blog is about my conjecturing ultimately. Firstly, no matter what intentions were involved, I genuinely think these tunes are pretty fucking sweet. Slice of Life bears many similarities to albums I've written up before such as Candy Claws, Beat Connection's Surf Noir EP, even Monster Rally. Ephemeral electronic music with usual beats and sounds culled from what to seems to be the listener's own hazy memories. It is genius really and it provides that feeling I get when reading the first chapters of a book by a great writer. The turf is often familiar but all the details are distorted and the insights skewed. What makes SODA lite different is the context it has pulled its inspiration, namely that new age and easy-listening yuppie sort of music I mentioned at the top of this write-up. Yet by picking it apart and reconstituting it SODA lite as given it an enticing significance that new age shit always lacked for me. 

To be had here:
SODA lite - Slice of Life

Rum for Your Life - Punch (2014)

I have not been in San Diego for about a year now, and as we get closer to summer (at least here in sunny California), I have started to turn my fine-tuned ear to new sounds coming out of the city to act as my own personal soundtrack. The lo-fi shoegaze act Rum for Your Life has recently played their inaugural show at the Soda Bar (the hipster proving grounds for those not in the know), and have an EP that promises great things in the future. The band owes a debt to shoegaze pioneers that have come before them, but when you craft fuzzy tracks this cohesively, you are allowed to borrow more than a few shreds along the way. Tracks like "Swinger" have a bass riff that could sit well next to proto-metal and garage acts often celebrated here at Space Rock, and by the time we hit "Tower," the whole gloomy set is brought to a fitting, sinister close.

It is free to stream, but sadly no download is available. What is this, 2011? Anyhow, check it now while it is free and pristine.

Rum for Your Life - Punch (2014)

EP Grab Bag vol. 90

An all North American Grab Bag this time. That is what was in the cards I suppose, but we aren't lacking in any glamor, mystic or bravado without our other-continental brethren today. Garage, country and otherwise for the auditory consumer.

To be had here:

Leon Patriz - Better Luck Next Fall (2014)

This here is from Vancouver, submitted by a dude called Enzio who has got his hands in several musical project out on Canada's Pacific coast. He's even played as part of Slight Birching. As for this EP, it's got only four songs yet manages to be incredibly diverse and consistently experimental. Electronic tones and affects, plenty of droning bass, and lo-fi buzz. Intriguing and hypnotic as anything with looping, droning parts should be. Then the last track throws that all out for a New Weird America-esque singer-songwriter number. Leave it up to a Canadian to make New Weird America even weirder.

Grenades in the Archives - Tokyo (2014)

Garage punk, the hard drinking, smashing into one another sort. Ive a theory there's no where on earth that once experiencing punk rock doesn't have young people eager to make their own fast, loud and intense music. Not sure how young the Bostonians that made these three songs are, but I am sure they didn't just start embracing the lo-fi garage punk style recently. It sounds like they've spent many an evening in tiny venues getting sweaty, drunk and sore all for the chance hear some rock. A promising start and I hope it leads to an awesome LP. Also check out their live set from WMBR.

Los Demolirs - EP.1 (2015)

Garage rock from Florida this time. Los Demolirs reminds me more of the sort of garage rock that was popular when I was a high schooler, the kind that MTV and everything gave two shits about for a second and then dropped like a hot rock for dubstep or whatever bullshit television plays now. It was a golden year for me, and that these dudes sound somewhat like mean entirely complimentary. I still dig on those albums, as I bet at least a few members of Los Demolirs did. Furthermore, for an EP from a garage rock outfit you've never heard of, the production in these songs is outstanding. A finely polished roughness.

Caleb Groh - Down, Dakota! (2011)

This is another EP I found by falling down various rabbit holes on this vast internet. Caleb Groh is a singer-songwriter from Nashville, making remarkably charming country-folk tunes. There is a full-length that followed this EP, but I felt this to be the best way to introduce someone new to his music. Three of the most delightful alt-country songs I've heard in some time and a spoken word poem that's sweetly strange. There's something I can't explain about how cheerful a full sounding country-folk song makes me. Modern and old all at once, I guess that is what they mean by timelessness.

baby dog - adult dog (2015)

Our pal Garrett Linck is back with a new single, "traffic cones," that is part of what should be an upcoming EP. Normally I don't write up singles nor imcomplete EPs, but Garrett isn't a new face on SRM. In fact I was writing him up routinely last year, both under his own name and with the group called baby dog. Always fine indie rock, with an earnest tone, and fine instrumentation that shows an understanding of power pop. I cannot wait for the other two tracks of this soon-to-be EP to drop, but you shouldn't hold up and dive in with what's available now.

