Planet Namek - S/T (2017)

I have a general ignorance of states throughout the midwest and south. But I feel confident in making the blanket statement that they're probably like every state I have lived in: the bigger the city, the more diverse the culture and liberal the people. Outside of cities, you have to look and think like everyone else lest you be a terrorist, a fag, or a .....cuck?

Oklahoma, aside from being a place where garbage lawmakers are trying to shit on the rights of women, seems like it has alright cities, musically speaking. Oklahoma cities have birthed experimental pop bands like The Flaming Lips (from Oklahoma City) and The Starlight Mints (from Norman), the state's cities seem no stranger to more unconventional strains of music. I mean, Hanson was also from Tulsa, but we won't count that against them. 

Planet Namek, a Dragon Ball Z reference, are a Tulsa band also of the unconventional bracket, but of the deathcore, grindcore, whatever the hell variety of music this is. Not normally of fan of these genres, but this band is incredibly tight, heavy, and weird. And I love weird music. Although I can't find evidence of one on their Facebook page, they have a keyboard player, which is just fucking bonkers for bands of the screaming and growling variety (two singers here: one screams, the other growls). And was that autotune peaking around the corner? Planet Namek - you so crazy. Seriously a head scratcher, but all the songs on this, their first full length, are entertaining and never dull. Angry, disorienting, and awe-striking - much like how I feel every morning now that everything good is going to shit. But, with song titles such as "ARMPITTSBURG"  and "LUIGI BOARD", Planet Named remind us to not take things too seriously. 

Pay whatever you want to download over at their bandcamp page, 9 songs. 

Sample song:

Bandcamp link:

Planet Namek - S/T

RQ laji-2 - Bad Future Bullshit (2014)

I remember when I was younger, putting my shitty Radio Shack (r.i.p.) microphones up to computer speakers and recording music from Commodore 64/128 games. There was something in those tunes that blew my prepubescent mind.. to the point where I'd load the games just to hear the music. That crunchy, 8-bit sound... that others of my generation first heard in Atari and some earlier Nintendo games, has been seeing a bit of a renaissance lately, specifically in a slew of retro games coming out for smart phones (check out The Incident).

It's a sound that may escape most generations pre- or post-ceding my own. I imagine the home video-gaming console craze didn't exactly sweep the attention of those born in the 1960s... and as technology progressed with those systems, so did the music quality... and the 8-bit crunch was lost to, eventually, actual orchestral scores... so kids born in the 1990s might not have the same connection to it either.

Ren Queenston, the Canadian composer/songwriter behind this and buttloads of other releases, I would guess is, of or around, my generation. The music here could easily be outtakes from a strange Atari game that never saw the light of day. As robotic voices sing to you about piñatas and about how they want to drink your juice, visions of pixelated venus fly traps and knife wielding Speak and Spell machines may spring to mind. Yes, it's a little menacing. But the marriage between glitchy '80s video game music and creepiness speaks volumes to my mind which, these days, seems to be impulsively grasping at those melancholic days of youth (where I played a lot of video games and watched a lot of horror movies).

I suppose that happens when one is in the midst of a midlife crisis. Life expectancy is only early 70s people! At 35, I'm feeling it. Time to buy a DeLorian, or whatever car it popular with the balding class these days.

RQ laji-2 - Bad Future Bullshit

Brother Low Elephant Grass - Alien Anarchy (2015)

I've been thinking about places lately. Places I'd like to live, places my friends tell me they're planning to move to, places I'll only get to see via photography. As I'm pondering all these locations there's a large oversight. I'm only looking at Earth, and if it is all fantasy in the end why not throw in outer space to the pondering? At least, this is what Brother Low Elephant Grass inserted into my mind as I heard their very weird music.

Alien Anarchy isn't simply a creative title. Rather it particularly describes the sound of the album. It truly contains an incredibly far out avant-garde sound, full of prog-like guitar, an massive amount of effects and a very competent composition of all these multifaceted parts into enjoyable songs. The experimental nature of this album is what prodded my brain out of considering various exotic locales and straight into the limits of what science fiction has to offer. In a quite brief time period at that. What I'm trying to say is, this album is transportive. It'll take you to some legit cosmonaut nightmares if you want. That said, the tracks "Monk" and "Reality Clashes With The Content Of My Mind" are some spectacular lo-fi tunes that I'm ever so eager for everyone to hear.

To be had here:

Brother Low Elephant Grass - Alien Anarchy

Caterwaulrus - eNVy yoU (2013)

Texas has an unfortunate stigma associated with it. To some, it's a state full of conservative, gun-toting, Christians... and to people like my mother, not to mention most of my family, friends, fellow Portlanders, etc...  that's akin to being a criminal or an alien or worse.

But, preconceptions aside, Texas also has a history of being a breeding ground for some great psychedelic music. Roky Erikson and the 13th Floor Elevators were out of Austin, a city that The Black Angels still call home. Red Krayola were from Houston, and so is the outsider musician, Jandek. The Butthole Surfers came out of San Antonio. Those are some severely psychedelic acts, and I'm thrilled to say that Caterwaulrus, which is the solo work of one John Michael Sherry, fits that lineage quite nicely.

"eNVy yoU" is not a rock record by any means. It's not a throwback 60's psych record either. If anything, it's like lo-fi bedroom pop but with broad stripes of psychedelic production. A fair comparison would be Animal Collective, but this is a bit stranger. Voices pan from left to right speaker and almost every track is drenched in delay, making this a good headphones record. It's got a drum machine at times, and is mostly acoustic, but with all the weird shit happening it escapes a "folk" categorization. I suppose if you could take what was happening in Daniel Johnston's head during his psychotic break and set it to music, it would sound like Austin's Caterwaulrus.

9 songs, name your price.

Caterwaulrus - eNVy yoU

Lasso - Golden Lasso (2014)

A new release from a band I wrote up some time ago, Lasso of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Golden Lasso is a weird western, combining psychedelic, country and avant-garde offbeat antics into an whimsical yet captivating album. I don't mean to paint it as an off-the-wall sort of release, for it is markedly restrained in its composition, instead skewing toward a subtle approach to the weirdness. It's warm and charming in tone, leaving me elated by the end of my first listen. The delivery on the vocals is great and well-mastered throughout, plus whoever the lady is they've got singing on "Tangolassi" is exceptional. However, I was most intrigued by the way the made the westernness of this album so present without the usual twangy guitars and lamentations of tragedy (not that those aren't great too). It seems they've been busy in the interlude since my last post of their work and put out a few albums, which you can find on their bandcamp page linked below.

To be had here:

Lasso - Golden Lasso