TMT Cerberus 05 Ted Williams’ Cryogenically Frozen Head

In this ever-expanding musical world, there's a wealth of 7-inches, cassettes, CD-Rs, and objet d'art being released that, due to their limited quantities and adventurous sonics, go unnoticed by the public at large. TMT Cerberus seeks to document the aesthetic of these home recorders and backyard labels. Access the archive here and email us here.

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Sam Goldberg
Winter Hallucinations [CD-R]

[Pizza Night; 2009]

http://clevelandpizzanight.blogspot.com/

By Jspicer

As Cleveland's scene turns from burgeoning to full-fledged, it's wonderful those so instrumental in garnering the broken city some much-deserved praise are finally receiving a bit of individual pats on the back. So it seems fitting to open the mailbox and find some continued goodness flowing from the heart of rock and roll. Goldberg compiles the three Winter Hallucinations cassettes into a six-song CD-R as homage to the passing cold and a welcome reminder to embrace the springtime bliss. As the title suggests, Winter Hallucinations is icy and dense. Goldberg's wall of ambient guitar and pedals rolls in like the foggy breath of children heavy with oxygen after a day of enjoying snow banks and street sledding. What separates Goldberg's batch of slow-rolling ambient is speed — never does a track within Winter Hallucinations exceed five minutes. Rather than draw out his ideas, Goldberg's pithy approach cracks down on the noodlings and need to show off, delivering six songs that run the length of a BBC sitcom. The lack of pretense, despite the conjured imagery, is much needed log on the fire to keep Winter Hallucinations warm and cozy in the face of its frozen veneer.

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Seven Lies About Girls
Make Yr Own Lightning [4xCD-R]

[Teen Action Records; 2008]

http://www.teenactionrecords.com/

By Gabriel Keehn

Ohio-based Teen Action Records house band Seven Lies About Girls has created a monster. This quadruple CD-R straps a couple megatons of psychedelic dynamite to its stomach, lights itself on fire, and runs straight into your stereo. The release is essentially one truly massive track, clocking in at a preposterous 3 1/2 hours, that redefines the term “jam band.” Comprised of guitar, drums (helmed by Aaron Hibbs of Sword Heaven), and some electronic manipulation, the group blazes a trail through the sonic sphere with alternately noisy, forceful tribal blasts and more open, outer space meteor gunk. Through it all, there is not one second that could come close to being described as flimsy, weak, or just not awesome. From the get-go (the first disc dives straight into pure psych groove delirium), a tone of “no bullshit” is established so concretely that even when the pace seems to drop below spine-distorting, the track is held confidently together by its own gravity and inertia. The release comes in some of the coolest packaging I can ever remember; the four CD-Rs are housed in the four slit open corners of a glued-together, old, decorated LP sleeve (mine came in a copy of Men at Work's Business as Usual).

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U.S. Girls – "Me and Yoko" [7-inch]

[Not Not Fun; 2009]

http://www.notnotfun.com

By Mangoon

Megan Remy's obsession with the reverb-drenched Spector and Meek produced music of the early '60s continues with this fetching little piece of wax courtesy of Britt Daniel's Not Not Fun imprint. As U.S. Girls, the Chicago native has already showcased her fixation with those echo-laden pop-tones manufactured in the Brill Building and beyond; her CD-R on Chocolate Monk featured a ripping cover of Dave Clark Five's “Bits and Pieces,” and her rendition of The Kinks' “Days” has become one of her live staples. It's in that spirit that she lays down "Me and Yoko" whose old timey lead-in sample makes way for a booming back-and-forth bass riff that could pass for Les Rallizes Denudes providing a pummeling back drop for a drunken Shangri-Las or maybe Mammal supplying some bass bombs for Lesley Gore; its faintly saccharine rhythms are delivered in a singularly unique doom drone package. As Remy's earnestly desperate vocals come into the mix, her devastated caterwauling, slightly off-key and piercing, hang precariously in the air, ready to crack and fall back to Earth at any moment. It's a devastating interpretation of pop no doubt; Remy's gutter diva style amplifies the pain of pop with added malaise and heroin despondence. The B-side, "Rise + Go" is a little less pentatonic and a little more ambient; its crackling guitars undulate in large tidal sways as its no-fi boom-box production only adds to the heart rending sincerity of it all.

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Sean McCann
Phylum Sigh [CS]

[DNT; 2009]

http://www.dntrecords.com

By Jspicer

Sean McCann's latest is a tour de force of wails, chimes, tweets, and spasms. Like the aftermath of a tornado ripping through a Medieval carnival, Phylum Sigh is an organic treat. The album draws its power from the sounds of busted Ferris wheels, carnie barkers, warped children's jewelry boxes, and any kitchen sink-associated sound that can be transformed into the happy sounds of children at play amidst the rubble that was once a spritely theme park. Often, McCann's Frankenstein creations border on the scary and sadistic — the sort of monkey-grinding fair that would accompany It, as he torments his long-time victims for the last time — but for reasons unexplainable, as distant and jarring as the songs seem, there's a familiarity to cling to. Whatever specters conjured from Phylum Sigh's ghost town are ran away by Peter Pan happy thoughts. During the darkest times, the happiest in all of us can flip the script and save us from damnation.

