Lilys - 'In the Presence of Nothing' (spinART)

And so here begins a brief foray into the work of Lilys, a memorable outlier from the 90s white American indie guitardrome, whose work still resonates with me a ton, almost irrationally so as the future keeps on happening. This first album (here sampled as a 1998 repress/reissue with different cover art from the handmade OGs) firmly planted its flag in shoegazer territory, and only hints at its own identity in flashes. It was fine to ape My Bloody Valentine in '92 –– everyone was doing it, after all –– and Lilys on this record really got this bending whammy bar sound, just like on 'To Here Knows When', which I guess is what 'Tone Bender' is about. Said song alternates between a plodding, thick low-end by the rhythm section, and then a lightening up to let some relatively unaffected guitar strings scratch through, and back and forth and back and forth. Lyrics occasionally poke out of the morass, but it's more a feeling than anything to sing along with, and yet this is actually a pretty clear-sounding record that has pretty solid separation between the instruments. The opening cut, 'There's No Such Things As Black Orchids', is practically a MBV homage, but I still love it anyway. Why listen to a record of a band that hasn't yet found their voice? Well, for Lilys/Heasley that's not such a straightforward proposition; after 25 years of loving this band (while also finding something exasperating about them), I can't put into words what makes his music greater than just a clone of whatever was on his playlist at the time, but I know that you hear a ton of it in 'Elizabeth Colour Wheel' (complete with UK/correct spelling, a subtle nod to his Anglophilia for those paying attention). Of course his voice is part of it, a singing tone perfect for being buried in fuzz and reverb, but there's a little more mystery between the effects, as if this band is curious about more than just seeing what sounds guitars can make but you're going to have to work, and infuse your own interpretations of what that might be. The rhythm section is more than competent here; uncredited, but apparently containing members of Velocity Girl. But no member of Lilys is long for being in that band, and being the debut LP is no exception. This is quite a different record than what was to follow (though to be honest, Lilys didn't do abrupt 180s, gradually shifting from sunny hooks towards the dreamy haze of their next record, their masterpiece, into more overtly 60s/mod-influenced pop, into whatever unique hybrid they had become by the time of the major label signing). Sole Actual Lily Kurt Heasley is known as a somewhat difficult figure, a personalty that shifts as much as the sound of his band does. I've never met him but have come to feel he's a bit of a genius in disguise; to dismiss him as a soldier of pastiche is missing the point. The long track here, 'The Way Snowflakes Fall', builds up from a fluid type of group improvisation that would have fit on a Jewelled Antler CDr a decade or so later. It's in this track that I really hear a mastery of what he was trying to do; this isn't a band doing shoegaze-indie music pop to latch onto a trend, but exploring sound expression through the lens of shoegaze-indie. I guess I'm a completely unapologetic Lilys defender now in 2020, and I'm going to gush even more about the next one, but 'The Way Snowflakes Fall', with its static-industrial bedsheets and converging resonance, is clearly more than a band of coattail-hangers trying to flex their long-form muscles.

Jazzfinger - 'Mole & The Morning Dew' (Spirit of Orr)

Ecstatic drone! Thick, rushing roars of processed guitar. Echoes that ping back, jarring against other sonorities. Cheap keyboards and clanging guitars, sprawling out to explore a dark tunnel. Interplay both primitive and sophisticated. An autumnal atmosphere, like a Jesmond treeline in the dusk, the distant roar of suburban-bound traffic. Naturalistic renderings, both pastoral and contemporary.  The rush of electric energy, a current throughout, filling available space with its potentiality. Not exactly howls, but restrained cries, made with strings and wood being tapped, hammered and bowed. Treble kicked out of the window. Throw in everything and see what sticks, but refine it as it happens, control shaped through a long relationship of improvisation. It's not chaos, but a realm of glorious glowing energy. Arpeggios cycling towards a dark centre. Searing, bowed metal, pulsing through reverberating amplifiers. Gentle acoustic tones prodding against it all. Voices, bathed in static, in varispeed dictaphone glory, providing an off-centre to repeated guitar figures; the colour in the bowing takes it to different directions. Yet is always circles back.  A tape splice to end it all. 

