Silent Trese

Whenever my good friend Jacob sends me a band to listen to, I know it's going to rule. Silent, however, even tops the best of his previous recommendations. I cannot express how much I LOVE this album; it embodies everything I love about a modern post-punk aesthetic and reminds me A LOT of how much I loved that first Savages album back in what feels like one hundred years ago.

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Watch:

I don't really know much about Trese yet, except my DwC cohost Mike Wellman sent me the trailer last week and it's being made by/with people who our friend Karen Kunawicz knows. Mike has a copy of the book it's based on hold for me, so I should be picking that up and reading it soon, so I will leave you with the trailer for now and report back on the book later this week.

Really cool stuff, from the looks of it. 

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Playlist:

Led Zeppelin - Coda

Silent - Modern Hate

Mudvayne - Choices (single)

Exhalants - Atonement

Windhand - Split

Deftones - Ohms

Violet Cold - Empire of Love

ZZ Top - Rhythmeen

White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000

QOTSA - Villains

Goatsnake - Black Age Blues

Lustmord - Heresy

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Leviathan the Fleeing Serpent - Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Love for the Dead

Various - Lords of Salem OST

 

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Card:

 

I can't really go into it here - or more like I don't want to at the moment - but I take this as a direct commentary on a BIG question that has been on both K and my own mind these last few days. 

Gang of Four - I Love a Man in Uniform (Re-recorded)

Speaking of Post-Punk...

I'll admit, I had some trouble getting into Gang of Four initially. That's Entertainment sprawls a bit, and as much as I loved their sound upon hearing it I never really liked the way that sound was represented by their recordings. Slowly though I got used to it, mostly through the incredibly original musicianship going on with all instruments involved (the guitar on Tourist! Oh my...) but the rift with the recording kind of prevented me from digging any deeper.

At some point a man I respect very much, Dayton, Ohio's Larry Evans - of The Smug Brothers - told me in a beer-fueled conversation that I was doing myself a great disservice not digging deeper into Gang of Four's catalog. Almost at the same time Mr. Brown sent me a copy of the retrospective A Brief History of the 20th Century, which featured the original version of the above song, I Love a Man in Uniform. I gravitated back to this particular track again and again and it made me curious...

Sometime later I wanted to return the favor to Mr. Brown so on one of the occasions that he visited us we hit up a local record store and I picked up a copy of Return the Gift for him. At the time I had no idea it was an album of re-recordings of classic GOF songs. We popped that disc into the stereo and lo and behold here it was! The Gang of Four record I had been waiting for. All those classic records are fine - there's still several I need to explore, but the recording on these new versions are just fantastic; crisp, clear and very much what these guys deserve to sound like. Hard to imagine a band doing this and having it make such a stronger impression - maybe this is mostly because I don't have the history with these guys that other do, but here's the original version of the song - you tell me if the new one doesn't trump it by about 1000%.

Eagulls - Live Performance on KEXP

Okay, I hate to use genre monikers, especially when you get into sub genres, as I'm about to, however there are a few of these that I find extremely helpful and on the nose when discussing similarities between certain bands/scenes. One is Post-Punk. I know, usually you slap "post" on anything and it immediately sounds pretentious. That's fine; pretension is sometimes warranted and sometimes good. ESPECIALLY when discussing Post-Punk groups such as Gang of Four, Bauhaus, Savages, Wire, The Teardrop Explodes and Magazine. There's been quite a resurgence in Post-Punk these last couple of years and Eagulls definitely fits into it. Expect more of these guys here; like I said earlier, I am in hardcore love with this record.