Episode Zero
Our top five from 22… so far…
So here is the new thing! The new music thing! Not that it will be exclusively… or even mostly… new music… rather, it’s a new thing! About music!
Please click on the links below… this will soon be available on Spotify, Google, etc… but not TOO soon!
You may also then dig the notes below!
Thanks for stopping by! We appreciate you!
Matt & Dan
Furthermore, in the interests of adding value… or further distraction… we’ve each prepared a playlist…
Click here to check out Dan’s Episode Zero Spotify playlist…
& Click here for Matt’s YouTube list
Dan’s Notes
High Vis
Liverpool’s High Vis are one of those bands that I wish I could say I discovered via some cool underground zine or seeing them in a gritty club somewhere or something. Alas, I will confess that I first heard their 2019 debut No Sense No Feeling via one of those “if you like artist x, check out this vaguely related band” playlists on Spotify after falling in love with their peers in the current UK scene like The Chisel, Big Cheese, and Chubby And The Gang, all(like High Vis) made up of folks from late 00’s-early 20teens New Wave Of British Hardcore acts who have since moved on to exploring more sounds than just wall to wall aggression and speed. They play a style of melodic and tense punk heavily influenced by moody 80’s acts like Joy Division and Echo And The Bunnymen mixed with a driving hardcore edge. Their new album Blending released at the end of September this year expanded on this into incorporating more shoegazey melodic guitars on songs like “Talk For Hours”, the lead single and going-to-therapy-and-getting-your-mental-health-shit-in-order anthem that encapsulates a lot of the core themes of the record. Their singer Graham Sayle has stated in interviews that the album’s lyrics were primarily written about his own dealing with addiction, mental health diagnoses and treatment during the Covid pandemic mixed with working class anthems like “0151” (named after his hometown’s area code). Imagine Dag Nasty but fronted by an angry shouting Liverpudlian mixed with Joy Division if their drummer really wanted the crowd to start a circle pit, sprinkled with occasional swirly guitar pedal detours and heavy working class pride in the lyrics.
Poison Ruïn
Poison Ruin are a newer band from Philadelphia that started as a solo project during the pandemic and back in May put out the three song Not Today Not Tomorrow EP, their fired recorded as a full band. Frontman Mac Kennedy played all of the instruments on their first two demos, also rereleased as a self-titled LP in 2021. I first found out about this project via seeing their name on fliers online when they were touring with another great band I want to find an excuse to talk about on one of these shows, Edmonton’s HOME FRONT, and really enjoyed what I heard when checking out that full length. Their sound is a Frankenstein of proto-thrash a la Hellhammer, bouncing post-punk/new wave in the vein of Wire’s “Pink Flag” album, and spooky dungeon-synth interludes that would fit in perfectly as the soundtrack of a low budget 80’s sword and sorcery epic like The Beastmaster or KRULL. It opens with the sonic equivalent of the sun glinting off the tip of a medieval warrior’s blade, builds to thundering drumrolls you think are about to blast into speed metal, and then swerves into something that could easily fit right in on the lineup of “Urgh! A Music War”. By the end of closing track “Edifice” they are cruising along through post apocalyptic wastelands in a stomper reminiscent of Amebix or some other vintage 80’s anarchopunk. I get the impression that they are just getting to the point of their career where they can afford to have someone else book their shows for them and seem to be hitting the road more often so hopefully we’ll be hearing more of them soon.
