John Thill

This month in schizophrenic retardation: I listened to a bunch of tapes I’ve had for a while, but have been too lazy to sit and engage with. I had me a Thursday afternoon of it. I drank a lot and listened to some of the most unabashedly awesome and stupid music I’ve heard in a while. I guess I had been expecting crushing harsh noise cuz I’m ignorant as fuck, but listening to the Bengeorge7 / Buffle split tape, released by Breaking World Records and Dutch Beer, I heard some of the best jingoistic idiot rock since Riverside became a cesspool of track mark post-humans. Bengeorge7 provides some of the best half-assed freedom rock I’ve heard in a long time. And by “freedom,” I mean songs about fuckin’ freedom, kicking ass, rubbing one out into and American flag while thinking about the victims of 9/11. This neon West-Mass shit is hardcore dopeness that impresses me with its weirdness far more than say, the Fat Worm of Error full length that was on Load. Sure this music is juvenile and a bad joke, but so good because it just flies all over the place, getting grungy, getting Nintendo, getting hardcore, getting psychedelic – all while holding down a mentally retarded vision of recent history and busting loose with transcendental patriotism. The other side of this tape is Buffle from Belgium and the atmosphere is definitely more staid. Less look at me rage like a retard on Christmas. The vibe tends to be more like the outcroppings of Finnish sound that have sprouted as of late. Childish, but less forested than the Finns, more optimistic and pre-verbal. Fun and fucked-up. Unfortunately, no overblown freetard nationalism on this side of the tape – still good though – even though it starts to sounds suspiciously like art-music in places.

The next analog freakout I put in the cassette player was a tape by Frozen Corpse called Deep Fried Brain. As I started to play this sound slab, my expectations were rather low. This starts off in a noisy/droney mechanical whine, but luckily it intensifies and becomes downright creepy, with some weird tortured wails – I’m not talking death metal fakery here, I mean weird underground animal torture shit, that you’re not even convinced you are hearing right. Como. Como que. Fluid onslaught that makes it happen, makes the stomach drop, produces that proper sense of illness in the listener. Side two kinda fucks me up though, clatter that really sorta sucks my soul out through the nostril, while weird vomit sounds are made. I feel like I’m in some gut-wrenching eastern European horror film. I kinda had to lay down at one point and say “fuck nah” to the crushing jet liner sounds that were coming down. It was like parking outside of Ontario International during a panic attack. Evil sorts of strip mall / vacant lot visions were hurtling at me. Then, further on, there’s some totally 50’s scifi shit that starts blowing up. Reminds me of Karlheinz Stockhausen, but evil, really fucking evil. This sucker was done by the Cauliflower Dreams sector of the Bread and Animals label, which busts forth quite a bit of hardcore dopeness on a regular basis.



Then I played guitar with a Tecate tall can for a bit. After that I listened to the Monster Dudes split with Rocket Pony. So this record is half good. Rocket Pony is pretty exctuciatingly shitty. It was basically like watching the Passion of the Christ in a theater full of big box Christians with their fat dripping off them, but they’re from Canada and all, so maybe they don’t understand American FUCK YOU spirit. Fuck nah doggy. I could make noise that good by dragging my dick across a cheese grater. Monster Dudes on the other hand rules the school. Like the pre-school and shit. Good retarded brain groping by Noisey, Idaho’s best father-son noise rock asteroid. (By the way, Chris Payne is a shitty Christian cuz he’s bugging me to do work right now. I saw God. The tape kept rolling. I threw a Tecate at Chris Payne and I got swallowed in the garbage that is my life. First, some old Chinese food grabbed my leg and started saying like “I mmonnnna eat yo face, grandma!” and I was like “Ain’tcho grandma doggy!” Then a coffee spilled toxic mold on me and I started breathing funny and then the old ink jet printer started telling me “Give up, human shit it it it it tititititi.” I was like “nah, bitch-ass robot puta.” Then Chris Payne asked me to do more shit and a dirty shirt covered my mouth as I tried to scream. My roommates were too high to hear and so I died and harsh noise still sucks). Psychehdelic Montessorri SCHOOL! Terror Tapes dubbed it. Venec, wants to know if we’re done yet? “YES!”