The Lie Lay Land – World’s End Girlfriend

The main hallmark of World’s End Girlfriend’s music has always been its amazing complexity, but it has taken different forms over the years.  His early albums were defined by relatively minimal structure, usually with just a few bars repeating for a whole song, but backed with constantly changing beats and stunning arrays of small, glitchy samples. With The Lie Lay Land, Katsuhiko Maeda has taken a much more organic approach. Most of the instruments are now played live, instead of synthesized, and while there are still his trademark samples of the human voice, they are much less prominent. The complexity now comes from song structures which often hardly repeat, full of dramatic crescendos and many quiet breaks to catch our breath. The instrumentation is more lush than ever, with violins, horns, saxophones, and electric guitar filling out the sound.  The end result is much easier to listen to than his early albums, but no less fascinating to listen to.

The change in instrumentation is not the only shift in Katsuhiko’s music. Mostly gone is the trademark romanticism of his earlier albums. While his melodies used to tend towards sad and sweet, on The Lie Lay Land they are often much darker and more energetic.  And while Farewell Kingdom, for example, thanks “beautiful girlfriends” in the liner notes, The Lie Lay Land thanks “unspoiled monster”.  This may turn some people off, but don’t worry: the songwriting is just as strong as ever, if not stronger. These songs will not fail to get stuck in your head and never leave. It even has a sensitive ballad, for those who loved that aspect of his older work: “We Are The Massacre” is almost certainly the saddest thing Katsuhiko has ever done.

Despite a shift in style, World’s End Girlfriend is no less appealing than it was in the past. Katsuhiko Maeda has kept his music fresh and interesting since the beginning of his career, and The Lie Lay Land is his best effort yet. Definitely recommended for old fans or newcomers to his music.

1. Phantasmagoria Moth Gate
2. We are the massacre
3. Satan Veludo Children
4. Garden in the Ceiling
5. the owl of windward
6. Scorpius Circus
7. song cemetery
8. Give me shadow, put on my crown.
9. Black Hole Bird
10. Unspoiled Monster

Noble, 2005

The Gerogerigegege – Tokyo Anal Dynamite

What the fuck is this bombastic bullshitty attempt at noise? I’m still not sure whether the Gerogerigegege’s “magnum opus” sounds like Lightning Bolt really drunk or Joan Rivers tossing off a homeless blind man in a shady brothel. Am I the only sane person on the planet who can pinpoint the fact that all this fucking ridiculous album contains is messy blast beats and unforgiving ejaculatory painful distortion? I mean, I know Juntaro Yamanouchi calls it ultra shit music, but he’s only saying that at a mediocre attempt of trying to be contemporary and humorous. What he doesn’t seem to see is that the kind of music he is creating is pointless, incredibly frustrating horse shit that only serves in irritating my ears to the point in which they want to just fall off and disintegrate into the ground. This is a audio representation of sex with a schizophrenic 6 foot horse.

At time of writing, I’ve been listening to this album for 8 minutes and slowly, but surely, I’m losing my mind. I can’t tell when one track ends and the next begins. I also wouldn’t be able to distinguish for you the difference between any one of these fucking ridiculously pretentious acts of faggotry. Out of the reviews I’ve written, I have never, ever wanted to turn back on one and just cut myself slowly until I bleed to death.

If I had a gun, I wouldn’t know whether to shoot the speakers or myself. I mean, I even listen to and enjoy some Merzbow and Masonna, but that’s entertaining. This is diarrhoea coming out of the engine of a space shuttle, or a Banshee with syphilis. I’ve just looked out of my window in my bedroom two stories up, pondering to jump, for the fourth time. The only thing this album has helped me experience is the ultimate migrain, a serious requirement for anti-depressants, and some nightmarish bestiality visions. If you want to listen to noise, listen to 1930 by Merzbow, because even though some of it sounds like it’s being shat through a fluorescent tube, at leasts the sounds change at some point, because it seems that change would kill this band. I have totally lost faith in Japanoise, the scene that brought us Boredoms and Melt-Banana. This album is to Japanese music what Dane Cook is to stand up comedy. All I want to do now is go to bed and cry myself to sleep, always knowing that somewhere out there, this kind of monstrous cocksucking stupidity still lies out there. Thank you Tokyo Anal Dynamite. You’ve ruined everything.
(note there is a 0/5 rating for this album. to quote sorryrobin, anything they get will be better than what they deserve).

Cryptomnesia – El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

**

OK, so I’ve been a Mars Volta fan for about 4 years now, and I still find them one of the most constantly inventive bands on the planet. I’ve been a huge Hella fan for nowhere near as long, about 6 or 7 months, but Zach Hill is a fecking god.