GRISELDA – Benny The Butcher x Conway The Machine x Westside Gunn
My third pick is kind of a cheat in that it is the 2022 solo albums by the three core members of GRISELDA – Benny The Butcher’s Tana Talk 4, Conway The Machine’s God Don’t Make Mistakes, and Westside Gunn’s two mixtapes Peace Fly God and 10. I had gotten into their group album from 2019, WWCD, a while back after seeing an appearance by Benny and Conway on the late great DESUS AND MERO show and after checking out that album and some of their other solo records fell in love with these three emcees from Buffalo NY whose sharp rhymes over dark boom bap beats harken back to grittier 90’s/early 00’s NY artists like the Wu Tang Clan or Mobb Deep, and whose lyrics often draw from their pasts growing up in economically disadvantaged parts of their hometown while celebrating the finer things in life they are able to experience now and occasional references to their shared love of fashion, visual arts and pro wrestling . All three make appearances on one another’s albums while also featuring artists both established and up and coming from Busta Rhymes and Raekwon to newer Griselda Records artists like Armani Caesar and Stove God Cooks, and their respective albums all explore different aspects of similar subject matter with Benny exploring more of the gritty street tale side of things, Conway delving into more introspective subject matters of grief and other personal topics, and Westside celebrating his successes over the years while offering newer artists (including his own son on 10’s “Fly God Junior”) a collaborative platform to show what they can do. If you love grimy vintage New York boom bap rap made by dudes in their late 30’s and early 40’s who have lived through a lot, with sharp lyricism and head-nodding beats, these folks are for you.
Billy Woods – Aethiopes
A haunting series of snapshots of African American history and diaspora wandering through beats that meld Afro beat, reggae, middle eastern and North African rhythms with spaghetti western twangs and eerie ambiance. Woods is a veteran of the “Alternative” rap scene of the 90’s and 00’s and beyond through starting as a protege and collaborator of the group Cannibal Ox before moving on to his own solo projects as well as being half of Super Chron Flight Bros throughout the first decade of the Millenium, followed by an onslaught of music both as a solo artist and a collaborator with artists like ELUCID and Moor Mother. Woods’ delivery is closer to spoken word poetry than pop music and jumps between images of historic atrocities to getting stood up by a date in a fancy hotel room to watching his parents argue from the backseat of a speeding car while album producer Preservation’s samples of snaking horns and ambient synths send shivers up the back of your spine. The album has strong roots in the aforementioned “abstract” alternative rap scene but spreads its wings to travel the world through dusty samples and intense imagery, and collaborates veterans of that scene like Mike Ladd, Despot and El-P alongside newest artists like Boldy James and Quelle Chris. As a fan of stuff like the Def Jux Records catalogue, this album feels like a more mature and well-travelled adult version of that whole scene who has spent the ensuing decades gaining new perspective and exploring new sights and sounds beyond the end to end burners and “lyrical miracle” flows to comb the world for spine-tingling melodies and rhythms from far corners while exploring topics and imagery personal and political. It’s not the sort of album you would put on to get the party started but it will definitely take you on a journey.
Hammered Hulls – Careening
If you can say any city still has its own regional “sound” in terms of musical sub genres in 2022, then Hammered Hulls are the platonic ideal of the DC sound as codified through the releases of Dischord records over past four or so decades. Frontman Alec Mackaye has been a part of that scene since the start in bands like The Untouchables, The Faith, Ignition and The Warmers (not to mention being the younger sibling of another pretty prominent member of that scene) and has started a supergroup of sorts with members of Helium/Ex Hex, The Make Up/Chain And The Gang and Titus Andronicus that sounds like a distillation of decades of music from that city from the past 40 or so years that might seem slightly derivative if it weren’t for the fact that these are some of the folks who helped codify that sound in the first place. The songs veer between more upbeat punk tempos to palm-muted reggae influenced grooves with melodic guitars and Mackaye’s sometimes staccato shouts over top. This record has been straight up catnip to a lot of folks I know of a certain age, from grizzled old hardcore fans to those into the more melodic ringing indie guitar sounds woven through the record’s 12 tracks. In an era where it seems like we’re getting more and more nostalgia tours by older acts it’s cool to see these folks getting together to make exciting new sounds that build from their past catalogues while not just rehashing or playing the hits. It’s only been out for a little over a month so I feel like I’m still getting around to really absorbing it but it’s definitely
Honorable mention: MSPAINT “Acid” single, END IT “Unpleasant Living” EP, TENSION SPAN “The Future Died Yesterday” LP
Matt’s Notes
So… when Dan put this to me as the topic for the first show… I was like… “Fairly straightforward!”. As it turns out, not so much! Rather than extemporize on the how’s and why’s and what’s-it’s and wherefores… I present to you, first, the proper 5 as needed for the show… and then, cause context is everything, the longer list…
My personal criteria… which may be different than Dan’s!… are simply that it… i.e., any given release… was released this year… and that I own it in PHYSICAL MEDIA… i.e., in record, cassette, or CD format… as opposed to whatever I may have access to through my paid streaming services…
Alrighty then!!
