Pink Skull - Endless Bummer on RVNG.

Holy smokes and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, dance music is alive and well. If only Charles Darwin were alive to witness the inception, refinement, and never ending evolution of what originated as 4 x 4 Berlin-Detroit machine music; he’d flip his wig. Well here we have it folks, the synthesis of indie rock, no-wave, techno, and dance punk from our friends at RVNG Matt and Josh.

Like my mama always said, “anything worth doing, is worth doing right.” Well bubba, RVNG releases quality product, and nothing bears that sign more proudly, in my opinion, than Pink Skull’s “Endless Bummer.” While, Pink Skull has hit us with mini-nuggets of wonder, “Endless Bummer” is their first full length and a helluva go, to be sure. For Christ’s sake, for a limited time you could even customize the album cover for a nominal fee. Much to my brother’s chagrin, our copies read “Can’t Keep A Pompa Down.” Brilliant! No matter, the first track, “Peter Cushing” (synonymous with Star War’s Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin for a generation, and you know who you are) with its lofty flute and Liquid Liquid-esque live bass line makes you want to muddle home-made cocktails on a warm summer’s eve and get into it. The funs don’t stop there though, homey. The second track (a-side), “Chicken Dream Inside Egg” is a show-stopping, panty-dropping straight up indie-house hit with a subtle shuffle and a catchy “Boo Doo Dee Dah Dah Dah Dah” vocal. This track compels otherwise skinny boys to grab the closest babe in short shorts on the dance floor and whisk the night away. The reversed bass, in selected sections, combined with the reverb guitar twangs and Saxaphone scream, “two men enter, one man leaves,” with its refined jazziness and raw juiciness.

From here the album progresses to straight up weirdness, but in a loveable electro-dancey way. Imagine Human League, Tina Turner, Stars of The Lid, and the Rapture huddled around a makeshift table made from a piece of plywood and a used keg at a Larry Levan loft party and you’re growing ever so close to an idea of what this album aspires to, and often achieves.

B-Sides, baby, that’s where it’s really at after all, and this one done brought it. “Endless Bummer” shakes the rafters. It jangles with its minor key synths and simplistic bass, but the twitch-glitchiness, acidy synths and the track’s tweaked Laurent Garnier inspired sax screams “take my to the rave.” “Oh, Monorail” follows with a funky underpinning and its rhythmic vocals force you to dig out your old EMF and Jesus Jones records and scour those little bastards for their inevitable redeeming qualities. After all, mid 90’s electronic forays were the basis for where you are now, like it or not.

Why stop here, right? You want to know as much about this damn record as you can before you spend them hard earned greenbacks, yes? “Fast Forward Bolivia” begins with a combo of Indian screeches that sound like Prince Rama fighting with R2-D2 at Altamont (WTF, we’re already invoking Grand Moff Tarkin, what’s a droid or two?) ending in a psychedelic stew of flautisto terrorism, Native dance, and delay that smacks of awesome. Still reeling from the Charlie horses from dancing my ass off, I finish the album the way music is supposed to be listened to, which is as the artist conceived it and in the order conceived. Nevertheless, I am taken aback at “The Inconsiderate Neighbor” and “Fired, So Fired.” While not the strongest of finishes, I forgive Pink Skulls like you forgive your best friend for asking if you’re still dating that high-school sweetheart he knew you were still into. Bittersweet, yes! However, it didn’t really matter too much because he was, in total, way cooler than she ever was. These last two songs are that girl, and the album, your best friend. We can all dig deep to forgive minor shortcomings, when what lasts is infinitely more memorable. The Skulls are Pink. Long Live The Skulls.

Oh, yes, lest I not forget, the digital download comes with three additional tracks… “Gonzo's Cointreau,” “When Falling Straight Through A Goat” and, in my opinion, the most magnificent “Several French Revolutionaries Standing on the Back of My Neck.” “Several French Revolutionaries Standing on the Back of My Neck” is creepy and beautiful and frightening and despite numerous requests by your author to the label is still unscheduled for pressing to vinyl. However, I shall remain persistent in this endeavor. Until then, let Julian Grefe and Justin Geller dazzle you with their fantastic skills as Pink Skull.

