Paradise Brut - Violet Violence (2015)

So people are compelled to make music, well, many people are compelled. Not all of them are terribly good at it, not that that's a reason not to keep making it (unless there's gonna be the new Billy Joel or something equally ultra-horrific). However, it is even less common for someone to be awesome at two genres of music, and then to be a bedroom recording artist at that. Nonetheless, our friend Dani in Madrid has managed this feat.

A couple of times I've posted on a very noisy, messy garage rocker that uses the moniker King Cayman. You might recall how those albums are best heard loudly and with a beer in your system. Well, he has translated that notion into electronic rock with this release. It holds much of the same spirit as his garage punk music, but grinds it down to a sparser core that is only thereafter elaborated with electronic affectations. Few vocals are heard, though when they rarely do show up they are with his customarily spooky effects. Yet this is not where your focus should be. It is in the fundamental breakdown of lo-fi rock that he's offering up. I mean this in the same since that when you crush an orange it yield delicious juice, he's managed to mush up garage rock into core elements and giving them a wholly new texture. He's taken the components of most good lo-fi rock; angst, excitement, confusion and irreverence, and made them into bare sounds. It is like imagining your own irregular heartbeat and somehow knowing it has universal currency. I adore it.

To be had here:
PARADISE BRUT - VIOLET VIOLENCE

Nigel & The Dropout - Folderal (2015)

When I wrote of Nigel & The Dropout's previous album, Tumultuous, I mentioned how I only came to know of them from one of them firmly giving me a card with the band's name and the link to their bandcamp on it. It seems it worked so throughly they turned me into a devoted enough fan that I looked into if they had a new album out. Guess how pleasantly surprised I was to see that indeed they've got one out and furthermore that it is pretty damn sweet.

So in case you didn't hear their previous album, which I still highly recommend you check out, Nigel & The Dropout are a duo from Detroit that make electronic dance rock. So while I am the first to admit I truly prefer never to dance ever, not my preferred form expression (not shocking for a man who finds time to write a music blog), but I can tell this shit would be something to move around to. However, this isn't the case for every song. You see, the album has a considerable range. Tracks like "Gestalt" and "I am a Trampoline" are dance rock for sure, but the songs "Blood Brain Barrier" and "Pulled Over, Pulled Under" are far more ethereal to the point of becoming space rock-like. Still others fall outside this binary, being more droning and experimental. I can't decide which of them I enjoy the most, and regardless of which you fancy best I am sure you'll like Folderal.

To be had here:
Nigel & The Dropout -  Folderal

Leveret - Action At A Distance (2015)

As per usual I got this album, taking note of the email that submitted it and in all good intentions hoping to get to it soon enough. Well, in what I think of as an improvement on past performance, I'm only a month late on this one. Even so I feel I have denied people the excellence that is Leveret through my roundabout methods. Too little time and too much to consider with such an hobby as writing up all the free tunes on the internet, right?

Leveret are from Portland, Maine where they apparently make some of the best electronic rock I've heard in years. These songs combine many features of bands I've long enjoyed. Most significantly the sound is what I would imagine a slowed down version of the Unicorns to be like. Just imagine how that could be played around with if you elongated the texture of the songs. Action At A Distance contains this brilliant notion, if even unintentionally, and builds upon it to make fantastic electronic rock songs with lyrics that are witty and disconcerting all at once. Add in the use of ambient sounds and electronic effects and facets to the strange indie rock you've got some absolute gold. If you can hear Leveret playing the remarkable tracks "Oscillator," "Unclothing" and "Grandfather's Axe" without feeling they're utterly destine to leave a slew of pop hits you're likely a monster. Or perhaps a realist of the meanest sort, but I'd like to live in a world where this sort of music was understood to be a fantastic form of art and to be shared widely and readily. However, there is a weirder side to Leveret. In fact the majority of the song on this album are the sort that would never be popular in a million years but are fucking one hundred percent worthwhile psychedelic-electronic songs that held me captivated thoroughly.

To be had here:
Leveret - Action At A Distance

EP Grab Bag vol. 76

The latest batch of EPs from the inbox, all of them top-notch, some of them will inevitably become beloved if you give them a chance. Listen and relax, it is a recreational activity after all, pilgrims.

To be had here:

Jibóia - Jibóia EP (2013)

I lost track of exactly how I ended up with this EP, but I know why someone sent it in, as it is, I believe, a Portuguese band that is connected to my love affair with the city of Porto that I expressed in one of the Scenes of a City posts, again from Lovers & Lollypops. The EP itself is an instrumental electronic effect and guitar laden swirling of various rock and world music styles into a stunningly loud and mesmerizing amalgamation. Nears prog at moments only to come back with Mid-Eastern tunes and then to thumping bass. Really something rather unique and worth checking out.

C. M. Slenko - Moonlight Veneration (2014)

Hopefully you still remember who this is from the post last week of his new full-length, Rented Rooms. While it seems he had more in him than that one album could handle, so here is the EP that was released at the same time. Upon listening to Moonlight Veneration it is easy to see why it was issued separately, as it is not the more traditional folk of the other, but noisy and lo-fi experimental anti-folk. They're not even comparable, in fact there's no vocals even on this until the final track. I found my first listen to be mind-blowing and I'm getting addicted to replaying it. Released for free via Sioux Trails.

The Ha-RAng!# - SHE WANTS PRETTY (2014)

Something that's been missing on the blog since the last Grab Bag, some fucking garage rock. Here's a band from Charlottesville, VA that makes playful garage that conjures memories of the King Khan and BBQ Show. The songs are catchy, loud and fast but not too sloppy to enjoy. Plus they threw in some audio from Back to the Future for jollies I suppose. Certainly worth the three smackers they're asking for this EP.

