Noise for Zeros

Patty Lane / Story of Life 7″ + comic
Skin Graft Records, 1993

Here’s a 45 that’s gotten better with age. When I first picked up this warped psych monster I was more interested in completing my collection of Skin Graft 7″ + comic combos than listening to the music inside, but it’s become one of my favorite records to spin when I’m in a particularly weird mood. At first take, I considered this Drunks With Guns / Strangulated Beatoffs offshoot band a cut-rate Butthole Surfers clone, probably due to the fact that Fruitcake’s heavily processed, echoed vocals sound a lot like the Butthole’s cover of Donovan‘s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” on Pioughd. But years of putting this on mix tapes (it nicely filled the mandatory oddball track quota) and tossing it on the turntable whenever stumbling across its dayglo orange sleeve, I’ve come to realize that Fruitcake’s grotesquely deranged 1960s psych is weird on an entirely different level than the Butthole Surfers. With the volume and effects-pedal blowout of over-the-top psychers like High Rise and Mainliner and the drugged out charm of classic Roky Erickson / 13th Floor Elevators riffs, Fruitcake pulls off two ridiculously awesome and hilarious (the lyrics to “Story of Life” are an ode to jacking off) tunes that will forever damage your brain.

DOWNLOAD:

Fruitcake – “Patty Lane”
Fruitcake – “Story of Life”

LINKS:

Fruitcake bio and discography on I Heart Noise

Gag Box / Unwind 7″
Spangled Records, 1992

The last posting got me thinking about another great math rock band from Chicago. And even though they’ve got one of the most boring band names you’re ever gonna hear, Table put out one of the best singles of the early ’90s. It’s got all the elements of your average math rock band: muttering detached vocals, fragmented shards of clanging guitar, and a propulsive rhythm section that’s all business. But Table takes these basic elements and goes a step further than most by giving their songs sustained tension and texture instead of the standard tension/release, loud/soft manipulations found with lesser bands. In particular, their thick, gnarled bass sound really sets them apart, almost approaching funk bass territory while still firmly planted within the rigid metronome of math rock. So even though their name has never been tossed around as much as Shellac, Tar, or 90 Day Men, everything Table put out was on par with those other Chicago legends.

DOWNLOAD:

Table – “Gag Box”
Table – “Unwind”

LINKS:
Unofficial Table page on MySpace

Ray / Half-Decayed 7″
Faye Records, 1995

We live in weird times. Record shops close by the dozen, but there’s vinyl at your local Best Buy and nearly every obscure, fractionalized sub-genre that sputtered through speakers for a few brief moments over a decade ago in maddeningly short supply gets resurrected and posted by one of a handful of people who remember or at least give a shit. So while I mourn the closing of many record stores and often long to flip through the stacks of those long-gone music mini-meccas, I’m also grateful to live in a day and age when a lazy Google search or bumbling web surfing yields a score that many years of crate digging never procured. Such is the case with this long lost math rock group, The Great Brain, whose Algorithm CD I came across while catching up on some of the fine postings over at Built On A Weak Spot. For years, I anxiously awaited an album by this Chicago group after hearing this 7″ release, but I never kept tabs on them in those dark, pre-internet days, so I never even knew that they’d managed to get an album out. At the time, the midwest was full of math rock bands usin’ their noggins to complicate and control the energy of hardcore punk with deconstructed riffs precisely arranged and played with a musical virtuosity that most punk bands couldn’t (or wouldn’t) achieve. What makes The Great Brain noteworthy is that they were able to keep a frayed, loose edge to their sound that most bands of similar ilk would smooth and/or polish over. Their sound has a gut-level umph to it that many bands of the genre lacked. “Ray” falls somewhere in between the loose jangle of Pavement and the jazzy aggressiveness of St. Louis greats The Dazzling Killmen, pairing catchy choruses with shouted bursts of nervy noise. The flipside, “Half Decayed,” completely ditches any hint of math rock with wavering twangs of oddball guitar that simmer into a straight-up, collegiate guitar rager. Check ’em out, and if you’re ready to hear The Great Brain get Captain Beefheart weird on you, give their Algorithm CD a spin…

The Great Brain – “Ray”
The Great Brain – “Half-Decayed”

The Great Brain’s Algorithm at Built On A Weak Spot

Year Future 12″ EP
Gold Standard Laboratories, 2003

The sadly defunct GSL label had an amazing streak in the early 2000s, cranking out landmark releases with a diverse roster of the era’s best bands including The Locust, Mars Volta, !!!, Chromatics, GoGoGo Airheart, I Am Spoonbender, Sunshine, The Vanishing, and many more — many of which will likely be featured here sometime in future. The GSL aesthetic was ever-shifting and adventurous, from lush prog rock to icy neo-goth to hip-hip and weirdo noise, all somehow capturing the anarchic spirit of punk before punk became a commodified cultural trinket to be consumed at your local Hot Topic. Label head Sonny Kay’s good taste always warranted consideration, so after a string of notable bands featuring him as a member, like Angel Hair and my faves, The VSS (who’s essential Nervous Circuits album recently got a deluxe re-issue treatment on the Hydra Head label), I was primed to hear his latest band, Year Future. Their debut is probably the best representation of the band’s potential, along with their Hidden Hand 7″ released about a year later. And as much as I love these two releases, their debut album, First World Fever was a tedious mess I can barely listen to, a huge disappointment full of clumsy lyrics mixed front and center, dully spouted for 40-some minutes in Sonny’s whiny monotone shout. His “singing” style can be grating on the earlier releases as well, but there they were at least buried in the mix and work as an oppressive force without drowning out the band’s interesting and dense swirl of echoey guitar and synth. At their best, Year Future connected the dots between proto post-punk groups like Warsaw-era Joy Division, Public Image Limited, The Birthday Party, and Killing Joke, to the jaded Gravity Records-era post-hardcore bands like The VSS, Clikitat Ikatowi, Antioch Arrow, and Heroin. Check out some of Year Future’s finest recorded moments from a pair of tracks from their 4-song debut EP below…

DOWNLOAD:

Year Future – “All Of Your Eggs”
Year Future – “Some Bodies”

LINKS:

Year Future bio on GSL
Buy Year Future releases