- Soul Glo: Diaspora Problems
- Hot Water Music: Feel the Void
- The Replacements: Live at Riot Fest Toronto
- PJ Harvey: B-Sides, Demos & Rarities
- Leatherface: Minx (re-issue)
Yesterday’s Ring: Goodbye Nightlife
*This is a very special record, and likely deserves to be part of a show devoted to Montreal punk…
- Kendrick Lamar: Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers
- Viagra Boys: Cave World
- Lemonheads: It’s a Shame About Ray (re-issue)
- Titus Andronicus: The Will to Live
- Neil Young: Toast
- Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (re-issue)* Super-deluxe (11 LP, 1 CD)
- Matt Andersen: House to House
- Son House: Forever on My Mind
- Bleeding Hearts: Riches to Rags
- Sloan: Steady
- Red Hot Chilli Peppers: Return of the Dream Canteen
- Dinosaur Jr: Seventy two hundred seconds (EP)
- Sex Pistols: The Original Recordings
- Rise Against: Nowhere Generation II (EP)
- Dan Andriano and the Bygones: Dear Darkness
- Beach Rats: Rat Beat
- Nirvana: Hi, how are you Madrid? (live)
- Penetration: The Best of the Pyramids
- The Replacements: Unsuitable for Airplay
OK!! Here we be: round zero!
Soul Glo!! Fuck! Where to start!?
OK… this was prompted to me by the YouTube algorithm right around the time it was released. In one way… incredibly fucking invasive marketing! Fuck everybody concerned! Including me! But… on the other hand… this record is so fucking tight!
So… I’m a white, liberal, middle-aged guy… and I love Bad Brains… so all that in itself should probably disqualify me from writing about this. Also, I didn’t know this until today… their bass player left the group just around the time the album was released… due to allegations of abuse… so… I don’t know if that means I have to take this off my list… I don’t think it does! This article in the Guardian speaks to this…
So… moving forward on the assumption that this is fucking dope, intelligent, heavy fucking music… I’ve got little else to say! Their videos are worth watching again and again… including live footage! So many stage dives in small clubs…
And fuck… when I look at more recent news and media releases and so forth… it seems like they maybe are planning global domination for next year…
And this Brooklyn Vegan article in which Peirce (vocals) and TJ (drums) do their best of 22 lists… fucking educational, Man… I plan to spend some of my 2023 with their 22 lists…
Hot Water Music: Feel the Void— I’m so fucking glad this exists…
It’s hard for me to be objective about Hot Water Music. You will hear me saying this again about the Replacements and Leatherface records that came out this year.
So… Sean and Trip went to Florida around twenty or more years ago, and they came back talking about this band…
Besides that… my first real connection with this band was the Leatherface split… and I got their first LP Fuel for the Hate Game as part of the same mail order… spring of 1999… South End Halifax, Nova Scotia… working as a line cook / dishwasher… and living in half of an attic, with about 9 people scattered elsewhere throughout the small apartment… I had dropped out from University for the first time…
Huh, where were we? I’ve streamed this album incessantly as well… so… besides maybe a couple of non-22 records… this is most likely the one I’ve listened to most this year… I’m sure it’s more than one hundred hours at this point…
In terms of what propels this up the list for me… it’s a record with Wollard and Cresswell as equal partners!
This is the same year that I got a tattoo featuring artwork from the latest Ship Thieves album. As far as I can tell, Chris Wollard is incapable of writing a weak song. Hopefully we will be hearing more from him and/or the rest of HWM in 2023…
*Also, it is due to attending HWM at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver in September that I am now aware of Northcote! And that is major…
The Replacements: Live at Riot Fest Toronto… I should have been there… I wasn’t… so… thank Fuck for this!!