Steve Palmer - Fables of the Feral Boys + Unreleased (2015)

The man from Minneapolis is back with some more American Primitivism. For the second time appearance of Steve Palmer on SRM, following his Unblinking Sun LP, what we've got here is an EP combined with previously unreleased material being issued on a cassette for our pleasure by Fall Break Records. The same enterprise that brought us Full Crumb.

Steve Palmer is the sort of musician I feel anyone with a coherently thinking mind should relish, however a background on how this isn't folk music as you might assume is always helpful. I've gone over the love for the music of that John Fahey many times on this blog and on the podcast, and in my write up of Unblinking Sun pointed out the degree of his influence on Palmer's style. I could go on at length regarding this topic, but I'll restrict myself to saying Palmer shares Fahey's vision of combing America's traditional music of folk, blues, country and layering on healthy and enchanting experimentation that can only be accomplished so elegantly through absolutely amazing skill and insight. Fans of psychedelic and drone should recognize the kinship of these genres with what the mesmerizing and experimenting guitar playing achieves here. Those into the blues and folk with hear the fast-picking method that only the greatest musicians execute properly. Hence the name American Primitivism, taking our musical legacy back to a primordial sound such to muck around with it anew. Steve Palmer has shown himself to be an excellent purveyor of this idea. I'd say there isn't a note, or echoing drone for that matter, that he plays in these songs I'm not enthralled to hear.

To be had here:

Steve Palmer - Fables of the Feral Boys + Unreleased

P.S. I feel I'd be remiss without mentioning that Palmer isn't alone in his Fahey-esque sound. Do check out another contemporary American Primitive player hailing from France, Magnus Dewi, who got written up back in July.

Generacion Suicida - Todo Termina 12" (2015)

Took a couple of days off there, but I'm coming back with a noisy vengeance. You may recall the blog Teenage Lobotomy and the label that its Croatian writer began, Doomtown Records. If not you should double back and check out most righteous releases Divided Minds and Modern Delusion, which I've already written up. Today, we've got one of the newest releases from the burgeoning label, Generacion Suicida.

In what appears to be Doomtown's preferred style Generacion Suicida is an outfit that makes very loud, fast punk rock. This isn't to imply that the music of all the bands are the same, but they share the attributes of lo-fi punk. In fact Generacion Suicida is quite different from either of the releases from the label I've previously mentioned. Most obviously that the songs are sung excitedly in Spanish. Even went so far as to call it Latino punk. And the songs are everything you'd hope for from such a descriptor. Todo Termina doesn't have a dull moment, hardly even a second to take a breath. Moreover, it is incredibly well executed music, far from merely a sloppy mess. They clearly know their way around their instruments and any fuzz, distortion and otherwise is a purposeful effort. Punk rock from L.A., sung completely in Spanish, issued by a Zagreb-based indie label. Oh, and Spain's Trabuc Records and France's Symphony of Destruction Records. Can't say nothing good came from globalization. 

To be had here:
Generacion Suicida - Todo Termina 12"

COSMIQUE - Les Lundis de l'Espace (2014)

It wasn't very long ago I wrote about my rediscovery of the French independent label, Cocktail Pueblo, when I shared Les Princes du Rock. It wasn't the only thing that caught my attention however. Les Lundis de l'Espace came across immediately as a release worthy of some attention, if for nothing but the very neat retro design of the cover art. 

Not surprisingly there's not much online about COSMIQUE save what goggle can translate on on the label's website regarding this album. From which I've pieced together is that the band is a duo and that is Les Lundis de l'Espace (Mondays in Space) this is a concept album, masquerading as a soundtrack to an astronomical television show. How can you not be on board already?

The tracks themselves a quite short, some last only a few seconds, so even with 31 of them the whole playtime is merely 22 minutes. What's heard on these brief "songs" is enthralling. It might be hard to imagine them as a soundtrack to anything that wasn't about space. The absolutely otherworldliness is so powerfully present that should I ever catch a rocket to beyond the sky I would be disappoint not to hear these tonal, ethereal numbers chiming in my ears. It's weird, in the best ways.

