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Label me impressed
By George Chen
I AM ALWAYS losing
things. If you saw my room, you would understand. The only thing
that keeps it from becoming completely disgusting is that I have
a no-food rule in there. This makes the process of rounding up a
year-end list a little like sniffing through dirty laundry to gauge
its potential wearability for a third week in a row.
I'm bad at completing
projects, a killer trait for a freelance writer and pretty much
the story of my life. Right now 2003 feels mostly undone, so instead
of poring over artifacts and rehashing my year of general malaise
with any air of authority, I want to give some space to the next
generation of record labels, the stuff that keeps popping out of
the disorganized heap. These labels have it, whatever it
is.
NGWTT, an acronym for
Nothing Gets Worse Than This, is a record company run by Colorado's
Friends Forever. Much like the band itself, the label works by throwing
as much junk into as small a space as possible. Its Web site (www.ngwtt.com)
is a comical extension of this philosophy and deserves equal time
as part of the whole "band as life" project. A good example
of this non sequitur overload is the mix CD by Josh Taylor of Friends
Forever, an insane mishmash under the name DJ Spins Hits. Yo!
Tip Yip Y'all is worlds removed from the mash-up trend, mostly
because the beats never match, but also because the juxtapositions
of Non and Tammy Faye Baker or the hammer-ons of Orthrelm over the
Chicago Bears' rap record get busted up by Taylor screaming and
beatboxing. Other releases include Friends Forever stuff, CockFight!,
"motivational therapist" Crystal Lake, and the Fog
III CD by Michigan beat monger Mammal, who also shows up in
the next paragraph.
White Denim (www.whitedenim.com)
is run by Matt Kosloff, a college kid in Allentown, Penn. His label
first came to my attention. Because of a 7-inch from Portland's
Nice Nice and a bloglike Web site. Kosloff seems like many a hardcore
kid who outgrew the genre's confines, and he's since dipped into
a deep well of weirdness and issued forth the stately blurt of Providence,
R.I.'s Barnacled, the Harry Pussy-esque improv rock of Air Conditioning,
and, in perhaps a sign of music to come, the compilation Closet
Full of Clothes. Maybe it's just the artwork by Portland artist
E*rock that makes me think of a video game arcade melted down into
Day-Glo goop, but the content of this LP also works as a broadside
against provincialism in the American underground, bashing together
the oddest entries from multiple genres. A cut-up track from
Chicago's My Name is Rar Rar is juxtaposed with the primal drum
circle of D.C.'s Black Eyes, the aforementioned Nice Nice, Planet
Mu signee Doormouse, and the feral scree of Hair Police. I'm really
into Mammal, too, in case you haven't noticed. Gary Beauvois is
also responsible for the insane scrawly artwork on his own covers
– their contours swirl and swill much like his music; his machine
beats are bent and scattered like angry bees. His track on Closet
Full of Clothes is more of the same, heavy and repetitive like
a rave in Mordor.
Of these labels, the
most legitimate is Broklyn Beats (www.broklynbeats.net),
which is already getting the stamp of approval from the Wire.
I met label owner Criterion Thornton when he played in San Francisco
two years ago. His aesthetic fit right in with the overlap of the
avant-electronic and rock scenes. Thornton used to play in a hardcore
band called Dogfight, and he brings a global and sharply political
sensibility to his label, run with partner Heather Leitner, who
records as Doily. On the new split disc with Criterion, Doily's
"Mattress of the Universe" side flexes spaced-out dub
and grainy beat crunch. Critical darlings DJ/rupture and Donna Summer
show up on the 7-inch collection (SIC), but the other ace
up Broklyn's collective sleeve is the glorious sonic middle-finger
of Aidan Girt. Girt is probably best known, or unknown, as the drummer
for Montreal's Godspeed You Black Emperor!, but he's cut antiglobalization
dance jams as Bottleskup Flenkenkenmike and perhaps more successfully
as 1-Speed Bike. The latest Girt release, 1-Speed Bike's "El
Gallito," starts off with the best intro to any record I've
heard all year and manages to follow suit with an energy and imagination
that bodes well for the future of layering music and politics.
Top 10
• Animal Collective,
Here Comes the Indian (Paw Tracks)
• Matmos at Yerba
Buena Center for the Arts
• Bands Against
Bush, with Lightning Bolt, Total Shutdown, and USAISAMONSTER, at
Verdi Club
• The Whip at
40th St. Warehouse
• Growing at the
Hemlock Tavern
• Lungfish at
924 Gilman
• Beans' Liquid
Suspension, Vancouver B.C.
• Soddamn Inssein,
Hospitals, and Curse of the Birthmark at Grandma's House
• Joshua Plague
cooking tour
• Neil Hamburger
on Jimmy Kimmel Live
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last month's noise.
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