Buy the 12" or digitals from RVNG. here

Magic Lantern - Platoon on Not Not Fun Records

What the funk? ”Maggot Brain,” was, is, and will arguably forever be an unparalleled bundle of tremendous funk. Indeed, as a result, I would be forsaking my duty to proselytize the good word of music that isn’t rubbish, if I did not beseech you to dive into Magic Lantern’s hazy bucket of tar -“Platoon.” Clinton it ain’t, but “Platoon” strives for, and hits dangerously close to, the benchmark heart of true funk.

Sans any real vocal track “Platoon,” picks up where “Maggot Brain” slowly fuzzed out and I am in love with it. The opener – “Dark Cicadas” - is so frigging fonky that my mind could not override my lower appendages from shucking and jiving. The sultry “Moon Lagoon Platoon” conjures images of the ubiquitous Vietnam film scene where the wayward soldiers blow off steam before heading back into the ”shit,” painting imagery as thick as chilled Jager shots in the jungle night.

If I hadn’t snatched the record from the new releases stack, I’d have sworn sideways that it was a human impossibility that this ill sludge had been recorded after 1973 or 1976 (maybe). Guitars and organs twitch and crescendo and heavy waves reverberate through warm analog tubes. Unlike previous releases, this album is much darker and has a narrower focus. This business is as dark as pre-Christian Samhain rituals on the solstice - just oozing with sludgy psychedelic funk.

Now, I know cats are slinging the word “psychedelic” around like pre-pubescent girls talking about “Justin Beiber” at the “American Girl” Store, but Lantern has earned the title through funk, sweat, and tears. Fret not though, children, this is not sloppy psy-funk, but truly mind-bending, old school, organic bad-assery. Note band images, easily culled from the network, and you will see these lads, heads bent and shoegazing - not at their pedals (though one can imagine the magnitude of incessant toe tapping that must occur to produce this fog) - but as a result of being totally zoned into the ethereal. These corporeal vessels channel, rather than just merely produce, slurries of face-melting rhythms.

Now “Platoon” is Magic Lantern’s most recent 12” following a series of cassette and limited pressings and displays a stoic maturation. Prior releases ran the stylistic gamut from dub, prog, Kosmiche-pastiche, drone, and various other elements on a song-by-song basis. Here however, Magic Lantern fuses, successfully in most instances, varying elements within each song’s loose borders. For example, in lieu of an arguably unbridled jam out on “At the Mountain of Madness” (containing a b-side of Warholian noise art reminiscent at times of Stephen Stapleton’s NWW works) the band has honed their compositional craft on “Platoon.” Yet another example of their tighter, new direction, presents itself upon listening to their album “High Beams” followed immediately by “Platoon,” both on Not Not Fun Records, incidentally. On the one hand, “High Beams” varies from sounding like a Can homage on “Vampires in Heat” or older Pelican on “Deathshead Hawkmoth,” while “Platoon” cruises consistently throughout the album with an enticing but violent calm. “Platoon’s” B-side contains two tracks that, together, run a healthy 20 minutes plus. “On The Dime” maintains the solid groove of the album while amping up guitar stabs and organ wizardry. On “On the Dime” Chip Knechtel and Gavin Fort blast their gear, drums and bass respectively, into a sonic flow like a river of mud and sound very much like Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding doing what they did for James. These are the raw materials that you wished Bristol junglists would use to fashion their own tracks. Finally, while “Friendship’s” guitars now share headspace with eerie horns and what can only be described as some bizarre East-Asian clarion call to things that can result in no good. The track never relents on trying to bury you in the thickness. Here, Magic Lantern sinks deeper into the abyss, oozing sludgy funk. The reverb machine is still cranking overtime but the gears and pistons have been power cleaned and re-lubricated.

This album howls and snarls and creeps clandestinely into your mind. The mayhem inducing chugginess must be what it’s like to wake up in your barn, clothing tattered, only to find out that you have no recollection of last night’s events and that your village has been ransacked by a wolf-monster that dispatches groups of armed townspeople in short order. Yeah, it’s that heavy. Get lost and enjoy.

