TMT Cerberus 06 At Arm’s Length

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.

----

Snowstorm
Self Titled [7-inch]

[Malleable Records; 2009]

http://www.malleablerecords.com

By Mangoon

Rapid fire mini-bursts of flamboyant skronk in the vein of Harry Pussy, early Black Dice, or Drunkdriver, this Philadelphia bass and drum duo deliver a blizzard of hi-octane noise rock with metal interludes that lead to sizable accumulations of fine auditory powder. Live, they dress in all white, either in stolen biohazard or beekeeper suits, and their music produces similar whiteout conditions. The groups' blizzards of bludgeoning bass and flurries of frenetic percussion double as festering corpuscles on the verge of major pus emanations or power drills trepanating the craniums of sewer mutants. Its 12 songs are delivered in under 7 minutes, an immediacy that harkens back to the attention-deficit days of the Bleeaurgh!!! compilations and all the glory of those 5-second hardcore songs.

----

----

FNU Ronnies
FNU Ronnies [12-inch]

[Night People; 2009]

http://www.raccoo-oo-oon.org/np/

By Jspicer

This one-sided silkscreened 12-inch may seem a bit extravagant for three tracks worth of noise, but once the needle drops on screech-infested opener “Watchful Eye,” you'll soon realize that perhaps even two sides — or your entire collection — may forever be perverted and warped just by letting FNU Ronnies into the party. Playing like Michael Myers making love to Pretty Hate Machine, FNU Ronnies create a wall of undesirable but strangely intoxicating distortion. The end product are three despicable tracks of true filth that more resembles the backward language of hell rather than the forward-thinking of progressive musicians — perhaps due to the split Philadelphia and Oakland locations which FNU Ronnies resides. This LP is the music of the streets as the gutters overflow with piss, blood, and booze. It's the tattered voices of 80-year-old smokers who breathe out tar and smoke. Yet, like the addicted, we too cannot resist another puff of industrial intoxicants. Puff, puff, pass.

----

----

Kabyzdoh Obtruhamchi
Estcho[2xCD-R]

[Stunned Records; 2009]

http://www.stunnedrecords.blogspot.com/

By Gabriel Keehn

The Kraut is strong with this one. From a psychedelic fortress deep in the woods of Western Russia rumbles forth this double-disc behemoth from Slavic madman Sergey Kozlov (a.k.a. Kabyzdoh Obtruhamchi). Only his second release (the first being a 2008 cassette, also on Stunned), these two discs offer us an extended peek into a realm where anachronisms, such as tribal drums and pre-linguistic wails, mingle utterly freely with electro-acoustic improvisation and gritty electronic blips and whirls. A strangely cohesive reinterpretation of an overload of garbled Can tracks broadcast across the frozen tundra to a decaying radio in the bedroom of a young Russian, these two discs show a maturity and textural awareness that one does not expect on just a second release. Every sound fits into the overall picture -- from the icy background tones to the arrhythmic clicks that feel like misfiring, stiffening synapses to the far-off drums of a lost tribe huddled around a fire on a frozen lake to the guitar lines ripped straight from the Aurora Borealis -- every component of these massive jams signals place, time, feeling, and it's a beautiful thing. I can just hear Florian Fricke calling across the ages, “Sergey, I am your father.”

----

----

Altar Eagle
Judo Songs [CS]

[Digitalis; 2009]

http://www.digitalisindustries.com/

By Jspicer

Just how many projects can Brad Rose maintain before collapsing under the weight of it all? Hopefully the amount is infinite, as Altar Eagle — Rose's latest project with wife and musical cohort Eden Hemming — create lush ambient landscapes that teeter on the edge of pop but never fall into the serendipitous trap of meshing upbeat melodies with experimental music scapes. Judo Songs plays like radio static, each track unraveling as if it's slightly out of antenna range. Snippets of Eden's breathy vocals cower behind waves of calm drone, waiting to ambush the listener should they ever escape their hazy prison. While you may be tempted to reach into the air to tune the dial, just give it time — soon you'll realize just how melodic Altar Eagle can be with a static veil covering their music box songs.