To be had here:
COSMIQUE -  Les Lundis de l'Espace

Black Fruit/Factotum SPLIT (2015)

What we have here is a split album, something you might have pieced together from the title of the post. You might not have guessed that they're garage rock bands from Michigan and another from United Kingdom. Nonetheless this is very much the case.

Black Fruit are from Grand Rapids, Michigan, a city on the other side of the state from yours truly and one I fail to understand fully but has produced its fair share of excellent bands. Black Fruit is a particularly awesome example of this. Moreover, they put out the majority of the tracks for the split (7 of 12 songs) allowing for you to soak of all the lo-fi bliss their belting out. Fuzzy guitars, loud and steady drum beats and almost totally incomprehensible singing. The songs are infused with a healthy degree of both surf rock and mild nihilism. It's funny how those blend so well.

Factotum is a British outfit, who while certainly being garage rock are of a different sort. The sound is more grungy and filled out with a psychedelic style. Additionally the singing is more abrasive and akin to post-hardcore garage punk. The songs are intense and rumbling, so while the songs are the minority of the split they haven't any trouble holding up their end of the bargain. Overall the split is indeed an interesting contrast in the varieties of garage rock that are existent, but I would be hesitant to say they show any UK-US rift in the style (this is how the email pitched it to me). Especially because I remember Whirlwind Heat, a Grand Rapids based garage rock band from a bit over ten years back that was more like Factotum than their fellow Grand Rapidians Black Fruit.

Finally, the album is due out physically as a colored vinyl, I believe in March, by Stolen Body Records. So if you liked what you heard and want it on wax, look out for that.

To be had here:
Black Fruit/Factotum SPLIT

Pulco - Innovation In The Trade (2015)

Pulco has touched many soft spots of mine. Firstly, he's from Wales, and like many folks I have a endearment to the underdog, even in a rivalry between nations and cultures, which makes Wales a romantic place in my mind. Secondly, the album art is a simple abstract piece that reminds me fondly of Wassily Kandinsky. And finally the music is bizarre, artsy and utilizes spoken word like a British twee pop band I've greatly admired for years, Death By Chocolate (they were circa 2001, for if you google that name you'll first find some newer outfit I'm unfamiliar with). Basically, this Welshman had a lot going for him right away and he was anything but a let down.

That Pulco's music is technically impressive while being lo-fi and so well-composed for experimental tunes makes sense considering the man behind the project, Ash Cooke, has been an accomplished musician for a bit now. He was a member of the group Derrero, who've got several albums out, have toured some some great bands including a favorite of mine, Super Furry Animals, and even got to sit down with John Peel. However, I am not acquainted with that band, not yet at least, but I can very much vouch for Pulco's Innovation In The Trade. As I referenced earlier the album bears a likeness to the spoken word-laden indie pop I recall from over a decade ago, this is particularly apparent in whimsically enjoyable tracks like "The Blazing Hat Pt.2," "Graham" and "Stan & The Bike" were the 'lyrics' are more of recited poetry or storytelling. On the other hand "A Ferry To Your Own Life," "Prank" and "A Man Shouts" show how incredible of a writer of pop songs Mr. Cooke is capable of being. Or there's ones where it just gets weird such as "Fan Heater" and "Pabell." It's a multifaceted effort that's very coherently woven together. If you want more of this, you're in luck as he's got quite the catalog on to browse through on bandcamp.

To be had here:
Pulco - Innovation In The Trade

Gazer - Fake Bulbs/Phone Commercial (2014)

Gazer are from Cincinnati, Ohio. A city that stands out in my mind for two reasons. Firstly, I went to see the Tallest Man on Earth in Newport, Kentucky in a venue that's built in house of the inventor of the Tommy Gun. Upon drunkenly crossing the pedestrian bridge over the Ohio River from Cincinnati to Newport to find out cigarettes were like $3 was rather epic. Secondly, when crossing the same river in a car as a kid I witness a crashed minivan all wrecked to fuck on the vehicular bridge going south to Nashville and on the way back a week later.  Different minivans, what are the odds? Now I get to add Gazer to these stark experiences.

When done well I can really get into post-hardcore. Gazer does it very well in my book. They're loud, lo-fi and brash sounding. As it should be, no? At least for this variety of intense punk rock, absolutely. The tracks are  mostly short, markedly fast and full of screeching, pounding and hollering vocals drenched in DIY recording fuzz. It is the kind of music to stomp around to, maybe getting a black eye or jammed thumb in the sweaty mosh pit. I'll be standing aside though, as I am already too old for that shit. Yet I'll smell that angst and intensity, enjoying it entirely. Fake Bulbs/Phone Commercial is a double release with each side of the 12" vinyl bearing one of these two EPs. They're on separate pages on bandcamp, but I trust you'll navigate that just fine. 

