Enemymine - Enemymine ep

Label: K
Year: 1999

I thought we had posted this one before, but I looked and don't see it. Which means my senility is reaching critical mass, or I've overestimated the depth and breadth of this blog (that's what she said).

This band is one of a series of bands that Mike Kunka has bass guitar'd his nards off in to great critical acclaim (at least, this one critic I know). You'll remember him from Godheadsilo, Dead Low Tide, and Smoke and Smoke. For Enemymine he is joined on bass (a second bass, not simultaneous two-man-one-bass styled action) by Zak Sally, who was in Low and The Hand, and on drums by Danny Sasaki of Jackie O Motherfucker and Mocket fame(?). Together Enemymine has bits and pieces from each of those other projects; moments of moody instrumental passages, dark, noisy indie rock, and over driven blasting metallic noise rock. Variety is the spice of...the Indian Subcontinent? I forget.

DL

Mannequin - Yr Aching Tooth!!!

Label: self released
Year: 2004

Four songs, two previously unreleased, unmastered, sold on tour only. I'm guessing the songs were intended for an lp that was planned on Robotic Empire Records, but the band broke up before they could finish. That's just me being a super sleuth, I don't actually know.
Sound good?
Members of Pygmy Lush, and Pg. 99 play a volatile version of grungy punk that gets pretty abrasive, but never offensive. Could be considered hardcore if you're into that kind of thing.

Sorry I don't have much credible information on this one. I hate to do that you you all.

DL

Godflesh - Messiah

Label: Avalanche
Year: 2000

Self released in 2000 as a limited fanclub CDR, with approximately 1000 copies in circulation, this ep was actually recorded in 1994 around the same time as the 'Selfless' lp, and the original four tracks have a similar pounding avalanche warp versus proto -and-bass approach as 'Selfless'. A year or so after sitting on the songs, the band made dub remixes of each (which...I mean...ok, I guess), and proceeded to sit on those even longer. It wasn't until they broke up that Justin Broadrick decided to package all eight tracks together and give it away. Which was very nice of him.
The record was re-released in 2003 by both Relapse and Ritual / Howling Bull (and again by Relapse in 2008).

DL

Cable - Variable Speed Drive

Label: Doghouse
Year: 1996

Right in the thick of the mathy, destructo-core of the mid 1990's there was Cable. A self loathing Connecticut based wrecking crew that fused a Rollins era Black Flag with Tim Singer era Deadguy, and at least in the beginning, some vein popping Groundwork styled hardcore. Potent stuff. Unfriendly, caustic, potent stuff. Later the band would carve out a more sludgy, wide open riffing style, but this first album goes straight for the throat with no detours and no delay.
Members who played in this version of the band were also in, Isis, Empty Flowers, and Hex Inverter.

DL

Bauhaus - Live In The Studio 1979

Label: Nemo
Year: 1997

Decent chance that there isn't a practice tape by your band that's going to surface twenty years from today and be studied by music nerds, dissected, and celebrated as a Rosetta Stone of a nascent genre. I mean, I could be wrong, you might be in one of the best bands out there...it's entirely possible, just not entirely probable. If you catch my drift.
But by all means, keep at it.
And when you stumble across something along the lines of 'Dark Entries', please let me know.

Originally released with a Bauhaus retrospective book that I never saw (cause I can't read...ok?! Fucking rub it in, why don't ya?!). Ground zero shit. Essential darkness.

DL

Gasp - Ghost In Scow Out

Label: self released
Year: 2017

File this one under: Never Thought I'd Be Listening To A New Gasp Record...Now If Only They Would Mount A Tour With Noothgrush (probably won't fit on one of those plastic record dividers, so abbreviate as space dictates).
I'm pretty sure (but am well documented to have been wrong on at least four [possibly five] occasions) that I reviewed the Gasp demo "Sore For Days" the summer I was living in Isla Vista and writing reviews for Heartattack fanzine. I'm pretty sure. I definitely still have the cassette in my possession, and recall writing it up that summer.
What's definitely for sure is that a couple summers later when their first album came out "Drome Triler Of Puzzle Zoo People" (which still scores in the top ten when ranking worst titled records that I own), I wore the thing out. The absolute weirdness that Gasp manages to combine into a cohesive and, most importantly, highly listenable package is difficult to convey. To just say, "yeah, they are that fucked up psychedelic power violence trip", is not doing them justice. Sure, it's kinda right, but Gasp are more than the sum of their parts. They were fucked up, but they in turn fucked you up.
The bulldozing sludge and scattershot grind are in the way backseat here on these two songs. Long ass songs, mind you. There isn't any of the lo-fi scraping hardcore of the demo here.The hazy noise treatment of both the instrumentation and song structure itself, is what holds the often conflicting elemental fragments together, and run them through an oscillating flange of cosmic debris. Hallucinatory music for deviant explorers. Start listening, and next thing you know twenty minutes just went by and there you sit, no worse for the wear, but the floor hasn't swept itself.

Very happy to hear Gasp in the year 2018, a solid 22 years since I'm pretty sure I wrote that demo review.

DL