Yakuza - Transmutations

Chicago’s YAKUZA has succeeded in garnering attention of all kinds, all the while not compromising the band’s free-flowing and spontaneous musical integrity. Regardless, YAKUZA remains independent, maintaining an almost indescribable sound that picks and plucks from a wealth of influences and inspirations. Staying deeply rooted in a genre all its own, YAKUZA’s existence lies on a metal base with progressive flair, while somehow also incorporating elements of jazz, world beat, and post-rock ambience. Picture (if you can) a mixture of King Crimson, all periods of John Coltrane’s career, Tortoise, and Napalm Death. The end result is captivating, a sound that Rolling Stone, Revolver, Alternative Press, the Chicago Sun Times, the Chicago Tribune, All That Jazz and countless others all agree is refreshingly original, technically proficient, all the while still staying very metal. "Exploration, experimentation, riding the line between the familiar and the foreign; the essential elements for YAKUZA have already been established.

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Oxbow - Narcotic story

Oxbow is one of the rare bands that exhibits such a glacial lack of compromise, from the start settling into a style that's harsh at best, and using music outside of their bubble as base componentry rather than outright influence. Never "metal" but nearly always "heavy,” Oxbow knows its history, having used blues conventions as crude scaffolds for cerebral noise rock of the most disturbing order. But if it's at all a hidden agenda of Oxbow's to destroy, or at least disfigure, "the blues" in order to save it, The Narcotic Story brings them one step closer to fruition. A vestige of the blues – of the sort evocative of some stinking deep-south abattoir – remains. But the record's eight songs are imbued with a desperate, film-noir quality, emphasizing orchestration beyond guitar, bass and drums. The band flirted with similar textures on 2002's An Evil Heat, but here there's less reliance on the typically "heavy.” The occasionally mathy Zeppelin riffs that stumble and slide, and stop-and-start rhythms are in shorter supply overall; the metal has largely been smelted out in favor of tension. Toggling between dissimilar themes over the course of the longer pieces continues to be an Oxbow hallmark, perhaps in more of a traditional fashion than a sudden edit-like jump. The transitions between the delicate and the bludgeoning are allowed to develop less jarringly in dynamic-laden numbers like "Time Gentlemen Time" and "A Winner Every Time.”

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Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician

Easily one of the most bizarre, nightmarish, acid-drenched albums ever to bubble up from the gutter, Locust Abortion Technician will make you redefine the meaning of "wierd." This is the Butthole Surfer's best and most avant-garde album, filled with tapeloops, slowed/sped-up/reversed vocals and sfx, sludgey distortion and chaotic song structure. It is a crazy, schizophrenic mess that will get inside your head. I love it. The Butthole Surfers prove to be masters of the studio, as they create "music" that you would think spilled out of an insane asylum from a freaky netherworld.

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sgt - stylus fantasticus

Formed in 1999. The music of sgt is classic music, and the sounds of the noise, experimental, jazz, and the improvisation, etc. have mixed,It is like the technique of film music. The noise of the guitar wraps the melody that the violin plays. In addition, The base and the drum unite into one, the sound repeats development, it uplifts the person who listens, It seems to see scenery. This is by far the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard. don't let that detour you from checking this out tough guy. maybe you can play this with your girl and I bet she's be inclined to shine that dome piece. It's hard to try to wrap this up in one neat little package but imagine a band like red sparrows or a mellow Isis that got invited to play with a band that makes the river dance music and you re getting there. my daughter said it best today and said "this is the kind of music flowers would make if they could." and I smiled at how simple but to the point a 5 year old can be.


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Mr. Bungle - California

I cant find a quality review snippet to cut and paste, so I'll try to do this album justice with my own ramblings. I post alot of things on here that I'm sure many people have already heard, or are well aware of. this blog is not for those guys. This blog is for those type of people who think Mike Patton was only the singer of Faith no More, and for those who may have heard of a band but never taken the time to check out what I consider essential listening. To me California is the quintessential Mike Pattton record. It goes everywhere any of his other output has gone only this is by for the most streamlined and accessible for new listeners. You see, Mr. Bungle is not your everyday rock band or punk band, or jazz band, or death metal band, or acopella band or etc... Mr. Bungle takes just about every imaginable musical style and somehow incorporates it into one flawless piece. some songs are soft and mellow like the first track "sweet charity" which sounds somewhere along the lines of Frank Sinatra on some sort of pharmaceutical. and then there are other efforts like "ars morendi" that reminds me of an Italian circus house band performing on acid. and there are so many other great tracks on here like "air conditioned nightmare", " goodbye sober day" and "pink cigarette" that just makes this album so worth checking out. This is one of those albums that will remain in my top five favorites for the foreseeable future.


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