WFMU's Beware of the Blog

ASMR's Greatest Video Hits

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a physical sensation characterized by a pleasurable tingling that typically begins in the head and scalp, and often moves down the spine and through the limbs.

Most ASMR episodes begin by an external or internal trigger, and are so divided for classification. Type A episodes are elicited by the experiencer using no external stimuli, and are typically achieved by specific thought patterns unique to the individual. Type B episodes are triggered involuntarily by an external trigger, via one or more senses, and may also involve specific thought patterns associated with the triggering event. Both types of triggers vary between individuals, but many are common to a large portion of ASMR enjoyers.

Common external triggers:

• Exposure to slow, accented, or unique speech patterns
• Viewing educational or instructive videos or lectures
• Experiencing a high empathetic or sympathetic reaction to an event
• Enjoying a piece of art or music
• Watching another person complete a task, often in a diligent, attentive manner - examples would be filling out a form, writing a check, going through a purse or bag, inspecting an item closely, etc.
• Close, personal attention from another person
• Haircuts, or other touch from another on head or back

My pal Mark Houston stumbled across an assortment of clips meant to induce this state of mind, and we couldn't stop watching them. I posted it to a friend in Australia who used to be driven mad by things like people who chew cereal loudly, and even she was oddly lulled.

Insanely Rocking Qawaali Video Clip

Aziz Mian! (thank you Katherine Graham):

 

R.I.P. Siege singer Kevin Mahoney

Live 1984 video from one of Boston's killinest.

Stooges at Farmington High School Gym, Michigan, 1970

Via the Retronaut blog, insane! More pix via the link.

Kids covering My Bloody Valentine at home

Psychic Paramount live at WFMU (MP3)

Hard to believe Psychic Paramount have been around for ten years already, coming up out of the ashes of the late great Laddio Bolocko. Both on record and live, PP swerve between brutality and bliss: layers of textural distorto guitar action and color, throttling, mathy percussive pummel recalling great moments of This Heat gone into total in-the-red Japanese psych mode. Add Robert Fripp-like loops building and dismantling the songs themselves in bulldozer style, and you've got the makings of one killer progressive rock unit. This month's session on my radio show blasted into orbit at the moment of start-up; guitarist Drew St. Ivany matched the propulsive intensity of bassist Ben Armstrong and drummer Jeff Conaway with figures reminiscent of Achim Reichel, heavy repetition segueing into burnt intermission of collapsing rhythms, eerie space and then finally climbing upwards into another frenetic movement to close off the 30 minute set. St. Ivany tweaked the post-session mix, it's a scorcher! Thanks to the band, Mike from No Quarter and Ernie Indridat and Ruaraidh Sanachan for the engineering.

 

Recent WFMU New Bin Faves

Terrors - Lagan Qord (Weird Forest) Somewhere in the cold grey spaces between Amen Dunes and Kurt Vile live the faraway, mournfully woozy guitar ballads of Terrors, the home-recording project of Elijah Forrest, whoever that is (I'd like to know).  Lagan Qord is a CD & vinyl issue of 2 years' worth of cassette releases.  Check his cover of "God Bless the Child", which sounds almost like John Cale demoing tracks for Nico's Chelsea Girls sessions.(Scott Williams)

Clap - Have You Reached Yet? LP (Sing Sing) The best in Stones-y 1972 glam/garage/punk/rawk, from Manhattan Beach CA. Legit vinyl reissue by the Sing Sing label who also brought us power-pop / first-wave punk gems by Liquid Stone, Straightshooter, De Cylinders. And the bass player's name is Jim Morrison. Audio: "Middle of the Road". (Jason Sigal)

