SoundGarden - By Crooked Steps Video

Directed by Dave Grohl. I wanted sooo much to dislike King Animal based on two facts: the ticket prices when they first reunited and the song they had in The Avengers, which basically sounded like audio slave. However, King Animal pretty much sounds to me like the next logical step after Down on the Upside, which I always thought was quite the high note for the band to go out on.

How to Destroy Angels - The Loop Closes

Although I did enjoy the eponymous EP that came out two years or so ago, this song - found on last years An Omen E.P. - is probably my favorite thing Reznor has done in a 'band' setting since... I don't know when. With An Omen having been released so close (relatively) to their upcoming debut album Welcome Oblivion I'm hoping this is a harbinger of what is to come. By no means do I mean to suggest I don't like the last few NIN records because I do, but this has a certain throw-back feeling to the simpler digital feel of some of the tracks on Pretty Hate Machine, which in sheer terms of song-craft I don't think he ever topped (certainly each NIN album got better in terms of production and imagination, but the song cycle on PHM is, in my opinion, really just perfect.

HTDA's debut album, Welcome Oblivion, is out March 5th on Columbia Records. I for one have found it fascinating to watch Reznor's career take the twists and turns it has. He's almost more fascinating as a businessman than a musician.

New Song from The Knife - Full Of Fire

New music from The Knife!!! This makes me VERY happy (in a dark and creepy kind of way). The song is the soundtrack to a short film by Marit Östberg*.Their upcoming new record (their first since 2006's masterpiece Silent Shout) is reportedly a double album that comes out April 8th. It is available for pre-order in a variety of formats from their website here.

Here's the trailer for the album:

The Sonic Mastery of Zen Guerrilla

I don't remember most of the specific details for the show where I saw Zen Guerrilla the first time. They were probably playing with Cash Money (later Cash Audio) and maybe the Quadrajets as well. Probably at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. Somewhere around the hazy aethers of 1998. Whatever night it was Zen Guerrilla made an immediate impression on my friends and I. It was common at that time for us to stop by the merch booth on the way out and plunk down money for a disc or 7" (still do when I go to shows, but unfortunately it's not as common these days). One of us must have done so (my money's on Mr. Brown) because soon after Positronic Raygun was in very heavy rotation amidst our little group. It is a fantastic record and while it didn't completely capture the sonic explosion of the group's live performance, engineers Scott Herzog and Matt Kelley helped the band come pretty close. It's blues-flavored RocknRoll Hendrix style - dipped in the sheer cosmic slop of cranked-up reverb and distant radio signals. Even the outro, an almost three-minute loop of a single bar of music dubbed "Frequency Out" has such a strange, otherworldly sound that I have been known to put it on repeat and listen to it for hours on end, often because I don't want the tone the band sets to end.

I was able to see the group one other time, sometime in 2000 I think at the Bottle opening for Nebula. Once again they were magnificent. Hadn't lost a step. And at both gigs their show-stopping set closer, a balls-out cover of Iron Maiden's The Trooper, was really just a smash in the teeth (almost literally for one of us, as the second time the singer Marcus dove off the stage at directly at my friend Hawk who had but a single instant to move before being crushed by the much-larger man. I felt bad that Marcus had ended up landing pretty much face-first on the beer-soaked floor, but I was glad I didn't have to drive my friend to the Hospital).

Dramarama - Anything, Anything

It's weird, I never heard this song before I moved to LA. Here they play it on pretty much every rock station, still, despite it being considerably old. Even KROQ plays it, and their rotation is about fifteen songs wide and really only dips into the 90's for (of course) Nirvana and (inexplicably) that Harvey Danger song Flagpole sitta (which I actually dig).

Marvel's Doctor Strange Movie

image courtesy of screenrant.com

This news is hours old so I'm not breaking anything here, but I just have to say that the fact that Marvel Phase 3 will contain a Doctor Strange movie is AWESOME!!!

Now, who to cast, eh?

UPDATE: Well, I've started a petition to get Hugh Laurie cast as Stephen Strange, not thinking that it will work per se, but as a method for showing Marvel support (or, I guess, lack thereof, for the actor getting the role). Read about and link to sign it on Joup: Laurie FOR Strange.

Also, check out Laurie's LastFM site here.

An Unexpected Gem of a Compilation

Oh, along about ten or eleven years ago there was a great little record store in Bridgeview, IL. It was about the only good thing in Bridgeview that was good, unless you count numerous adventures in Guidish Park trailer park (now known by some other, uppity name). Anyway, the store was called Unabused Music and it was run by a great uy named Mark. He specialized in having weird imports, bread-and-butter albums by great bands and generally just a nice selection of interesting left-of-center items. I discovered Au Pairs via a 6-disc compilation set I purchased from Mark.

It doesn't look like much. Frankly it looks like it's trying waaaaayyyyy too hard. But something made me buy it* and I was very glad that I did.

Along with Au Pairs there are a number of standout tracks that introduced me to a bunch of bands that I'd either heard of but never really heard or just plain had never heard of. This is one:



The live version of Chelsea's Right to Work on the Shit Factory is a lot more... concise and in general a better listen, but the one above is quite the interesting watch. I mean, the performance above pretty much becomes a shambles at one point, but that's part of the whole atmosphere of this scene - or at least as I understand it through my research, not having been there.

Lastly, the first track that really did it for me on the aforementioned Shit Factory was The Fall's Rowche Rumble - I'd always been aware of the accolades The Fall were given but they had remained on my periphery until I heard this track and fell absolutely in love.




.............

* This was when I was in a band called The Yellow House - a band that ended up making some pretty decent strides in really making a name for ourselves. It was easily my most radio-friendly group, kind of a combination of Blur, The Kinks and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. In a Magickal effort to help us achieve our goal (which in the end it didn't) I named the Record Industry my 'god' and began making a weekly 'sacrifice' to it by no matter what buying two new CDs every Monday. This turned out great for my record collection, however the band eventually died right on the cusp of something great.

Ka sera sera