To be had here:
Fake Bulbs & Phone Commercial

EP Grab Bag vol. 89

As it so happens from time to time the submissions to the blog will fall into an rough category for a period. It's been garage rock, ambient and even noise before. While this time it was a vague theme, but one that I believe has a rather clear through line. Each of these EPs are experimental music, though as different varieties. All weird and all psychedelic in their own way.

To be had here:

▲҈҉   - ▲҈҉   (2015)

This weird wing-ding symbol is something Canadian Sean Travis Ramsay, has titled both this project and EP. He's been on the blog before, under the moniker of Slight Birching. It bears similarity to his album Cultural Envelope, insomuch that it's experimental folk with a decidedly lo-fi, bedroom ambiance. Strikes one as the sort of thing a man tinkers and plays with in lonesome evenings, and regardless of that being the actually case for Mr. Ramsay, he's done a wonderful job at painting a sonic picture of beautifully anxious confusion. Not to be missed, especially not by fans of Cultural Envelope.

Theme Witch - You Are Wrong EP (2014)

Jumping to Portland, Oregon for some more lo-fi experimentation, yet in a vastly different direction. Theme Witch is a hazy, washed out pop act that sounds most like a wildly distorted tape of 80s jangley post-punk reminiscent of the Smiths and Joy Division. Like someone took these bands are a core and layered on warped keys, beats and guitar parts while leaving the original singing somewhat faded and echoey beneath. It's trippy shit, and I found it incredibly catchy too.

Energy 2000 - Mercury​-​Atlas 6 (2014)

In keeping with the experimental trend of this Grab Bag we've got another EP that falls neatly into that catagory and of yet another sort. Richmond, VA's Energy 2000 could be called NASA-wave, as it is psychedelic space rock, bordering on chillwave, overdubbed with crackly dialogue between astronauts and ground control. The songs are more than just far out, pun completely intended, as they're very well crafted. The guitars are twangy, with notes bending around all over the place forming a mesmerizing tapestry. Does something wonderful after a couple of beer following a hard day's work.

Injection for me - Birth/Coma (2014)

Of course we can't have all this experimental music and not have any post-rock. Injection for me is a band I haven't any information on really, but if the links they sent me are to be trusted they may very well be from Russia. However, that doesn't make a difference in the world of spacey instrumental post-rock, for it is all about the music. These two tracks have ambient vocals, like Engery 2000, but a fashion that reveals their post-rock roots. It's very possible fro them to have been influenced by post-rock groups like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, This Will Destroy You and Caspian.

Unqualified Nurse - Let Snarl (2015)

Low fidelity is my mistress. I always come back to her no matter how much I enjoy hearing any other sort of music. Yet I'm aware that at low fidelity's extremes it is certainly an acquired taste, one that I have been testing and indulging since I was a young teenager. No wave, noise rock, garage punk and post-hardcore music isn't ever gonna be pleasing to the masses of music listeners out there. Thankfully it doesn't need to be, we just need some dudes in England with some microphones and guitars to feel like spending some of their precious hours on this Earth creating a bit of pleasurable chaos. Enter Unqualified Nurse, our British guide into this intensely lo-fi wilderness.

Let Snarl is the full-length I've been waiting for from Unqualified Nurse since they sent in the EP Medicine Music, and let's not forget The Weird. The lo-fi recording technique takes center stage is all of these releases, and it's just as unrelenting in here. The vocals sound like if you were listening to a garage band that had all the doors and windows of said garage closed up while singing into an old mic hanging from a rafter. Very awesome and quite deliberate. The chaos is up front, scaring off those that aren't accustomed to the washed out, fuzzed to the Nth degree style. However, given a good listen the influential nugget of popular garage rock or surf songs from decades ago can be heard nestled deep in there. It's all about the love of what guitar-driven rock and an fine appreciation of the natural degeneration of low-budget audio recording. Unqualified Nurse has done a better just than most in capturing this primordial element of lo-fi rock, like a distilled yet cloudy version of what a garage punk fan knows they love about the genre. You know, lo-fi's je ne sais quoi.

To be had here:
Unqualified Nurse - Let Snarl

Space Rock Mountain Podcast 36 - No Direction Home

The gang gets together to talk about Martin Scorsese Bob Dylan flick, No Direction Home. Watch the film here.