There had been rumours circulating that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (perm-sporting guitar genius from the Mars Volta) and Hill were collaborating on an album, and merely the mention of this made me dizzy with excitement. So when it was announced, I was like “HOLY FUCKING SHIT” and danced for joy. Then I saw the promo. Bad move.

The 50-second promo for Cryptomnesia (i saw it a month before I heard the actual album) consists of pictures of Omar, Cedric Bixler Zavala, Juan Alderete de la Pena (vocalist and bassist respectively of TMV), Zach, and Jonathan Hischke (the bassist/synth player from Hella), mashed with ridiculous coloured effects and patterns. It seems to say “I am Omar. I’m really fucking wierd. I am the Messiah. We rock, so buy this album.” And it looked pretentious. So, I thought well fuck that, excitement over.

However, when the album was leaked, I just had to try a listen, just hoping that perhaps the album wasn’t going to be as bad or as pretentious as I thought. “Tuberculoids” as a title for a track kind of ruins that idea. But, you know, it’s not that bad – Zach Hill’s fantastic spastic drumming is the canvas for Omar’s equally spastic guitar hammer-on solos. Cedric, however, sounds as moany and annoying as he does on Bedlam in Goliath. To be honest, listening to the song in its entirety is effectively pointless, as it’s one idea repeated over and over again for 4 and a half minutes.

Then again, Omar has been like this for a few years now. Gone are the days of the complicated post-hardcore delicious riffs of At the Drive In, gone are even the incredible jazz improvisations of early Mars Volta. Omar’s solo albums primarily consist of stuff like this, just stupid ideas that don’t fit in TMV tracks, that consist of effects that sound like they’ve just been shat out in a severe case of violent diarrhoea, pointlessly atonal guitar solos that sounds like Bad Moon Rising being played in an unfortunate hurricane. Slowly, this not necessarily pointless, but not palletable for release experimentation is seeping into the Mars Volta’s function, which is probably why members are leaving left, right and centre because Omar and Cedric are heading so far up their own arse, they fail to see the difference between great ideas and expendable experimentation only useful as an exercise to eliminate good and bad sounds rather than an excuse for totally annoying breakdowns.

However, that’s not to say that when you take away all the bullshit that Omar still doesn’t have it in him. The beats and riffs in Half Kleptos are groovy as hell (although it is extended far beyond what it should last, and the riff isn’t built upon whatsoever), and the title track’s opening riff (which kicks in after 55 seconds of a strange interview with a Jewish man) is one of the highlights of the album. The opening tracks blend in and out of each other through segues of bizarre noise. Now, I’m sure most hardcore TMV fans remember the infuriatingly bland sound collages at the end of Cygnus… Vismund Cygnus and the Widow, but the annoying noises actually serve a purpose on Cryptomnesia, and are actually quite entertaining.

Omar has always been able to surround himself with fantastic musicians, and Cryptomnesia is no exception – Zach Hill is on top form here, as is Omar and Alderete de la Pena. Eventually, the title track becomes bland and annoying as the same thing is repeated over and over again, as layer upon layer of stupid fucking annoying guitar riffs blind everything, and the sound is reduced to this annoying blur, an excuse for Omar to say “Hey look, I can play guitar really fucking good!”

The three tracks that follow, Hella-esque instrumental “They’re Coming to Get You Barbara” chaotic electronic-themed “Punky Humans” and “Shake is for 8th Graders”, which sounds like a Bedlam in Goliath outtake, are all mere exercises in technique. The irritating bass sound on Noir, the tiringly cliche Paper Cunts and it’s Beefheart-esque extension “Elderly Pair Beaten With Hammer” (the latter complete with atonal saxophone! You know, the thing that every Mars Volta fan hates when it pops up 8 minutes into a song that so far has managed to avoid any annoying noises?) become very, very annoying eventually. As for Warren Oates, it just sounds as though  it’s a roundup of all the annoying stuff we’ve heard on this album, tied in with a couple of highpoints, including Zach’s tasty beats and some pretty good riffs too.

The album ends quite abruptly with Fuck Your Mouth, a 23-second seemingly sampled piece, and then it’s over. 36 minutes of total noise and bullshit, and 36 minutes of tasty beats and riffs, mixed together to create some form of murky lake with gold hidden at the bottom. Such a shame that the water hides the gold from view, and smears it with its shit. Come on Omar, you are way too awesome to require an effects overload. I think it’s time you started making music again.