Heldon - 'IV' (Aural Explorer)

Apparently this isn't a proper release of the fourth Heldon album, but some sort of compilation, containing most of the fourth album but some other stuff. I've never noticed before since it's the only Heldon record I've ever listened to -- but why is that? This stuff is great, I want more! 'Chief Electronic Wizard' Richard Pinhas established a style of minimal electronic music that has been unbelievably influential, though quite singular for its time, so it sounds like a lot of things from recent years, except it birthed a lot of it. This slowly builds up a suite of songs called 'Perspective', with a weird interlude at the end of side 1 (which sounds like guitar-based post-rock twenty years early) that Pinhas neither wrote nor played on. But it's his band - the looming face photographed on the back cover is his, as if there was any doubt whose band this is. He's credited with electronics and guitar, though the guitar isn't that recognisable until the third track ('Perspective III'), where it roars and threatens to keep rupturing the vinyl, despite being pretty buried by the pulsing synth rhythm. In other places, things are more placid; 'Perspective I' could be something released on Kranky in the late 90s by a band like Tomorrowland or Labradford, and the synths are where it gets really crazy. 'Perspective IV' is the most wild, a precursor to all the 'ecstatic drone' stuff that came out of places like Leeds in the late 90s/early 00s. And what does this record make me feel like? Like bits of my brain are burning, and there's a wonder about my place in this world, suggesting that natural, pastoral beauty can find a new life through technology. The cover art is pretty fucking scary, like something you might see on a Voivod album cover, and directly inject this into the "science fiction" realm (as well as reish label Aural Explorer's typeface, which is so retro-cool it feels like it came out of modern day Portland). But I don't want to dwell on this easy sci-fi vibe - it's important to take music like this and make it your own, freeing oneself from the easy tendencies to associate it with soundtracks and other cultural offerings. Pinhas was a pioneering figure and never succumbed to easy New Age sounds or dance beats; this is electroacoustic music, truly, though it doesn't sound anything like AMM, or Cluster, or even other French weirdness like Mahogany Brain or Red Noise. I don't pay much attention to contemporary followers of the Heldon sound, but maybe I should; there's a whole soundworld that I must admit I am undeveloped in, as a listener.

Cabaret Voltaire - 'Red Mecca' (Rough Trade)

There's a lot to like in Red Mecca, particularly if you dig cold-yet-still-rambuctious songs in the CV mold. But things are so sharp and metallic it's more like rust than mould. Side one is pretty slow but continues from Mix-Up's more thoughtful moments, with lots of open spaces, more acoustic percussion, and more clearly enunciated singing. Though it's not exactly crooning. It culminates in 'A Thousand Ways' which feels weightless and never-ending, but without any exaggerated qualities at all. I've always gone to Cabaret Voltaire for their experimentalism, their approach to tapes and the interesting guitars vs tapes textures. But the songwriting here isn't half bad. Side two feels slightly more song-oriented, though there aren't any chart-toppers here. I didn't grok enough lyrical content to relate to anything specifically, but there's definitely a confidence that was lacking before. 'Red Mask' is practically a single, with Watson's tape loops dancing all around the more standard industrial rock grind. And it's pitted against 'Black Mask' (the titles are probably something to do with contrasting views of Islam or religion?) which is somewhat looser, around a standard mid-tempo drumbeat and with bleating synth hissing and distant atmospheric textures skirting around a songform. This record reminds me a lot of Savage Republic in a variety of musical manners - the monobeat, the chanted vocalising, the percussive single-mindedness. And like Savage Republic, Cabaret Voltaire are an 80's avant-rock band that hasn't really had their dues yet, at least in the sense that we're not making documentaries about them and they aren't doing reunion tours and these records aren't being reissued. And like Savage Republic, Cabaret Voltaire maybe didn't directly influence many of my peers but more likely were an influence on an influence. One inversion is that Savage Republic were a rock band with heavy industrial leanings, and I would probably flip that around to describe Cabaret Volatire. But like the last record, there are a few guitar lines that, while not exactly Led Zeppelin, have some sort of anthemic, cheerful lift that looks a bit more like on AOR radio than you'd expect -- in this case I'd say the harmonic progression of 'Split Second Feeling'. 'Spread the Virus' is pure evil though - despite a slight free jazz/circus feel at times - it's a goofy dark trip trying to break out of a straightjacket, and there's a nice shuffle to the beat despite all of the tortured growling. Moody, yes, and thirty years old now!