Two Skies - STAY / OCEAN (2014)

An English psychedelic band with a double single, but they run over 10 minutes so I think it is qualifies for the EPs. Loud, fuzzed guitars and very 70s psych sound, including the higher pitched vocals the seared over the top of the druggy soundscapes of those days. The seven minute plus opus that is "Ocean" is pretty wild and worth spending the time to hear all of its meandering varieties of trippy-ness.

Menschliche Energie - Billy EP (2014)

While I normally throw a group of EPs together into a longer post, for whatever reason I want to say a bit more about Menschliche Energie. Perhaps it'll be clearer to both you and I by the time I finish this write-up. Now I'd never heard of Menschliche Energie before I discovered Billy EP after rolling around on bandcamp pages for a few hours. That's not terribly unusual for any of us at Spacerockmountain to do, but I've always felt a strange need to assume the role of a champion for the music I find in this method. Sure I talk up and will recommend the shit out of submitted material, even follow the band myself and make sure I am not missing out on new releases, but I always envision myself as a loud fanboy in this scenario. I am cool with all this, in fact I enjoy the fantasy, or slight reality, that I'm your buddy giving you a heads up on some cool tunes. It changes, however so subtly, when I pull out of the infinite depths of the internet a particular EP, whether or not these fellas are actively seeking promotion or not, and tell you, "This is some real tight shit."

It is that infiniteness that is the issue. It isn't just infinite to me, but to everyone using the internet, and I am just making more infinity every time I feel the need to write something up and publish it here. Truth is I want you guys to be like "yeah, that's cool" but most of the time I am just staring at a void full of endless more music to hear, books to read and movies to watch that can make one feel uncultured despite a lifetime of consuming memes and media.

Yet in a desperate hope that this does fall down some endless void, I'm telling you that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Menschliche Energie's Billy EP. It is unsurprising at how well-crafted their songs are once I knocked around their bandcamp page. They've got releases from as far back as 2003. These guys are veterans at what they do. And what they do is snyth-heavy post-punk rock. It's absurdly able to blend a James Dean, leather jacket rocker style with the ultra-Mod and flamboyant 80s music that succeeded that notion. The songs are brief and don't jerk themselves off in anyway for having been a longstanding band from Nürtingen, Germany, but rather show a seasoned musicianship that knows excellently how to cut off the excess fat, leaving just enough to make it tasteful but not chewy.

To be had here (NYP):
Menschliche Energie - Billy EP

Brainiac - Bonsai Superstar (1994)

Brainiac were a band from Dayton, OH that made some of the most innovative synthpunk that has ever been created. Tragedy forced the band to break up in 1997 after their charismatic lead singer, Tim Taylor, died at the age of 29 when his car crashed and burst into flames(thought to be a mechanical malfunction). Their influence was surprisingly far reaching, as everyone from Death Cab For Cutie to Trent Reznor site them as having inspired certain elements of their own music making. There's even a story on the internet claiming that, 3 days after the car accident and 3 days prior to his own accidental death, Jeff Buckley, during what would be his last performance, lamented on stage about the passing of Tim Taylor... seemingly foreshadowing his own death by asking, "Is that how you like your rock heroes - dead?"


Brainiac were a force to be reckoned and were on their way to big things. They'd gone on tour as an opener for both The Breeders and Beck and were being groomed by major labels. This is their second record, released in 1994, the first to feature John Schmersal who would later go on to form Enon and act as touring musician for Caribou. Bonsai Superstar was where their sound started to take on a more definable shape, one that some liken to Devo on amphetamines. The band walks confidently, with swagger, on the lines between accessible and inaccessible("Transmissions After Zero"), ugly and sexy("Flypaper"), dangerous and nerdy("Hot Metal Dobermans"). From here on in, synthpunk experimentation would remain at their core. Moog synthesizers chirp and buzz along with the band. Guitar lines hint at melodies, while each chord seems to include one note that makes it intentionally and unapologetically dissonant. Singer Tim Taylor is an extension of that same formula, veering in and out of key as he growls and screams, at times through heavily effected processors. What's most remarkable about his voice, however, is his searing falsetto, which brings to mind Ian Svenonius of The Make-Up.


This record is, unfortunately, out of print. Hard copies can be found at crazy prices, so until someone is able to rerelease it, I feel it's important to get it out there. For anybody who's already a fan (and anybody else) make sure to check out this full Brainiac show that some saint recently posted to youtube.

Brainiac - Bonsai Superstar

RedDelicious - 1120 (2011)

Now I am perfectly cool with listening to ambient music. It is far and away the bulk of what I've gotten submitted to the blog lately. It does sometimes make it hard to break apart the different albums mentally, but remarkably enough RedDelicious swung in and broke the pattern up for my flattering mind. While parts of 1120 fall into ambient, encompassing the telltale background-ish haze, in others it moves into electronic rock. It's got a more dynamic take, more akin to a science fiction soundtrack or unordinary video game tunes. Makes the mundane feel like that shit is electronically enhanced, that perhaps trimming my beard is cool and fun as playing Dr. Mario (this is a long held suspicion of mine that manifests when I drink expensive beer). There are a couple of real superb tracks like the catchy "Afrika Bambataa" and whistling-heavy "Blueberry Valley." Great stuff from a dude with a laptop and a collection of instruments.

To be had here:

RedDelicious - 1120