Asian Women On the Telephone - Chelsea Grandpa (self-released) Asian Women on the Telephone? My Lord, what would Yuri Andropov make of this mysterious pseudonym-attired bunch of miscreants? The tracks on this Moscow quintet's Chelsea Grandpa CD-R open up clogged passages in one's 3^rd ear by driving a motherfausting caveman club right through it. All the evidence required is on the falsetto-melt of "Scania-Man"/"Commandment 69" and the Flipper meets Can of "High Grade". Recorded live and released without any post-production, the mangled stew seems to emanate from somewhere between a state of visionary mental instability and a healthy sense of the absurd. Just try to get through the damaged guitar/keyboard/drums of "Feeling Round Dance" and the lysergic space portal of "Aspect-Son" without seeing a wood nymph on a tricycle wielding a battle axe. Hopefully this lunatic fringe will invade U.S. shores soon. Judging by AWOTT's video clips, the lo-fi free-psych-noise gurgitation-rock costume-drama is a killer spectacle! Come to think of it, I bet Yuri would be proud. You can download material (several albums worth!) via the Free Music Archive here! (Daniel Blumin)

Various - Play That Beat Mr. Raja Volume 1 (Cartilage) Totally boss French-compiled document of that Tamil film industry's greatest hits between 1977-1984. Well directed and curated assortment of Kollywood dancefloor busters that burst with genre-confusion, rawness and bubbly fun all around while being pulled in three directions by traditional Indian arrangements, Westernisms and the state-of-the-art (for the 80's) production techniques. Most recently Andy Votel's Finders Keepers has issued two volumes of one of the stars of this comp, Illaiyaraaja ("Vikram Vikram" MP3) but there's a wide assortment of greats onboard for this one. Audio: Agni Natchakhram "Raaja Rajathi" (Brian Turner)

Afuche - Highly Publicized Digital Boxing Match (Cuneiform) Possibly the last influences you might expect these days to come out of Brooklyn are indeed where the most fertile seeds get planted: Afuche's third disc (and first for Cuneiform) comes with a description sticker affixed to the case that bring up the likes of Zappa and Yes, admittedly not two major components of influence on the block these days. Magma and King Crimson have fared a bit better in injecting themselves into prog's 21st century, and quite often that influence finds itself dosed a bit with some rocket fuel as evidenced in bands like the Zs, Psychic Paramount or Upsilon Acrux. Hence, Afuche strut out their wild and wooly time signatures with a little fried production, but mostly lay back for some live-sounding straightforward compositions that allow for a fantastic array of sideways seepage: afro-cuban experimentalism, bareboned baritone sax, scratchy guitars, JB's-style get-down. Audio: "They're In There". (Brian Turner)

       Salyu x Salyu - S(o)un(d)beams - (Toys Factory) Just in time for another Planet of the Apes reboot, Cornelius is back. The name on the album might read "Salyu x Salyu," but the contents are pure Keigo Okayama, in the producer's chair and turning mild-mannered former teen-pop vocalist Salyu into the magnetic center of an immaculate stereo-panned wonderland. After the disappointing blurriness of 2006's Sensuous, the annoying-to-type S(o)un(d)beams returns the Shibuya-kei staple to the unpredictable harmony-laden otherness he accessed so magically on 1997's Fantasma and 2002's Point. If I understood Japanese, I'd probably be more excited by lyrical contributions from Yura Yura Teikoku's Shintaro Sakamoto. Salyu's rich voice ricochets Petra Haden-like amid bleep grids and allows Okayama a reason to get legitimately blue 'n' moody, like the dripping "Hostile To Me." The occasional funk experiment, meh. Still!  (Jesse Jarnow)

Remembering Conrad Schnitzler

Sad news of Conrad Schnitzler's passing from stomach cancer, August 4th. A true maverick of experimental and electronic sound, Schnitzler's work with the likes of Kluster, Tangerine Dream, Gen Ken Montgomery and many others added a rather dramatic fork in the road in the avenues of progressive music starting as far back as the late 1960's. Melodies, rhythms, noise, field sounds, all cloaked with alien atmosphere with a unique vocabulary that was highly emulated, but never replicated. Conrad und Sohn is a particular fave of mine, a 1981 recording he did with his teenage son Gregor that presents a totally Venusian wall of electronics and off-the-wall vox in English, but each of his nearly-100 releases all give glimpses into a truly visionary mind and world. This video clip is not in English, but presents some great images; Schnitzler finished his latest music project a few days before his death, and sent strands of his hair around the world in preparation for his departure, also starting the Global Living site. RIP.