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Juan Matos Capote
Jabal [CS]

[Circuit Torcat; 2009]

http://www.circuittorcat.com/

By Mangoon

Across the pond, interest in the electronic underground has been spreading virally throughout Europe since the late 90s; its tendrils weaving itself throughout England and Scotland, the Scandinavian north lands, and of course Austria and Germany (where electronic music was invented). Finally, Spain is saying “me too.” Circuit Torcat is a new Spanish imprint run out of Barcelona by visual and sonic artist Juan Matos Capote, and its first release is one of Capote's own. Jabal is a contemplative work that sees Capote testing the limits of his centerpiece instrument, a four oscillator pink and grey tone box that buzzes, squeaks, and squeals sanctimoniously throughout. Juan's expertise in hardware-hacking comes from studying under circuit-bending progenitor Reed Ghazala. Since then, Juan has become an expert in the field ripping through and rerouting consumer electronics much like a hungry bear would rip through pieces of wolf flesh. Jabal is a made-up word for Juan's secret spot of solace, a mountaintop overlooking Barcelona's booming metropolis that has for him become a sacred place where he communes with nature. There is a meditative aspect of this cassette that undoubtedly stems from those fleeting moments of peace experienced on the mountaintop. In addition to the oscillator, Jabal is peppered with Capote's own personal field recordings (much taken from atop the mountain), weaving bits of his own personal auditory nostalgia with gently oscillating sine waves to converge in on some serious prospects of nirvana, though tinged with a sense of foreboding paranoia. The tape comes in a miniscule edition of 50 and boasts full-color card stock and beautifully printed tape labels, all courtesy of Capote himself.

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Pop. 1280
Pop. 1280 [CD-R]

[Self-Released; 2009]

http://www.myspace.com/population1280

By Jspicer

The New York cityscape revolves around the first release from NYC avant-punksters Pop. 1280. Encapsulating the time period between The Voidoids [first] end and [second] beginning of Gang of Four, Pop. 1280 explore a twisted day in the life of average citizen in the World capital of bright lights, high rents, and low living. “Bedbugs” begins the journey as our narrator details the creepy crawlies gnawing away his skin as he tries to grab a few winks in a foreign habitat. “Times Square” finds the narrator waking up to the neon of the New York institution, seeking out the barren paradise for dancing girls with a pocket full of sex. “Themanwithnoskin” and “Is it Ugly?” play up the archetypes to be discovered while wandering the bustling sidewalks of NYC -- the freaks, geeks, beauties, and silicon oozing from every alley and doorway. Every anthem is heavy, slowly pushed out of its bone dry toothpaste tube. Pop. 1280 wrap their NYC, not in the lavish colors of Christo, but in the trash and sleaze of the NYC underbelly, proving there's still room for old punk influence to infiltrate modern ideology.

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Gary War
"Zontag" [7-inch]

[Sacred Bones; 2009]

http://www.sacredbones.com

By Mangoon

Gary War might just be the true life personification of King Crimson's 21st century schizoid man. An expatriate of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti band, Gary and his gang of shitgazin' shamans are quickly climbing the ranks of the American lofi-ocracy; their trademark warble reads as a futurist interpretation of Edward Ka-Spel and his Legendary Pink Dots project; but while LPD were musical diviners and remote viewers themselves, Gary War blazes past their perceived future world at warp speed while managing to stray away from a lot of the Flash Gordon sci-fi goofiness Ka-Spel's project had fallen victim to over the years. On "Zontag," Gary undoubtedly draws from his experience recording and playing with Ariel Pink; the track has the feel of Haunted Graffiti working through a retelling of Neil Young's Trans as its theremin slices and syncopated synth rhythms propel you through its auditory wormhole. "Don't Go Out Tonite" galvanizes Gary's loner leanings, a solid serving of robot vocals and crystal healing that falls in somewhere in between Chrome and Blank Dogs. Definitely a sizable cut above the rest of the bountiful crop of lo-fi bands, who like the nanobots in the grey goo scenario, seem to be proliferating at an alarming rate.

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Pete Fosco
Autumn Fire Blues [CS]

[Digitalis; 2009]

http://www.digitalisindustries.com/

By Jspicer

Oftentimes, guitar-driven music can become lost within its own Minotaur-infested hedgerow. Those who would rebuke and cringe at the thought of devolving into nothing but a jam artist often overlook structure and composition, even amidst announced improvisations. Pete Fosco, for the amount of subtle ambling he conjures, is also quick to avoid falling into jam band pitfalls throughout Autumn Fire Blues. Much like the populace of cold metropolises in the grip of Old Man Winter, Fosco takes a bit to warm up and get going. The A-side is dominated with ether, as Fosco works to shake off the blustery winds and cold fog of his imagined fall. The brisk morning temperatures and chameleon hues of summer succumbing to fall is mirrored in Fosco's delicate drones, transforming pedal-heavy anthems into mirrors of iced rivers and heavy-breathed pedestrians furiously walking to warm up their cold and tired bones. The B-side doesn't stoke a fire to thaw out the frozen visages of Autumn Fire Blues, but it does begin to breed smoke within the embers. Fosco even revisits an A-side track, “Mount Zion Road,” by adding light splashes of sun-drenched tremolo, as if to part the gray clouds that have been keeping his citizens in the cold dark of shorter days. The cassette's climax, “Drones for Empty Houses,” finally delivers the warm hearth that has escaped Fosco's ode to the end of warm sunlight. Not once does Fosco carry on too long or dare make flesh where there should be only bone. Autumn Fire Blues is best left bare and uncovered, so as to enjoy the refreshing winds and cooling rain before winter beats the optimism of summer from our weary bodies.

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