Daniel Dumile (aka MF Doom) concluded a prolific 2003 with this paranoiac collection of warped city tales, released under the alter ego Viktor Vaughn. Having relegated production duties to a committee consisting of RJD2 and relative unknowns King Honey, Heat Sensor, and Max Bill, Dumile's full attention is left for the mike. With his mush-mouthed delivery as currency, the charismatic MC delivers a phone book of impressionistic rhyme trails, barmy anecdotes, and twisted punchlines that siphon humor into the grayest scenarios. Vaudeville Villain's story-raps are just as brilliantly spun -- the immaculate "Let Me Watch" features Apani B Fly guesting as Vaughn's vestal romantic foil and ends on a note that strikes just the right balance between Vaughn's comedic and sordid qualities. Grubby and excitable, the album's production is no less superb, with RJD2's " ... Read more »

After the noisy but dream-like drift of Painful, Electr-O-Pura found Yo La Tengo in livelier and more outwardly enthusiastic form; while they had hardly abandoned their more subdued and contemplative side, as evidenced by the lovely "The Hour Grows Late" and "Pablo and Andrea," they seemed eager to once again explore the grittier textures they'd unearthed on President Yo La Tengo and May I Sing With Me with tunes like the gleefully manic "False Ending" and the bizarre horn-blasted "Attack on Love." Yo La Tengo also served up one of the most perfectly realized pop tunes in their repertoire with "Tom Courtenay" (which not only name checks the Beatles, but boasts a tune the Fab Four would have been happy to come up with themselves), and revisited the concept of the noisy groove jam (which they pioneered on "The Evil That Men Do (Pablo's Version)") with the a ... Read more »

So, hier ist er also, ein Beitrag ganz in Muttersprache. Logisch dass das hier jetzt so den einen oder anderen etwas verwirrt, und das ist ja auch ein ganz schönes Durcheinander, aber wenn man schon über den Plan schreibt, dann sollte man das auch richtig machen. Ist wohl auch so, dass diese exzellente Wiederveröffentlichung der mittlerweile vierteljahrhundert alten Scheibe eher die Deutschsprachigen unter uns interessiert, auch wenn das natürlich schade ist, denn der Plan hätte etwas mehr Aufmerksamkeit verdient.

Ursprünglich die Filmmusik zum gleichnamigen Film, die Wiederveröffentlichung aus dem Jahr 2000 hat eine ganze Menge extra Material von R. Kirkberg's zweiten Film, "Grottenholm". Insgesamt nicht nur ein wichtiges Stück deutsches Kulturgutes, sondern auch ausserordentlich unterhaltsame 40 Minuten. Was auch immer man dem Plan so vorwerfe ... Read more »

Led by singer Fred Cole, who had formerly been in the Northwest punk band the Weeds, the Lollipop Shoppe's sole album (from 1968) ranks as one of the better psych-punk LPs, and also as one of the better one-shot rock records of the late '60s. Featuring Cole's choked, bitter phrasing, the group staked out the middle ground between the Seeds (who shared the same manager) and Love, with a bit of fellow L.A. psych-punkers the Music Machine thrown in. If comparisons must be made, they were definitely closer in tone to Love than the Seeds, with a mixture of raunch and reflection in the spirit of Arthur Lee. Cole was one of the few psychedelic performers to make a contribution during the punk era, surfacing in the Portland punk band the Rats in the late '70s.

They were originally known as The Weeds and featured Fred Cole, now of Dead Moon. After The Weeds signed to UNI Records (a now-defunct su ... Read more »

Josef K were a rock ‘n’ roll rarity: a band that arrived seemingly fully-formed, manifestos unpronounced but doubtlessly concealed somewhere up their natty sleeve. Never mind the post-punk bollocks—these fine young lads were positively anti-punk. Teetotalers in a land of booze and dirty needles, they projected an austere and hyper-intelligent image. Naming themselves after the main character in The Trial, Kafka's masterpiece of alienation and paranoia, they courted bookishness just in time for the rise of the effete and literary youth in British rock—and promptly broke up before they could reap the benefits. Not because they were violent or did too much coke, but simply because they felt they'd accomplished all they'd set out to do.

On their scrapped first LP, Sorry for Laughing, Josef K perfected a kind of insectoid funk, brittle and tenebrous but shuffling along ... Read more »

By request, here's another Pere Ubu album from the nineties. Features one of my favorite Ubu songs, "Wasted". This album was released two years after the horrible Worlds In Collision (which AMG for some reason seems to love), and sees David Thomas return to his more creative and playful side. It's still all pretty slick, and especially the annoying echoed drums remind more of stadium rock than art rock. The guitar work by Jim Jones is amazing however, and is stylistically very much in line with early Ubu records.

Overall this is a fairly mediocre Ubu album, which is still too slick for its own good, but it's an important step in the right direction, eventually leading to the return to their roots with 1995's Ray Gun Suitcase. Highlights of this album are the opening track, "Wasted", which starts off like ... Read more »

Though it's another album of slow-building textural ambience, Depths is quite organic-sounding compared to the duo's debut. Besides the spacious noise that remains a focus, there are several tracks of faraway guitar pop ("Silent Ocean" and "Undercurrent" are highlights) that include vocals (by Windy) much closer to singing than their previous work. (AMG)

The world of experimental rock is crowded with musicians seeking to add more and varied sounds to their growing body of recorded work, while restlessly seeking to diversify their approach by absorbing more and more from outside their musical universe in terms of form, source, and stylistic considerations. Dearborn, MI, duo Windy & Carl tread a different path: They are interested -- no -- obsessed with creating a musical aesthetic based solely on digging ever deeper into the sub-subbasement of drone-based guitar music. As evidenced by this, their fourth long player, they've accomplished that. Windy & Carl, with their deceptively spare production mannerisms and subtle shadings of guitars, barely audible vocals, some keyboards, and employed sounds from other spheres, have developed a manner of letting the music speak for itself through them. By getting out o ... Read more »

Gang of Four's existence had as much to do with Slave and Chic as it did the Sex Pistols and the Stooges, which is something Solid Gold demonstrates more than Entertainment! Any smartypants can point out the irony of a band on Warner Bros. railing against systematic tools of control disguised as entertainment media, but Gang of Four were more observational than condescending. True, Jon King and Andy Gill might have been hooting and hollering in a semiviolent and discordant fashion, but they were saying "think about it" more than "you lot are a bunch of mindless puppets." Abrasiveness was a means to grab the listener, and it worked. Reciting Solid Gold's lyrics on a local neighborhood corner might get a couple interested souls to pay attention. It isn't poetry, and it's no fun; most within earshot would just continue power-walking or tune out while buffing ... Read more »

Only the wit of Bongwater and Shockabilly guitarist and renowned producer Kramer could get away with this -- a three-LP rock opera released as a box set in 1993 on his own Shimmy Disc label. The collection covers a year's work in his Noise New Jersey studio, where he toyed for long hours with the George Martin aesthetic, an answering machine, and his extraordinary gift for pop songwriting (not to mention guitars). Somehow, he sculpted it all into a cohesive whole with The Guilt Trip. What better way to spend an afternoon immersed in psychedelic pop -- it's as though he set out to make his own dream of a '60s concept album.

His hybrid sound borrows from the best of the Kinks, ... Read more »