StS Eagles

Recent WFMU New Bin faves

Mueran Humanos, S/T (Blind Prophet / Old Europa Cafe)
Mueran Humanos (Die Humans) is a boy/girl duo from Argentina via Berlin who manage to combine a dark synthwave heart with muy rockismo guitars & fuzz-bass and an effortless pop sensibility. Like their sexy-trashyglam-slasherfilm visual aesthetic, the wrappings are aloof, cold and violent, but the melodies are often sophisticated and pretty. Best case in point is the brilliant slow-burn of album-opener "Horas Tristes", an 8-minute piece of carefully constructed patience featuring dub percussion, kraut guitars, horror movie organ, a lovely vocal chorus and perfectly timed development of layers and events. References to Suicide, Ilitch, and Chrome are made explicit in the fine mixtape the band put together for the 20jazzfunkgreats blog (dl it here) but I also hear strong (surely accidental) echoes of the great early-oughts multi-national San Fran band Troll (anyone remember them?). Members Carmen Burguess (synth / vox) and Tomas Nochteff (bass / vox) sing entirely in Spanish. Carmen's beautiful yet horrifying collages provide their album artwork, while Tomas contributes the menacing charisma of a creepily handsome cross between Joe Strummer and Costes. Both are great screamers. Listen to "Horas Tristes" (stream). (Scott Williams)

WE - s/t 10" (Kollektiv) Oh jeez, another band strapping on some kind of ironic take on childhood-era pop hits, replacing Devo hats with 2001 monoliths on their heads and injecting shprocketsy-coldness into pop. Their manifesto includes this bit of prose: "Challenging the individualism of the Western pop song, WE reveals the latent politics of the love song and transforms chart hits by annihilating their liberal subject and replacing it with a collective consciousness. Through the simple substitution of the plural for the singular, intimacy becomes a form of collective action and the unique the universal. Despite being the mass product of an anonymous culture industry, the very premise of the pop song is one of extreme individualism, elevating the ‘one’ subject of romantic desire above any other and declaring one moment in time more significant (‘when I first saw you’) than any other." Bullshittin' us? Well, it's bottom line is it's pretty enjoyable. Equal parts Freur and the Better Beatles, WE grapple with and garble up Black Flag, George Michael, the Beatles, Whitney Houston and others and give you back exactly whatever you want to put into it (i.e. more pop music). They're fairly certain that they're not going to break down the walls ala Kraftwerk, but they're gonna enjoy the stripping of it all for the sake of art and I'm all for a schrpocketsy stare-down every once in a blue moon. Listen: "We're About To Have a Nervous Breakdown" (stream) (Brian Turner)

Prisoners Go Go Band - Live! At the Butchery with Special Guests On Fire! (S-S) A university experiment in South Africa circa 1980, PGGB were a the result of hours of jamming, collage and freewheeling that remained truly underground for several reasons, I guess mostly due to the conservative climate of the country and especially the fact the band was mixed-race (2/3 Indian) in highwater Apartheid times. They eventually pressed up 250 copies of vinyl, most of which got ruined from a glue mishap in their DIY-paste-up proceedings. Most of the salvagable copies were just sold to friends and rejected for proper release even by labels like ReR. Now out on S-S after some major detectivework, the recordings sound like a basement Faust Tapes done live rife with some rubbery Pere Ubu basslines, motorik drumming, surround-sound vocal mantras, gnome-like spirits of Cecil Taylor and Derek Bailey in assorted corners. High invention, low budgetry. Win win. By the way, the label has a nice assortment of MP3's up on the Free Music Archive for grabs. Stream: "Air Raid Shelter". (Brian Turner)

