Archive for January, 2009

Giants – They the Undeserving LP
The Mylene Sheath

The Mylene Sheath continue to keep their batting average at an all time high as the new releases continue to stream out. Second in the batch of new releases for the label I received comes this full length LP from Giants. Giants are an instrumental “post-rock” band from the Midwest, a place where I’m pretty sure this style of music may have been invented.

Unlike other bands in this rapidly growing genre, Giants differs mainly in the fact that their songs aren’t double digit epics but come in nice small packages averaging around the five minute mark. What is neat about the album however is how the songs weave together so that they work not only as single pieces but also as a whole long piece. The songs offer repetition and progression as they build by adding layers of intricate and even delicate sounds on top of another. Quite a few bands lately have been using a similar formula and it almost always makes for some great listening and this record is no exception to that rule.

The album is sectioned off into three parts labeled “Birth”, “Plague”, and ‘Rest”.  It is if the music tells a story or at the least each section is a theme and a group of songs that were meant to go together into a larger piece. However you want to decipher the meaning, the end result is that while Giants may be another band in the heap of bands making this style of music, their record is every bit as valuable a listen as the other bands who came before them and they have a lot to offer.

The record comes on white vinyl of which there were 300 pressed. It comes packaged in a standard cover with a 12×12 insert with the band’s information on it. There was also a green with white haze color vinyl pressing that was limited to 100. The album was originally released on CD in 2007 but this is the first time it has been released on the proper format and I for one am glad it has.

Related links:

The Mylene Sheath website

Giants myspace page

The Damage Manual DVD
MVD Visual/Invisible Records

The Damage Manual was a short lived project that featured Martin Atkins (Pigface, Ministry, Killing Joke, PiL), Jah Wobble (PiL), Geordie Walker (Killing Joke) and Chris Connelly (Revolting Cocks, Ministry, Pigface). They put out an EP and LP both in the year 2000 and then that version of the band ceased existence. As you could probably imagine, the band sounded like a blend of the participants other bands which made for some rather interesting results. I was a fan of both records, but especially the EP.

Since such a collection of musicians from well-known and great bands is a unique and rare event, Martin Atkins had the foresight to document the recording process of the band’s EP on film which is now available eight years later on this DVD. The disc starts off with an eight minute intro by Martin Atkins where he tells the story of how the band came to be. It was really quite an interesting into that ended up being my favorite part of the disc. Once the intro ends the next 50 minutes is spent showing all the footage they shot of the recording process. You see all the band members laying down their respective parts in pieces of various songs. There is plenty of footage of the band brainstorming and goofing around as well. Some of the footage was quite interesting to see as I’ve never been in a real studio while a band records before so I liked getting a peak of what goes on behind the scenes. There was some other footage that could have benefited from some editing such as the numerous scenes where everyone was screwing around with the security buzzer/camera for the studio door which became painful to sit through due to the annoying sound the buzzer made while they were playing with it. It was fine for about a minute, but 5 minutes of that grew tiresome and had me starting to divert my attention to other things in my living room.

Fortunately once that past it was back to the business of watching a group of very talented musicians from bands I really like make another good record together. This DVD would have made a great companion piece to the CDs the band released and I’m a little surprised they didn’t just reissue those as part of a package with this DVD.  As a fan of those records it was neat to see how they were made and the feature was a pretty good way to spend an hour on while hibernating from the winter.

The disc also has some bonus material that consists of a couple of music videos that I had never seen before, as well as some lyrics, dub mixes and two live clips when an altered version (sans-Wobble) played live at the Double Door here in Chicago. They bonus material was a nice touch to round out the package and sort of show you what the finished product ended up being. If you are a fan of The Damage Manual or just want to get a peak behind the studio door of the making of a record, this is a pretty good way to spend some time in front of the television.

Related links:

Invisible Records

MVD Visual

The Damage Manual on myspace

Order the DVD from amazon.com

Rosemary’s Babies – Talking to the Dead CD
Ghastly Records

Rosemary’s Babies were a very short-lived New Jersey hardcore punk band who were around between 1981-1983. Their sole muscial output consisted of the Blood Lust 7″ EP which came out the year they disbanded. Those of you who are Samhain and Danzig fans will be interested to know that this was the band Eerie Von was in prior to joining Samhain. In fact they credit Eerie’s departure for Samhain as the reason Rosemary’s Babies disbanded.

Now a couple of decades later the music of Rosemary’s Babies has finally available to those of you without trust funds to spend on old punk records on ebay. The original EP along with tons of unreleased material is convienetly available on this CD. This CD actually came out a few years ago, however I think they have again reissued it or something through some arrangement with MVD.

The music is pretty standard fare hardcore punk for its time, the songs are short, fast, angry,and loud. I’ve owned the original EP for over twenty years now and a couple songs from it would always end up on mix tapes I used to make for my car or for people. This CD contains 25 tracks, 20 of which are studio recordings with the remaning songs being live from CBGB’s in 1983. The studio tracks were all remastered and it pains me to say it but they sound infinitely better than the original vinyl (which had a rather muddy sound to it). I don’t know if they remixed it as well but it sounds better than ever. While the disc itself is great, the packaging was kind of a let-down. There were no lyrics or liner notes of any kind. The booklet simply contained a couple of photos and the band logo. I wish they’d taken some time to at least put a band history and the lyrics in the packaging. It seems like it was done very much on the cheap.

