Chappaquiddick Chappaquiddick (Noise Horror)

An excellent blending of art-punk, fusion, avant-garde, progressive rock, improvised music, and a bit of hardcore. The more I listen to this trio from Florida the more it might be it reminds me of a mix of Soft Machine and one of the members, Taylor Ross`s parallel project Witchporn, and his label mates The Moon Runners. By the way, avant-prog/experimental rock master Gianluca Missero aka Hox Vox from Venice gave me the solid feedback, saying that during his living in the northern part of the USA he had not chanced upon such a organically wrapped up ensemble, though, he was being well aware of similar acts (he signified this genre as "clean psychedelia eclectic mix-up"). At last I want to ask is it a new sign of the rise of new American underground music through tape labels?

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10.0

Moon Runners Full Enough (Rack & Ruin)

Duo Danny Natter-Jake Jones comes from Olympia, USA, the city with decent musical traditions, launching an inspiring art/avant-punk line. Music which is a mixture of motorik patterns, blues, garage, math-rock, post-hardcore, surf rock, and psychedelic seeds. 11 tracks within circa 45 minutes do show some affinity toward The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Times New Viking, The Fall, The White Stripes, the 80`s end Sonic Youth, Big Black, and The Stooges as well. The tracks have relatively short duration, averaging two and a half minutes out, which is sufficient enough, to deliver a spicy and noisy sonic depeche. The opening track All Cops Are Murderers does open up through exhilarating surf-y blues refrains while opposing to it primitivistic declamations to have created an intriguing contrast. My Name Is Not Mud strikes with Mark E Smith-ian cynism, and the clash coming out from guitars and drums. Indeed, all what regards Natter and Jones noise doings it is completely targeted and refined. In the track Wolf Shirt all is about to speak in the terms of very harshness, accompanied by a minimalist electronics (compare it to The Fall`s Perverted By Language). I Want to Say No is also driven by similar bass-synth outlines - still edge-y and psychedelic ones. The ending track Death Tunnel can be considered as exceptional - an nearly 17-minute long colossus, which provides the opportunity to have some experiments with form and content - after the intense hits of blues and noise rock you can hear atmospheric and reversed upper sonic sentiments, which is apparently the case of minimalism. One of the best.

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9.7

[Live Session] Live at WFMU on Brian Turner's show, 5/4/2010

The French duo/love pair Nafi aka Scott Serpent, and Armelle aka Bisoubisou remained me first time with the excellent single pair on label Beko DSL (though, it wasn`t their first release yet). The duo mixed avant-punk and no wave creating an astonishingly ecstatic milieu around the listeners.

9 tracks within 36 minutes provide a way out set of post-punk, no wave, dub, reggae, and the world music, in-between filled by monotonous shamanism (Intro / Reggae 1 / Rising Son), exploiting in the primitivistic way programmed synths and electronics, sheer psychedelic layers and noise walls. The most remarkabale it is their ability and ratio to realize their conceptual sketches to bring ideas into an end - into a real apotheosis (Reggae 2; Tropique du Cancer). All of those nihilistic shifts and vectors, though uncompromising ones, are mere instruments to fill this purpose. The band is ruled by democracy (or should I say rather anarchy?) - sometimes sings Nafi, sometimes Armelle, sometimes they sing in unison. By speaking about parallels and legends it reminds of the early PIL, The Clash, The Slits, The Screamers, Karen Cooper Complex, Sonic Youth, even Elastica, and from nowadays it is a bit reminiscent of Gang Gang Dance. However, it does not make sense to think The Dreams could somehow to be the bastard of one of them. Listen and enjoy, and if it is for purpose you could take a lesson for to be aware of how practicing punk music in the `adequate` way.

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