Peter Hope & The Jonathan S. Podmore Method - Dry Hip Rotation (Klanggalerie), I suspect this album found few allies in the medical community back in '86. Originally released on Native Records, the home of Hoodoo Talk, Peter Hope's contemporaneous and fantastic left-field collaboration with Richard H. Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire, this one-off project featured Hope, vocalist of The Box, a Sheffield band formed upon the dissolution of Clock DVA's original lineup, and Podmore, later of The Corn Dollies. Hope's warped humor and over-the-top vocal strangulations are a perfect match for the bizarro universe of Podmore's musical mind. Each multi-tracked sound construction feels like a hallucination. "Canal" rumbles like someone's unhappy digestive tract before Hope unexpectedly breaks into a sea shanty. "217" shifts on a dime into a Birthday Party screamer tumbling forth with any sense of band and recognizable song structure surgically removed. The messed-with vocals, tape loops, clanging percussion and use of major household appliances, rhythm boxes, and guitars keep the listener perpetually off-balance, ready for more propulsive confusion lurking just around the corner. Mocking self-centered humanity, consumer culture, and the pharmaceutical industry, Hope careens into odes to the creepiness of the kitchenette, paranoid ravings of home invasions and washbasin vandalism, and tales of industrial accidents. What's not to like? Predecessors like the Pop Group or Neubauten come to mind, and like them Dry Hip Rotation is not bland, indeterminate defeatism on a stick. It's great to hear an album that not only has something to say but also has a laugh while bashing the crap out of a pipe to make you listen. In the 21^st century, this reissue is just what the doctor ordered! Listen: "Dog-Eared Pictures of Birdwing Cars" (stream) (Daniel Blumin)

Trailer for Forthcoming Rowland S. Howard Doc

Autoluminescent is a documentary set to come out in August focusing on the story of late guitarist Rowland S. Howard (Birthday Party / Crime and the City Solution / The Immortal Souls among other combos). Interviews with Cave, Lydia, Thurston and others are sure to only scrape the surface on shedding light on one of the most intriguing six-string stylists of yore, his influence is yet to fully uncork itself in the modern, sadly Rowland-less era. Thanks to Bob Bert for sharing.

Milk Music live at WFMU (MP3's)

Recent guests on Brian Turner's show: hailing from Olympia, Washington, Milk Music are a killer electric rock trio that conjure up the downstroke punk attack of Greg Ginn with the pop hooks and Bigmuff stylings of Greg Sage & the Wipers (who are clearly a spirit looming large over the Northwest USA these days). Liberal doses of early Dinosaur and Thin Lizzy floating around as well in this, the band's first ever radio session. No-nonsense, simple, buzzed-up American rock for your downloading/listening pleasure courtesy the Free Music Archive.

Half Japanese Live In Hell

Holy Crap These Kids Covering Venom

via NucearGnormElimator

Annai Kaligambal

Kudos Herb Diamante!

Ice Age at WFMU (MP3's)

This Copenhagen quartet averaged age 17 when composing their debut LP "New Brigade" for Dais Records release stateside (now reissued on What's Your Rupture) who describe the release as "uncontrived, pure – this record is a youthful assault of downer no-wave hardcore, wise beyond it’s years." Indeed, there's a fresh breath of air in this mix of Pink Flag/Wire-style compact energy and '81 downtown NYC guitar nods (not to mention the frosty flurry of Darkthrone at times) but Ice Age's average 2-minute jams overflow with very original approach to youthful aggro-rock that has already won them a legion of stateside fans. They played live on my radio show in a no-nonsense 25 minute blast (MP3s from the Free Music Archive below), had a slew of big NYC gigs that week with the likes of Fucked Up, Prurient, Cult of Youth and others, and return to the states for more shows July 15-August 21 (listed here). More info at their blog.

Jan Halen

Eddie Van Halen vs. Jan Hammer to the death.

Eno's "China My China"

Here's a recently surfaced promo video for "China My China" from Eno's 1974 LP 'Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy).' Appearing as Brian's "band" are Judy Nylon and Polly Eltes (Polly appeared on the album as guest vocalist on "Mother Whale Eyeless"). Thanks Matt Laferty!

World's Largest 8-Track Collection

via Aaron Dilloway:

Fuck Shit Up

Useless Pieces of Shit, 1984, thanks to Bazooka Joe.