Various Artists: Rampage Tarantismo Summit: Volume 1

[Rampage; 2009]

Styles: a gamut is being run, from noise to improv to punk-noise to future-prog
Others: Functional Blackouts, Panicsville, Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Jazkammer

If you look closely at the four points propping up the initial installment of the Tarantismo Summit, none of them seem to make much sense inhabiting a split LP together. KK Rampage are punk-ish brutes with guitars that dent skulls. Smegma are a poop-y Portland improv outfit with enough underground cred to rival the greats. Insect Joy play a sort of impenetrable freak-prog. Ghost Moth are noisy and have a hard-on for ornate instrumentation and skronk.

The one bond linking these bands to the same quad is the will to push things forward, as The Streets would say, and there’s no excuses if you’re not ready to jump aboard, my friend. All four of these acts are wacky enough that no one in their right mind would listen to them, yet all four likely find that when they are appreciated, they’re really, really, really appreciated.

Tarantismo finds all four in top form. Smegma contribute the first half-side of vinyl, and it’s a doozy. What do kazoos, drops of water, retarded tom- and hand-drumming, sudden blurts, chants, whistles, skittering electronic tones, and shakers have in common? Smegma. What do choppy digital effects, voice samples, cymbal crashes, and a total lack of structure have in common? Smegma. What do high-pitched squeals, TV static, radio dials, short-lived bass guitar bloops, and random drum-stick-on-kitchen-counter taps have in common? You guessed it: Frank Stallone. I mean, Smegma. They rule shit.

Next up are KK Rampage, and the Chicago act offer a tweaked version of their tweaker-scum vitriol. They’re definitely recording in a cave or an echo chamber on this shit; either that or singer Johnny Rampage stowed himself in a meat locker for a few months and used the starvation to push himself to new heights. Either way, this is hungry music, urgent and looking for something, anything, to cure its aching head. Of course, if you were to incur a headache you would never leave a KK Rampage record playing; that’s just stupid.

KK are, as I’ve said so many times, the rightful continuation of the momentum created by Rhode Island bands like Arab On Radar and Six Finger Satellite, especially when you focus on their rhythm section, but the multi-layered vocals, overall sloppiness of the guitar sound and haunting sections of songs like “Dark Voices Calling Out” are all calling cards of a project very much its own influence. Flailing, flapping, floating, flipping and flopping, KK Rampage are that fish you caught but can’t bring yourself to club. But you will; you will if you want to eat.

Insect Joy? I’m just going to skip them...

Kidding!!! IJ are like a bad cabaret act on rewind or a mariachi band that plays only pitch-bended keytars or a fuzzy nightmare from which you may or may not awake. The Floridians conduct their songs much like a maestro conducts her/his ensemble, only they really seem to have little control of their subjects. Like an author using simple, snappy sentences to get out of the way of a story, Insect Joy channel inner dementia and move to the effin’ side once they do. The sounds that emit are disorienting but tethered to a rhythmic component, which helps the whole dish go down smoother. The space-age sine wave that follows doesn’t make any sense coupled with the preceding performance, and that somehow renders the song cycle perfect for the likes of Tarantismo.

And now, finally, Ghost Moth from Brooklyn, an army of noise instruments gone horribly wrong, a saxophonist tooting away on a deep-city rooftop to no one in particular as the ravages of the city crackle on below, a high-pitched tone sounding from the netheregions of the soul that could either be a patient’s heart rate or an aural warning of impending dddoom, depending on whether you’re conscious or dreaming (I like to hover in between!). GM produce with machine-like efficiency the chaos of a bleeding, burning city, a land torn between greedy capitalists and the Rest of Us. Or at least that’s how I read it.

What else do you need to know? Pick up this crumpled-up piece of noise-waste before it disappears like your friends will if you play this at a party.

A1. Smegma - Between Two Worlds

A2. K.K. Rampage - As Colors Fail

A3. K.K. Rampage - No Sign Of The Sun Returning

A4. K.K. Rampage - A Little Blood On The Curtains

A5. K.K. Rampage - Dark Voices, Calling Out

A6. K.K. Rampage - Touch Of The Serpent

B1. Insect Joy - Cursoria

B2. Insect Joy - White Pony

B3. Insect Joy - Windrills

B4. Ghost Moth - Hamas Movements 1&2

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