Javelin - No Mas on Luaka Bop

Not too shabby for a mid-day impulse buy, especially considering the three deep bloody Mary perspective from whence I made the trade of dollars for vinyl. How the hell could I refrain? After all, the cover has a Kris Kristofferson looking apparition with snow leopards pouncing from a mountain of ice behind ol’ Kris’ face. Mind you, this is all before an actual listen to this album, nay, even before ever hearing nary a whimper of cousins George Langford and Tom Van Buskirk, purveyors of reigned weirdness that is actually perfectly far out music for kids. One can’t even begin to imagine the joy of hearing the wildly varying contents within.

“No Mas” glides out on the good foot with a hazy down tempo, distilled embodiment of the feelings one has of summer mornings before the big trip to an amusement park or the “festival of the season.” Surely, you can empathize with the spirit of “Vibrationz.” You can’t sleep the night before so you anxiously toss back can after can of PBR dreaming of what the weekend may hold. From the jump off, the listener believes, incorrectly, that what they hold in their hot little hands is the typical Luaka Bop fare--- (after all, sometimes you buy by label, and sometimes you gamble and lose)-- worldly drenched amalgams ranging from East India to Chile. Alas, Javelin is sufficiently savvy to anticipate that expectation, and pitches several delightful, and yes, a few sometimes predictable, curves. For example, “Oh Centra,” a little ditty previously released on Lal Lal Lal, with its sub bass funkiness and its almost offensive Alvin and the Chimpmunk-esque pitched vocals manages to endear the listener, perhaps for its Salt-n-Peppa bass break, but maybe just because it’s cool, whether you care to admit it or not.

Anyway, brethren, the constant dynamism tends to give “No Mas” the aura of lacking focus, but on the positive, samples out Javelin’s warez as though they were a tag-team, compilation machine. Hell, that’s why I bought it. I inquired as to what was playing, on my weekly binging spree, and mistakenly thinking that it was several different artists, was politely corrected…”Nah man, it’s Javelin.” Ignorant me, it sounded like a Numero Group release, followed by Basement Jaxx, and then as I zoned back in from an impenetrable wander through the experimental section, something Motown sounding. Well, now you know why it was an impulse buy, but I digress.

Now, after aurally consuming some of their earlier releases, as we junkies are oft known to do, this album seems polished, like boots at the airport. Yes, the hiss and fuzz and lo-fi, which we’ve all grown to love, has been toned down, but in the most loveliest of ways, and not all that much. If you need proof, come to my basement and listen to “We Ah Wi” as we shimmy and shake,

So, to avoid any implications of impropriety and to be thorough in my job, it’s only fair that I address the B-side as well. As if the variation on the first side weren’t ample, “Moscow 1980” sounds like M83 and Luomo’s love child dancing in a field of daisies and synthesizers, in a pure electro-pop heaven, sliding you off into a personal Indian Summer day dream. Further progressing on a similar trajectory, though seemingly divergent, the late 60’s funk style “The Merkin Jerk” continues on the quest for the ultimate dreaminess. Here, however, the day dream is more of a Haight-Ashbury thing, and, unfortunately, seems incomplete, leaving the listener wondering if the remainder was stashed in a retro-future time capsule or if someone accidentally smoked it.

To round out the series of, what I believe to be, a fairly thorough first LP proper, are the monotonous “C Town,” the ersatz chamber music and xylophonic “Off My Mind,” the back-track for a Mos Def-like interlude, “Susie Cues” (sure to become an effective transition for the DJs and producers out there), and several more, which deserve their own treatment. “Shadow Heart” and “DEP,” in particular, invoke a longing and homesickness for the corridor, because of their likeness to Motown and P-Funk throwbacks that seem to age gracefully, gaining rather than loosing flavor. In fact, I’d wished that my friends were with me here as I pen this piece. Yet, my worries are short-lived, for if you are concerned with my opinion, than we too are friends, and sharing with you is tantamount to being with friends near and far. It is for this reason, the warmth inducing familiarity of an old friend that this album conjures, that you should give this record a listen. After you have well spent those 80 plus minutes, you too will be a convert to Javelin’s diversity and wit.