I’m always happy when some classic punk from the early days gets reissued so people can hear these great bands from the past. Anyone who is a fan of Eerie Von, Samhain, or Danzig would do well to pick this up for it’s part in history, so should fans of early 1980’s hardcore so they can check out a band they probably missed out on.

Pigface – Free For All DVD
MVD Visual

The idea of watching a documentary about a Pigface tour was weird for me because for a short spell I actually worked for Pigface/Invisible records during a time they were preparing for their Fook Tour. This was back in something like 1992 if I recall correctly. What I can tell you from first hand experience is that I met a lot of cool and talented musicians, every day was some new problem, the whole thing was chaos, and at least for me it ended poorly. When the band returned they were battered, bruised, and worse for wear but in their wake they put on a bunch of really good shows.

Watching Free For All, a documentary on the 2005 Pigface tour, was proof of the old adage that “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Many of the faces had changed, so had the location for the Invisible compound, but the problems, the chaos, and the general way the Pigface business was being conducted was very much the same. I was a bit skeptical at just how interesting this documentary on a band that is arguably past its prime could be especially since I hadn’t been a fan of their past few records. I went into it with an open mind however and soon found myself quite immersed in the film.

The documentary starts off with a very brief history of Pigface that quickly gets you to the time that this particular tour was being planned out. While early Pigface tours were a who’s-who of Industrial Rock bands all on the same stage, the modern day version for me was more of a who’s-that? I’ll admit to not following the band for the better part the last decade so the players may be more familiar to those that have stuck with the band all this time. The only recognizable faces to me were Martin Atkins (of course), En Esch (from KMFDM), Charles Levi, and Chris Mackey (from Evil Mothers who also doubles as the Pigface tour manager).

It was very interesting to see how a tour of this magnitude gets put together in the modern age. Martin was always very resourceful and for someone who has enjoyed varying degrees of success in the music business it is rather admirable to see how much of his label and operation is DIY.  They ended up screen printing their own shirts for this tour. They also had a rather odd concept of handing out coupons to concert-goers for sizable discounts on the band’s and label’s merchandise that essentially would make the show itself free for the money you saved with these coupons if you bought a shirt and a CD. Considering that so many people will purchase at least a shirt at a show, getting one for half the normal price sure would have made the evening out a lot less of a hit to the wallet. The concept wasn’t without its flaws though as you’ll learn in the documentary.

It was interesting to see the dynamic between the bands on tour and the members of said bands. It wasn’t without its share of drama which from a spectator point of view was totally fascinating and something I wish they would have dug even deeper into. There were problems with members who were supposed to play on the tour and backed out, as well a problem or two with the bands who were on the tour with Pigface.

There are some live clips from the various shows on this tour but I don’t think they ever showed a song performed in its entirety, instead the meat and potatoes of the documentary is all the “behind the scenes” stuff which makes for a far more interesting story in the long run. One thing I wished they would have done is give more screen time to some of the other players in the band such as En Esch. It seemed that Martin got the lion’s share of the camera time which makes sense to a degree but it would have been nice to know what the others were feeling at various times throughout the tour. Overall though it was a very interesting documentary film that turned out to be a lot more fascinating that my expectations thought it would be. The thing felt like it was over in no time and I actually wished it was a bit longer and went a bit deeper.

The film runs about an hour and twenty minutes and as I stated above, the time seemed to pass very quickly. The video is letterbox but not anamorphic widescreen which means those of you like me with fancy widescreen televisions will have to zoom the screen to have it fit your TV. Keeping with the band tradition, this was a very DIY project. The video quality, while pretty good, is certainly not done on professional gear but more like consumer grade video cameras. The audio is straight stereo. There are no bonus features whatsoever and the packing itself was fairly minimal in the information it presents.

Despite not having been a fan of their recent works, I found the documentary to be quite fascinating. If you have been following the band up through the modern day or have an interest in watching the life of a touring band this is definitely worth checking out. If you have never heard of Pigface before though you’d be better suited checking out some of their earlier CDs or the DVD of Glitch.

Some kind soul emailed me a link to this video of Toothpaste playing “Oh Yeah Come On” from their reunion at the Lucky Gator Loft a year ago. If you look closely you can even see me shooting photos in the video! I sure wish they’d do another reunion show because they were great!

It wasn’t enough that they just announced they are reissuing all their albums on colored vinyl next month, now they had to go and top it with the announcement of a limited edition box set containing all the albums on white vinyl. The box is limited to 275 hand-numbered copies and will be sold exclusively at their shows on their upcoming mini-tour. Unfortunately for me they aren’t playing in Chicago!

I’m betting that these will sell out before their third show. My only hope of owning one without paying some vulture on ebay is if I win the contest they are running on their website right here.