New Traditions In East Asian Bar Bands – John Zorn

Here we have “New Traditions In East Asian Bar Bands”, a work I consider to be musical genius Jon Zorn’s masterpiece; I’d declare this one of the best albums ever without a second thought. There is a total of 3 tracks here, all of them lasting longer than 20 minutes except the 16-min “Hwang Chin-ee”. Each track focuses on two players on the same instrument improvising: on Hu Die there is 2 guitarists, on Hwang Chin-ee there is two drummers and on Que Tran there is two keyboards. The first track, “Hu Die”, opens with a noisy spur of guitar and smoothly disspates into a drone, and then a female voice whispers something in Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese, I don’t know which. Then two guitars start to play and begin to entwine with each other, creating a soft and eerie ambience. The whole album is like looking into a black abyss as memories fade in and out. Throughout three women recite poetry in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. At times there’s silence, but the whole piece has a distant atmosphere, you can always hear a drone deep in the background that isn’t even there. Another reviewer states, “New Traditions… is more of a memory of the music than the actual music.” That description fits the album perfectly, to me it’s like catching glimpses of memories from past lives. In “Hu Die” there is only two guitar players and the narrator, creating a very quiet distant soundscape. The entire album is improvised.
The 2nd track, “Hwang Chin-ee”, is nothing but drumming (2 drummers) and the narrators’ voice for 16 minutes, but it is absolutely spectacular. The way the two drummers interact is flawless. The final 30-miute peice “Que Tran” is very quiet and is only 2 keyboards making ambient sounds that are on the verge of droning. It goes on for a while, but there isn’t even one dull moment. One final drone brings “New Traditions…” to it’s conculsion, but it seems very unfinished. It is a long, emotional listen that will take you beyond your earliest meomories. This is also about as “far out” as it gets.

Merzbow – Hodosan

I seem to hear a lot of people complaining about Merzbow’s newer works. It’s all so boring and samey, they say. They accuse him of losing his edge, of getting soft. With releases like Hodosan around, I can’t help but wonder what these people are on about.

Hodosan stands out from most of Merzbow’s output in that it is centered around Masami Akita’s drumming. Merzbow has used drums a few times before – most recently, on another 2009 release called Anicca. For those who haven’t heard Masami’s drumming elsewhere (for example in the

Masami Akita

supergroup Flying Testicle), this release proves what a virtuoso he truly is.  The first two tracks are based around technical, lightning-fast drumming laid around Merzbow’s trademark electronic noise. Unfortunately the noise in this release is somewhat lacking, being mostly made up of texturally boring sounds reminiscent of his earlier release Pulse Demon. However, it is not the focus here, and indeed if it were any more complex it might distract us from Masami’s drumming.

The final track comes as a bit of a shock after the amazing complexity of the first two: Masami is now playing a simple 4/4 rock beat. I admit this track is hard to listen to all the way through, due to its simplicity, but it seems a fitting end to the album.

For all those doubting Thomases out there who are  beginning to lose faith in Merzbow, get Hodosan. It may just change your mind.

Hodosan

1. Peace Pig Part 1
2. Peace Pig Part 2
3. The Joy of Soy

Vivo Records 2009

Hold Your Horse Is – Hella

Beep beep beep beep beeepp… beep bip bip beeeep. BEE BU BEEEP.

Hold Your Horse Is

And thus begins Hella’s debut album in unusual fashion.

baa dee dum (kukunk) daaa babeepbudubaabuu (kukunk) bumbeepbbaaaa BIIYIIM BIIYIIM.

For a noise rock band, an SNES-styled intro is unexpected. 44 seconds of this wierd beeping. And then, suddenly without warning, KABOOM into biblical violence. Already a wave of noise takes over the speakers, as Zach Hill’s ridiculously quick bombastic drumming in god-knows-what time signature and Spencer Seim’s wonderfully clean and inventive finger tapping enter the mainframe. Biblical Violence is a perfect “proper” opening (minus the cute anomaly of the D. Ekan, the album’s opening track) to Hold Your Horse Is, the awaited debut album from NorCal rock band Hella, because it perfectly summarises it – biblical violence says “motherfucker, get your fine self ready for 30 minutes of insane math-noise-fuck-awesome rock.

The surf-styled tremolos of Been a Long Time, Cousin and the more solemn riffs of Republic of Rough and Ready serve a perfect backdrop for Zach Hill’s outfreakage. However, it is a shame that Seim is shadowed by Zach Hill’s attention-grabbing insane drumming, as Seim himself is a guitarist of great virtuosity – primarily cause he has the ability to keep up with, and even challenge Hill.

one of my favourite tracks though has to be the track that follows.

bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum

Smash! 1-800-GHOST-DANCE is just an explosion of joy and raw power, constantly changing direction and tempo, making the perfect song to be a total dickhead to.