There’s nothing original I can say about the ‘Mats… including how when I was 15 there were just a few other people in my small group who GOT IT…
If you’re not into them… there’s nothing I can say to change your opinion!
If… you’re the other kind of person… I don’t need to explain it. You’ve experienced the magic yourself already!
On August 25, 2013… I would have been thirty-five years old, living in Doha, Qatar, and getting ready for my fifth year teaching Communications at the College of the North Atlantic-Qatar… with two kids younger than four years old… and I’d been in Calgary for three weeks earlier in the summer completing the second residency required for my Ed.D degree with the University of Calgary… and those are the reasons and circumstances surrounding my non-attendance of what surely was a show for the ages… all that being said… short of a professionally-shot HD video of the event… which probably exists somewhere… This is the best possible rendering of this historical night that you could want. Worth it for the Sham 69 cover alone.
According to Discogs, this is the first of a planned series of live double albums! If you’ve been paying attention, the Mats have been more prolific over the past 5 years than at any other point in their career… this was actually one of THREE Mats related releases this year… including the Unsuitable for Airplay live disc, and the Bleeding Hearts… featuring the late, great Bob Stinson…
PJ Harvey: B-Sides, Demos & Rarities… she’s simply the best…
Similarly, there is nothing original I could possibly say about Polly Jean.
I have a completely incomplete knowledge of her career; nor have I spent a ton of time with her releases…
And yet as soon as this came out, I snapped it up.
It’s utterly fucking primal. I’m listening to the set now for only the second time… and my morning is already in disarray. Holy fucking moly.
What could I wish for in this career-spanning set? Liner notes maybe? But their absence also adds to the mystique.
Anyway, I’ve gone about as far as I can here without drooling on my keyboard.
A final thought:
May 31, 2001. My twenty-third birthday. U2 is playing the Forum in Montreal and me and my friends have the cheapest seats you can get… this, my first time seeing Bono & Co.
My most vivid takeaway from that night was walking back from the beer stand and hearing this wild fucking voice.
Polly Jean is on stage by herself in a red body suit and blue electric guitar… I am as far away from her as I can be and still be within the same building… but in my memory she is larger than the stage and the crowd around her… she is standing maybe 10 feet away… and I can’t fathom the plastic Molson cup anymore…
You snap back to reality.
Bono told a really clever anecdote comparing the collapse of the Berlin wall to Quebec separatism.
I’ll leave you to decide the better memory.
More Polly Jean Harvey across all media, please and goddamned thank you!
Leatherface: Minx (re-issue). Just the saddest fucking punk music ever made…
A wallflower living in a guntower
He’s whistling the Brandenburg Concerto thing
Because he can be Sam collapsing and hysterical
And I laugh at the world it’s hysterical
And I love the way it turns
“Wallflower”(Lyrics: Stubbs)
Somehow the easiest way to describe my abiding love for this record was to share these lyrics. Because I’ve been growling along passionately, earnestly to these lyrics since I was nineteen or twenty? Except they were never these lyrics. They were always mine… except for the ones that weren’t… such as the ones I am only learning for the first time today… Brandenburg Concerto thing indeed…
A life full of grand ideas a life full of grand designs
Of noble feats and noble minds an entire lifetime out of petty crime
And eyes full of Pound signs an observer of what people do
“Fat, Earthy, Flirt” (Lyrics: Stubbs)
I went so far as to pay nearly two hundred dollars for an original press… which I never fucking do… and then this reissue was announced! I’ll be keeping both… and when one of my kids finally receives the collection after I pass… I hope that he listens to some of the Leatherface albums…
And then maybe that gets him closer to Hot Water Music… and Motörhead… and Hüsker Dü… and all the places you can go from there…
If you can sing like this through your darkest moments, then you are for sure not nearly as fucked as you imagined yourself. And I’ve been singing along for more than half my life.
Next, let’s have Fill Your Boots… and the Compact and Bijou EP…
*Final note: Frankie Stubbs is indeed still alive, putting out music, and appearing at European punk festivals…
We’ve enjoyed this Episode Number Zero immensely and we hope you have too! See you round a couple of weeks from now!
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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ December 4, 2022 6:31 pm
