Thursday, January 27, 2011

Rapeman - Inki's Butt Crack b/w Song Number One 7"

1. Inki's Butt Crack
2. Song Number One
Sub Pop Singles 1989

plus Live on WZRD 7/13/88
1. Intro
2. Radar Love Lizard
3. Superpussy
4. Trouser Minnow
5. Coition Ignition Mission
6. Up Beat
7. Outro

28 Minutes, 31MB 256K (single) and 128K (live set) MP3

What do you get when you cross Big Black with Scratch Acid? This. Anyone clicking this knows what they're getting into: Albini's antagonism, brittle guitars, angry bass and even the drums (with the dual snare attack) sound mean. I used to think that this record wasn't recorded well, but over time came to realize that the Rapeman material was in fact excellent recordings of instruments that are dialed in pretty weird. There's no bass to the bass (or I suppose I should say that the bass is all harsh upper-mids with David Wm Simms' trademark "strings slapping the fretboard" tone) The guitars have the presence knobs stuck at 30 and what is an otherwise scathing tone sounds perfect here. If Albini tried to play power chord rock, it would sound awful. The guitars tend to be sparse and annoying and violently stabbed into the music, with the bass and drums propelling everything forward. I listen to it now and think it sounds a bit hollow, but that's just because every other recording that's been thrown at me in the last decade has been brick walled. I threw the live on WZRD set on there for good measure. The recording is blown out and the levels go weird at times, but it's a good listen if for no reason other than to hear the in-between song banter, alternate lyrics and DJ's lack of charisma.

The Sub Pop Singles were limited runs released as part of a subscription. You didn't know what you'd get, but Sup Pop had great quality control back in the day. By the time I got wise, all of the "good" releases from that series (Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, etc.) had come and gone. As such, I picked this one up on Yahoo's auction site when they were trying to make a run at eBay's business model sometime in the mid-90s. Seeing as I paid less than $10 for this, I think it's safe to say that Yahoo never attracted many buyers.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Crownhate Ruin - Intermediate 7"

1. Better Still if they Don't Know
2. Every Minute's Sucker
Dischord/TC Ruin 1995
7:37, 14MB 256K MP3

A lot of the music from this period (and well.. pretty much any period) feeds off, borrows, steals and appropriates from its contemporaries. Hoover and Indian Summer were some of the first bands birthed from the hardcore scene that more or less got the 2nd (or 3rd, depending on how you want to look at it) wave "emo" ball rolling. I don't want to bore anyone with explanations of what emo was then as opposed to now (Andy Radin explained it years ago at fourfa.com) but long story short: before Dashboard Confessional (which itself is an amusingly out of date reference point) and the floppy haired Myspace bands (ditto) turned post-hardcore into pointless melodramatic histrionic hissy-fits, people bored with the then reigning hardcore template started experimenting with slowing down, adding dissonance, loud-soft dynamics and basically throwing some wrenches in the mix as far as playing with what was up until then primarily a by the seat of your pants, immediate music style. Plenty of bands had broken with the mold before all of that: The Minutemen upped punk/hardcore's musicality and even Black Flag slowed things down and got dissonant and introspective as time went on. DC had their own take on things with the famous "Revolution Summer" and post that, there was a lot of slowed down weirdness happening that made moshers scratch their heads. Some of it morphed into bland college rock and some, like Hoover, retained a bit of a sinister bite.

Anyhow, yeah. Back to Hoover. Seeing as I was raised in the midwest during the early 90's (ie, pre-internet) we were always last to catch wind of any musical trends. I went with some friends to see a local band and they ended up opening for Hoover. I wasn't sure what to think at the time. The energy was undeniable, but I couldn't really figure out what was supposed to be happening. The time signatures and tempos changed constantly and it wasn't something that my up until then Gorilla Biscuit saturated musical palate knew how to digest. I remembered being wowed and getting the record, but it took months for me to "get it". Once this wave of music started happening, you had everyone wearing sweaters, highwaters, clunky work shoes and gas station jackets.

Fast forward a year and Hoover splintered into Regulator Watts and The Crownhate Ruin. I personally Think Hoover was greater than the sum of its parts, but what always struck me was the fact that both of those bands sounded like Hoover, yet sounded nothing alike.

Fred Erskine is a big part of why I picked up the bass instead of guitar back in my formative years. The bass really carried Hoover and The Crownhate Ruin's music, and again, after a steady diet of hardcore and crossover, it was encouraging to see that the bass could play a more prominent role than just "lower guitar". I was lucky enough to see The Crownhate Ruin a couple of times. Once with Vin on drums and once with his replacement (if I remember correctly) who while a competent drummer really struggled to play his parts live. Vin is an was a beast on the drums and his absurdly quick rolls and cymbal grabs are pretty intense. Vin's previous band, 1.6 Band, is somewhat active again and they're definitely worth checking out.

Anyhow, for whatever reason all of The Crownhate Ruin's material was released at more or less the same time. They put out 3 7"s, a split with Karate and a sole LP: Until the Eagle Grins. Intermediate was recorded about halfway through the band's lifespan, but before their LP.