Burning Star Core - 'West Coast Spring 2004' (What The --?)

Vinyl Underbite returns from summer holidays! With all apologies for the lack of notice, but, no, we haven't died or disappeared. So those of you clinging to our every transmission, seeking Underbite satisfaction, can now return to the regularly scheduled programme with this adventure. West Coast Spring 2004 begins with a quick line check before C. Spencer Yeh explodes into some skittery violin fuckery, with Robert Beatty's "acoustic appraiser" (that's big talk for a hearing test machine) counterpoints and understruts things. As a duo there's a lot of space, and it's probably the only way this cassette-fi quality is tolerable. Instead of being murky and disappointing, my attention is drawn to the movement, energy and interplay instead of the psychedelic aspets of the sound layers. That's not to say this isn't an outer exploration of timbre and tone - Beatty's ringing echoes are pointed and haunting, created a pretty bad trip that occasionally takes centre stage (Yeh knows when to drop back and let Robert "solo"). There are times when they get so busy chasing their own tails that it becomes impossible to distinguish the two instruments, and it's nice to think that these sounds, created six years ago, live on in this wax, to be replayed over and over. This was originally released as a cassette series and this LP collects the highlights, with Side A being from Seattle and Side B from San Francisco. The vocal-driven Yeh material is clunky and hoarse, again due I think to the recording fidelity, and it sounds less voice-like than other recordings of his, apart from a few breakthrough bits of gnarlanguage. Side B has a spoken introduction - the audience sounds small, but enthusiastic, which is the best kind, right? -- and then begins with some searing bright light drone, slowly opening and unfolding and pulsing. This is perhaps where the lo-fi nature leaves one wanting, as the distortion of the recording equipment prevents the blissout from taking centre stage. It's okay though, because by the end things have descended into a bit of a tussle, which is continued in the next (brief) track, another jerky free-for-all that blends dancing fingertrips with blurting electronic windbreaking and squealing glimmers. It ends before it really gets anywhere, and then after an unintelligible introduction we hear Beatty's angry toy arms and a megaphone-styled voiceline. It ends like a drunken remix of Bill O'Reilly's A Current Affair outbursts, and distance has truly been covered.

Birth Refusal/Cassis Cornuta (Ultra Eczema)

A one-sided LP of synth repetition, slowly expanding feedback phase and the occasional flanged out space warble. Near the end the back and forth accelerates but it doesn't conclude, pause or stop to reflect at any point. The sleeve folds out into a 36" x 24" color poster showing various oozing swamp things knifing a pregnant woman in the woods. An apt band name, I suppose - it's some Michigan dudes, and Cornuta is an Antwerp weirdo that occasionally pops in Belgian underground clubs, armed with banks of synthesizers. This was recorded live for the radio and the whole thing feels like it's been run through some heavy limiters, smashing all fidelity into a narrow band. It still manages to be nasty; the malice is contained too, even in the more aggressive parts. It's a focused attack on civility, but forgive me if it feels a bit rote. I can't tell what's Cornuta and what's Birth Refusal as it's all fairly electronic (or electroacoustic) in origin, but there's no good times to be had here, for sure. If you turn it up loud, the ringing sine waves leap from the speakers slightly more, though it still has this weird feeling of middle-band. For artwork that is all body-flesh-corpuscle horror, there's something distinctly mechanical about this.