----

----


Timmy's Organism
"Squeeze the Giant" [7-inch]

[Sacred Bones; 2009]

www.sacredbones.com

By Mangoon

This handsome new gatefold 2x7-inch package courtesy of the Sacred Bones crew is only made duly enjoyable by the far-out sounds residing in its grooves. "Squeeze the Giant" is the solo debut of Timmy “Vulgar” Lampinen, the weirdo behind two of Detroit's most truly effed up bands of the 21st century: Clone Defects and Human Eye. With the Big Three all on the verge of bankruptcy, and the Rust Belt becoming no more than a distant memory of America's once strong manufacturing base, the time sees right for Lampinen to branch out in this manner. Plumbing the depths of his own soul, Timmy draws from a primordial well of post Beefheart avant-garde brutism buoyed to a tradition of post-industrial punk damage that could only come from residing in the ever-declining metropolis that is the Motor City. The titular track has an air of nascent Royal Trux while “Body of Love” and “No Hassle” look to mid-70s Cleveland and the proto-punk barn-burners particular to the whole Pere Ubu/Rocket from the Tombs gang for inspirado. Opening track “Tree Thirsty Earthquake” is a swooning sea chantey whose sweep echo produces an oceanic throb for Timmy to croon an off kilter ballad to, which like the music of outsider folkies from Simon Finn to Tiny Tim is as sincere as it is weird. Although this record sounds like a galaxy of musicians contributed to it, Timmy does it mostly alone, save for some sparse help from members of Kansas' Terrible Twos. Definitely some of the most outer worldly punk damage you're likely to hear this year.

----

----

Elephant Micah/GHQ/Vollmar
Summer Tryst Haunt [7-inch]

[L'animaux Tryst; 2009]

http://www.lanimauxtryst.com/

By Jspicer

The end of the line has come for L'animaux Tryst's seasonally-inspired Tryst Haunt series of 7-inches. What began with Matt Lajoie's (Cursillistas) desire to explore local musical darlings in Maine grew into a man-sized exploration of folk's far reaches. With the last three 7-inch LPs by Midwestern-based Elephant Micah and Vollmar, as well as the mind-melting meditations of GHQ, Tryst Haunt expands from its Northeastern hollow. Elephant Micah's two song effort, “In Midnight” b/w “Ocean Floor,” proves to be another in a long stretch of consistent variations of traditional folk ideals. “In Midnight” is the stunner of the two, with Joe O'Connell's echoing vocals and a darkly strummed melody mimicking the sound of disembodied music cutting through a clear summer night. Requiem for Bhopal from Steve Gunn and Marcia Bassett's GHQ are 12-minutes of lonely guitar drone that plays a cold, icy foil to the ebon warmth of Elephant Micah. [Justin] Vollmar's “New Best Friend” b/w “Flood Punch/Holy Blessing” continues to find the Bloomington, Indiana singer/songwriter becoming a Hoosier version of Phil Elverum with a blend of stream-of-consciousness lyrics and positive pop melodies. Each 7-inch interprets summer differently, but despite their differences they exist nicely as a package. Listening to one after the other breeds a greater appreciation for the highs and lows of the sun-drenched months to come.

----

----

Andrew Coltrane
Plagued Orphans[CS]

[Young Tapes; 2009]

http://www.youngtapes.com/

By Gabriel Keehn

Michigan has always been the sort of locus of North American noise. One of the latest and most exciting artists to come out of the area is Andrew Coltrane (who also goes by the name Cold Turkey). Coltrane is one of the most prolific of the Michigan noise artists, releasing since 2005 a bevy of mega harsh noise (much of it via his own Hermitage Tapes label). This cassette on the fantastic Young Tapes label represents a bit of a departure from Coltrane's normal fare which is characterized by pure hammering steel scraping orgies (for reference see his Symphony of Black Holes CD-R released last year on Cut Hands). Here we see the artist operating with many of the same raw sounds used on most of his releases (blank metal racket, steam hiss, unidentifiable and decayed humming), but to a much different effect. We are not bludgeoned by the sheer black wall of violent noise Coltrane is so proficient with or scared as a quick ramp up in volume leaps out at us from a closet, but here these sounds are molded into patterns and forms, becoming lullabies for robots. This tape reminds me of what I always wanted industrial music to sound like: a tape recorder stuck inside an abandoned but still operating factory and left alone. Very alone.

----

----

Schnüffler
Buero Bereich [CS]

[Holy Cheever Church; 2009]

http://holycheeverchurchrecords.blogspot.com/

By Jspicer

Schnüffler's Liz Allbee and Gino Robair credit their moniker as slang for huffing. Whether the pair is loaded on fumes or just adept at transforming sound into metallic vapor may be up for debate, but Buero Bereich leaves little to the imagination. The Trumpet/Drum duo put aside their normal devices of destruction in favor of strangling and manipulating mixing boards. The two tracks end up the work of children continuously smashing toy walkie-talkies. The blips, squelches, and beeps emitted from Buero Bereich are those of morse buttons being pounded, batteries being disconnected and reconnected to create disjointed static, and shoe canvas grinding away at the cheap plastic casings and poorly soldered electronics. Should Allbee and Robair ever decide to appropriate a video to coincide with their smash and grab, none would be more fitting than Art of Noise's “Close (to the Edit)” — clearly the work of a group high on gas and paint.

Most Read



Etc.