Blank Dogs - On Two Sides

A lil Chrome, a lil Joy Division, a lil Ariel Pink. Good things happen here and the spooky factor is oddly comforting. A recent favorite. Headphones lying on your bed, room darkened.

HEAR

Serge Gainsbourg - Rock Around The Bunker

Jawohl!
(Special Gift für Hilts)

Yet another one of Serge's many finest moments,
this here little re-imagined nostalgia trip-slash-ode
he produced to conjure his fondly Nazi-riddled youth.

The titles are tantalizing enough:

1. "Nazi Rock"
2. "Tata Teutonne"
3. "J'Entends des Voix Off"
4. "Eva"
5. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"
6. "Zig Zag Avec Toi"
7. "Est-Ce Si Bon?"
8. "Yellow Star"
9. "Rock Around the Bunker"
10. "S.S. in Uruguay"

But don't let that stop you!

Guitars by Alan Parker ("Hurdy Gurdy Man")
Backing Vocals by Clare Torry ("Great Gig in the Sky")

Wiki summarizes like so: a 1975 album by French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, containing songs which combined pseudo-1950s musical arrangements in the manner of Grease or The Rocky Horror Show with lyrics relating to Nazi Germany and World War II, complete with Gainsbourg's usual sex and scatology.

As a young Jewish teenager in occupied France, Gainsbourg was forced to hide from the Nazi and Vichy authorities; Rock Around The Bunker was all the more controversial in a country that has had a long period of coming to grips with its role in World War II.

Songs like "Nazi Rock", "Tata Teutonne" and "SS in Uruguay" further established Gainsbourg's role as France's resident pop provocateur, and was contemporary with David Bowie's similar Nazi obsession.

OR See Allmusic's more nuanced take here.

The opening lines to album opener "Nazi Rock"
invokes The Night of The Long Knives
(wheee!):


Voici venir la nuit des longs couteaux,
Enfilez vos bas noirs les gars,

Ajustez bien vos acroches-bas,

Vos porte-jartelles et vos corsets,

Allez venez ca va se corser,

On va danser le Nazi Rock!

Hören Sie!

(props: audiofile cribbed from this here fun little industrial musicblog)

God Is My Co-Pilot - The Best Of God Is My Co-Pilot

Smart n sprawling and herky jerky and those adjectives that get tossed freely into the forum because you have nothing really tangible to compare a band and its music to. In a better world GIMCP would be as hot shit as Le Tigre thinks it is. Taking nothing away from Le Tigre... okay a little something.

_________________________

A good allmusic bio: A loosely-formed aggregation of downtown New York City players built around the openly-bisexual husband-and-wife duo of vocalist Sharon Topper and guitarist Craig Flanagin, God Is My Co-Pilot emerged as one of the most crucial voices in the underground music community of the 1990s. Exploring themes ranging from sexuality to radical politics to religious enlightenment over a martial squall channelling the spirits of no-wave noise, hardcore thrash, post-funk and avant jazz -- along with the occasional touch of Middle Eastern jump-rope chants and Finnish folk music -- the group was both astonishingly prolific and breathlessly passionate; as stated in their anthemic "We Signify," "We're co-opting rock, the language of sexism, to address gender identity on its own terms of complexity. We're here to instruct, not to distract. We won't take your attention without giving some back."

Topper and Flanagin founded God Is My Co-Pilot in 1990 after finding themselves increasingly alienated from modern music; in true D.I.Y. spirit, Flanagin bought his first guitar and soon developed a self-taught improvisational technique denying the very existence of chord progressions or other accepted patterns. With a rotating battery of percussionists, he and Topper -- a remarkable vocalist capable of stop-on-a-dime shifts from sweetness to savagery -- began performing throughout New York, becoming favorites at the famed avant-club the Knitting Factory. The first in a seemingly endless series of GodCo releases was the 1991 EP Four Steps Down the Road to Trouble, issued on the group's own Making of Americans label; their first full-length, the 34-song I Am Not This Body -- a wildly eclectic free-for-all -- followed a year later. Once the floodgates opened, they never stopped; the group's massive recorded output was itself a crucial element of their polemical stance, a direct challenge to the accepted notions of music industry production and consumption.