Mariscal De Campo - Recordatorio (2014)

When Larry started the Scenes of a City series I hadn't a clue it would become so popular. They've generated it more attention and responses than most anything else we've ever done and for that we're thankful and bashfully proud. Yet in the course of searching around for the music from a particular city sometimes there'll be various other threads that appear which are insufficiently related to the post we'll be writing to be included but are simply begging to be pulled. Mariscal De Campo is a band I found in this backwards route, via stumbling upon the Argentine label Fuego Amigo Discos.

So the whole website is in Spanish, but what can be sussed out despite the language barrier is that Fuego Amigo Discos is an independent label that at least sometimes gives albums away on their site. Recordatorio by Mariscal De Campo is just such an album. Only other thing I could figure out from the site is that this band is from the coastal town of Punta Alta. So everything hereafter is mere conjecture, or in other words business as usual. The simplest way to explain Mariscal De Campo is that they make snythpop. However, this fails to fully elucidate the interesting interplay between dreamy and dancey sounds they've brilliant incorporated. The songs "Dejame" and "Escapada" show off their more new wave-tinged dance rock capabilities excellently, with "Otra Canción" and "Eso Que Ni Pensamos" show more dreamy snyth playing. All wonderful, and there are tunes like "La Comodidad" where all bets are off and it certainly a new wave hit. A live set by this band could be amazing. Surely gonna have to see what else Fuego Amigo Discos has to offer after this.

To be had here:
Mariscal De Campo - Recordatorio

No Crowd Surfing - Pretending I'm Not Here (2014)

I am finding myself listening to submissions late at night. Not sleeping well these days, mostly because I'm fretting over everything and in particular my shitty car. I have been shifting it by jamming my index finger into where the shifter once was and rotating the steering column with my other hand. Basically, things have been far from ideal. But the music keeps coming and so long as I can pay the phone bill I have some little access to the internet to hear it. Tonight a band that sounds incredibly familiar for it being from thousands of miles south of Hamtramck's unplowed streets.

No Crowd Surfing are from Cianorte, Brazil. This isn't where most anyone I know would have guessed first, even excepting the fact that they've never heard of this medium-sized city in the south of Brazil. Furthermore, it isn't just because they sing in English. What and how they're playing was so geographically disconnecting for me and I imagine for most North American listeners. Pretending I'm Not Here is an album that could very easily be passed off as emanating from Grand Rapids, Minneapolis, Hartford or countless other American cities. You'd be wrong though, and I only bring this up as it shows the influence of these Brazilian musicians lies heavily in the genres popular in my own adolescence here in Michigan. These are lyrically driven songs with full to bordering on cacophonous instrumentation that are the result of low fidelity recording techniques, an option made out of necessity as much as anything else. As for those lyrics, they're angsty and charged, you know, like emotional rock so thoroughly was back in the late 90s and right after the turn of the decade. No Crowd Surfing hasn't reinvented the wheel, yet they've proven themselves capable musicians and most admirably holding to an aesthetic they clearly relate to. I'd like to explain that when I was a teenager this music drove me crazy, but as I get older and see it from a more elongated view I can see the charm in it I missed as a confused, sixteen year old fan of Lou Reed and Freddie Mercury.

To be had here:
No Crowd Surfing - Pretending I'm Not Here

Full Crumb - Maelstrom Protocol (2014)

Full Crumb are from the United Kingdom, not sure where exactly, as I wasn't told. Yet through an unknown series of events is being issued on cassette and digitally by the Athens, GA-based label Fall Break Records. However, after listening to Full Crumb's output, I can understand why they'd be eager to release it.

Maelstrom Protocol is a particularly tricky albums to describe. It really is the sort of thing that is best experienced without too much preface and pondered about by the listener for days afterwards during the likely sessions of re-listening. Truly a whole range of genres are applicable to the Maelstrom Protocol, being in near equal measure krautrock, British new wave, psychedelic, experimental pop and shitgaze. Perhaps the only caught-all term that works is art rock, but as we all know that doesn't tell you much about the songs really sounds. Let's put it this way, there's something of Orange Juice or the Fire Engines sort of Scottish late-80s thing, strange audio clips serving as intros, dreamy pop numbers, and an overall feeling perverted reverence throughout. Go on, have a listen.

To be had here:
Full Crumb - Maelstrom Protocol