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

Negro Leo - Ilhas de Calor (2014)

Sometimes with music, I get so fed up with prettiness. To take that even further, I get tired of consonance. To slim down the world of music to only western music, and then slim that down further to my preferred genre of rock music, one is ill-pressed to find that minuscule sliver, that sub-sect of a sub-sect of musicians playing anything that veers aways from one of 2 scales: major and minor. Why is it that in rocknroll, with all it’s supposed swagger and rebelliousness against all things status quo, that so few are willing to embrace a little dissonance? 

But in a world that seems to consciously fight for the right to be unconscious of anything ugly, bands like Negro Leo are a much needed reminder that you can’t have one without the other. Hailing from the beach city of Rio de Janeiro, their music seems to avoid structure almost exclusively, like free jazz but with rock instruments.. free rock, maybe.. or no wave. Dissonance reigns supreme, never once allowing the listener a hook or a moment of beauty. This idea is perfectly represented by the cover art for Ilhas de Calor, which depicts a dirty puddle surrounded by tarnished metal. 

As all the words are in Portuguese, it isn’t easy to know what Negro Leo is telling us. Google Translate gives some insight, and the insight is bleak, bizarrely astrological, apocalyptic, and somewhat violent. One of the only songs in English, Xereca Satânica …. which I think translates to Satanic Cunt…  goes, “Be nasty to your cock, Hold it against the cop, Be violent to your pussy, Hold it against the rocks”. 

Ok, so not exactly music for a Sunday morning drive, but if you’ve got an itch for something new and different in your musical diet, you couldn’t do much better than Negro Leo.

18 Songs.

Negro Leo - Ilhas de Calor

Grime Kings - Honeymooning (2014)

Grime Kings is the work of an Ottawa-based musician named Callum Runciman. Although it sounds like a full band plays these 11 songs on 'Honeymooning", his second full length, the credits specifically state that all songs and instruments are by the hand of Callum. So, he's a bit of a phenom, as you are about to hear should you be smart enough to sit with this record ASAP. Super proficient and inventive musicianship, production, and chord progressions.. especially for a guy that, from what I understand, is in his early 20s.

Perhaps youth is why these songs, which are like lo-fi progressive pop songs with a fever, are so cerebral. Fewer years obliterating brain cells with alcohol. But you know how when you get a high fever and you become dizzy and your thoughts are crooked and slightly manic? Callum Runciman must feel like that all the time. Luckily his music doesn't suffer for it.

However, at times "Honeymooning" delivers so many ideas that songs can sort of explode, leaving smears of color slowly dripping down your walls. The danger with this, is being able to reign that chaos back into something that's both cohesive and relateable. Experimentalism is best when you can still make some sense out of it - without having to be a musician yourself. Grime Kings goes to both extremes: at times engaging and at times alien. The turnover happens quickly enough, though, that you're never left waiting long before you're reminded that you're listening to some very unique and very, very fucking awesome rock music.

Grime Kings - Honeymooning