T01 – Friends & Farmers – ‘Friends & Farmers’ CS $8
As a guitar/drum duo, Friends & Farmers brings new life to a genre that has in recent years become all too conventional. Combining a traditional country blues style with a folk-punk-rock aesthetic and a loud-louder-loudest dynamic approach, these two are not easily overlooked. Ben Dumbauld pounds out strong, earthy rhythms on his tom, snare and cymbal while David Evan blasts a dry and gritty guitar sound. Retaining short, upbeat song forms and strong, catchy melodies, Evan’s crankish vocals evoke imagery of what can only be some kind of deranged, post-apocalyptic farm.
T02 – International Surrealist Bulletin – ‘Ten Wounds Wiser” CS/CD $8
The self-described “Best Psychedelic Accordioncore band on the East Coast,” creates abrasive yet melodic music with some unconventional instruments: accordion, vibraphone, marimba, synth. Their second album in over 5 years, “Ten Wounds Wiser” maintains the dark aesthetic of their first album, but diverges from the atmospheric musique concrète of their previous work to encompass a more diverse range of influences. Here you find accordion and synth-laden industrial, reggae, noir, thrash, and free jazz tracks seamlessly tied together to create a complete, unique work.
T03 – Spaghetti Blacc – ‘RUN Digital Millenium Copyright Act X: Thutmose tha Gully.exe’ CS $8
Recorded in 2012, “RUN Digital Millenium…” is a blend of dark and atmospheric beats, combining eerie synths and samples with rapidly delivered rhymes, and elements of funk, jazz, and world music.
T04 – Stepkid – ‘Cosmonaut’ CS $8
The 10 tracks on Stepkid’s new tape, Cosmonaut, are short blasts of sound, sometimes less than a minute long, composed of blunt shards of synthesizer, flurries of white noise, and cascading cymbals. It’s the latest in a string of releases from Stepkid—which is the work of one Benjamin Tyler, a drummer who’s sat in with a number of bands around town. With Cosmonaut, Tyler has made what sounds like the freaky soundtrack to those scenes from old science-fiction shows, in which the hero somehow gets himself drugged, and it’s visualized by all kinds of primitive camera tricks—double vision! Blurriness! Jittery camera movement! Color washes! NED LANNAMANN