In 1993 alone, GodCo issued nearly ten separate releases, in a variety of formats (the full-length live CD Tight Like Fist, the EP When This You See Remember Me, and the cassette-only What Doctors Don't Tell You) on a string of different labels (including Knitting Factory Works, Dark Beloved Cloud and Shrimper, respectively). In 1994, their long affiliation with John Zorn's Jewish Culture Series resulted in the release of Mir Shlufn Nisht, a straightforward collection of traditional Hebrew and Yiddish songs; in keeping with the Orthodox directive that the word "God" not be written down, the group even altered their name to read G-d Is My Co-Pilot. By 1995, along with usual flurry of new releases, they also began collecting early singles and EPs with the two-volume set The History of Music; other notable subsequent releases included 1995's Puss 02, 1996's The Best of God Is My Co-Pilot and 1997's Excuse Me, Don't Squeeze Me, a collaboration with Melt-Banana. Get Busy followed in 1998.

HEAR

Karp - Suplex and Demo

Made me break out in an awesome rash whenever I listen to these. Still waiting to snag a copy of the Karp doc supposedly released last Fall.

When my wife questions my love for Karp I tell her that I feel they tap into something very powerful. To this she says, "Yes, earplugs."

HEAR SUPLEX

HEAR Karp's DEMO

Company Flow - Funcrusher Plus

Years ago I condemned hip hop as samey, formulaic, unimaginative, narrow, rigid, dumb and a soon-to-be-dead genre... then I heard this. Now I am not so stupid and narrow myself. Not that this is to blame, but this hasn't hurt to open me up a bit. A mindfuckblower beauty.

____________________


Allmusic.com: Featuring material recorded over 1994-1997, Company Flow's official full-length debut, Funcrusher Plus, had a galvanizing effect on the underground hip-hop scene. It was one of the artiest, most abstract hip-hop albums ever recorded, paving the way for a new brand of avant-garde experimentalism that blatantly defied commercial considerations. Musically and lyrically, Funcrusher Plus is abrasive and confrontational, informed by left-wing politics and the punked-out battle cry "independent as f*ck." It's intentionally not funky and certainly not danceable; the beats are tense and jagged, and often spaced far apart to leave room for the MCs' complex rhymes. Bigg Jus and El-P's lyrical technique is so good it's sometimes nearly impenetrable, assaulting the listener with dense barrages of words that take a few listens to decipher. Even if this is all highly off-kilter, it's also a conscious return to hip-hop on its most basic, beats-and-rhymes level; hooks or jazz and funk samples aren't even considerations here. The production is spacy and atmospheric, often employing weird ambient noises and futuristic synths that clash with the defiantly low-budget production values. It's also quite minimalist, particularly on tracks like "Vital Nerve," which is basically just a three-note synth line over a beat, and the classic Indelible MC's single "The Fire in Which You Burn," where Co-Flow trades rhymes with the Juggaknots over a skittering beat and sitar drone. Other tracks have sci-fi and conspiracy theory undertones; some are set in an Orwellian dystopia, while some pointedly satirize corporate and capitalist greed. Yet there's also some straightforward realism, as on "Last Good Sleep," a frightening domestic abuse drama. Funcrusher Plus demands intense concentration, but also rewards it, and its advancement of hip-hop as an art form is still being felt. It's difficult, challenging music, to be sure, and it's equally far ahead of its time.


HEAR

The Jazz Butcher - Bloody Nonsense

Fulfillment of a long-standing promise to Gozzer

made possible by the good offices of Processed.


I've sung the praises of Butch before:

you know, a classic British eccentric,

a real Southern Mark Smith.

~~~

AMG puts it this way:

This record is a greatest hits collection,

drawing many of its numbers from the mid-'80s albums

A Scandal in Bohemia and Sex and Travel.

Track selection here is

excellently representative of the artist,

a highly-varied clutch of Butcher's best work.

The ordering of songs is well-considered

and the sound quality is excellent.

This is an excellent introduction

for those unfamiliar with the work of this talented songwriter.

~~~

Rocky says:

Perfect slight lazy summer pop

Without a care in the world and a puckish thumb of the nose.

This is a fresh raw rip straight from my 12" vinyl purchased @ Wax Trax in '86.

Aside from "The Human Jungle", "Southern Mark Smith", sublime "Partytime"

My favorite reasons for this record are "Big Saturday", "Drink", and "Rain"

Give 'em a spin and listen to the digitized needle crackle.

Laid-back goldbricking absurdist boho frippery

never sounded so godawful good.

Whimsy, ma'am?

HEAR

Paper Bird

My new favorite song.

After my post on Bob Ferbrache, I came across this lovely little song recorded a year and a half ago.

Paper Bird just released their new EP, engineered by Ferbrache.

Notice cellist Ian Cooke playing with them in this performance.

Just another reason the Denver Scene is so interesting right now.