The bizarre Brown Metal and the chaotic Cafeteria Bananas follow (toms galore!) follow, closed by City Folk Sitting, Sitting and Better Get a Broom! (the former with some great build-ups, the latter just classic chaos).

So yes, Hella’s debut is a mixing pot of incredible riffs, mind-boggling drumming, virtuosity, kickass rhythms, perfect synchronisation and video game music. And surely, if you can listen to Zach Hill’s drumming for over 30 minutes without ejaculating, you don’t have ears.

1. “The D. Elkan” – 0:43
2. “Biblical Violence” – 3:03
3. “Been a Long Time Cousin” – 3:50
4. “Republic of Rough and Ready” – 3:44
5. “1-800-GHOST-DANCE” – 3:44
6. “Brown Metal” – 3:54
7. “Cafeteria Bananas” – 3:40
8. “City Folk Sitting, Sitting” – 7:06
9. “Better Get a Broom!” – 4:20

Today’s Recommendation: Otto DeFaye

Today’s recommendation is Otto DeFaye, a man that is able to create overwhelmingly beautiful music with a banjo, named Bobby Jo. I know I sound stupid, but I really don’t have anything to say about this guy, other than that his music is unique, so go check it out at his MySpace. There are only two songs up, so if enough people add him, that might convince him on making some more lovely tunes.

Review: World’s End Girlfriend – Dream’s End Come True

World's End Girlfriend

Katsuhiko Maeda’s output as World’s End Girlfriend (fun fact: World’s End Girlfriend might just be the worst band name ever) is often called post-rock, and although my experience with him is limited, I have no idea whatsoever why. It seems much more suited to the label IDM, being composed mainly of breakbeats, bizarre samples, and glitches. However, don’t let that fool you. Words like those would normally be used to describe dark, nihilistic artists, but World’s End Girlfriend is nothing of the sort. His music is beautiful, dreamy and romantic. Joyful, yet with an edge of melancholy. Perhaps this is the reason World’s End Girlfriend gets called post-rock – the quiet beauty and romanticism that seem to define modern post-rock are mainstays of his aesthetic.

Dream’s End Come True opens with its strongest point, Singing Under The Rainbow.  It opens with a peaceful string pad, soon to be joined by a piano. If things sound conventional so far, they start to get a little weird here. Childlike vocal samples they sound as though they were plucked from the middle of a word join in to help carry the melody, followed by high-pitched bells. A glitchy, sample-laden breakbeat then kicks in, and the track has begun proper. Things evolve through the whole track: the chord progression stays static, but new instruments continue to fade in and out, playing a new melody every time. Here a violin, there a whole orchestra, a brief glimpse of something that sounds like a saxophone crossed with a theremin, and a continually evolving beat. The result is bizarre, overwhelming, and extremely satisfying.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album doesn’t quite measure up. The following track, Caroling Hellwalker, is every bit as complex as the one that preceded it. However, it lacks the immensely powerful emotion, instead sounding more like something The Residents might have made if they were into IDM. Breaks made up of Nintendo sounds, complete tempo and key turnarounds, and often a lack of any discernable melody make this track a very difficult listen.

All Imperfect Love Song is the longest track on the album, clocking in at almost exactly 25 minutes. Over those 25 minutes, it shifts from violin ballad with spoken-word vocals to loud, busy sections reminiscent of avant-garde jazz. It is somewhat of a return to the first track, at least in terms of mood. Varying from lightly melancholy to bizarrely upbeat, it maintains a sense of continuity without getting monotonous.  It shifts between moods in a way that seems perfectly logical. Unlike many songs its length, it feels like it genuinely needs to be as long as it is.

Closing Dream’s End Come True is Wonderland Falling Tomorrow, a subtle, ambient piece. Beginning with a recording of ocean waves, it segues into thin-sounding drones. Eventually they are joined by a string ensemble. For most of the song they sound surprisingly dark, but just before they fade out and are once again replaced by the sound of the ocean, the tone seems to become slightly more upbeat.  Finally, even the ocean sounds fade out, and cut-out samples of people saying “goodbye” close the album. On its own, it’s not a very strong song, but it seems appropriate.

Dream’s End Come True is a fascinating album, to be sure.  Singing Under The Rainbow and All Imperfect Love Song make the whole thing worthwhile, and even the weaker tracks are abundantly worth listening to. Despite its weaker moments, the combination of scintillating beats and glitchy samples with post-rock melodies and aesthetic make it an interesting listen and a highly original work.

1. Singing Under The Rainbow

2. Caroling Hellwalker

3. All Imperfect Love Song

4. Wonderland Falling Tomorrow

Noble, 2002

Dream's End Come True

Introduction

TOKYO HARSH CULT is a blog of experimental music.