Insayngel (Heavy Tapes)

Blink and you may have missed them; Insayngel was two members of Sightings with a few other people, an ex-Excepter guy and people who were also in a band called Vizusa (according to the infallible discogs - I've never heard of 'em). The Pusheadesque cover art may give a hint as to the direction of these sounds - this is harsh, sick noise-rock, straining to get free from some imagined shackles. 'Plastic Ancestor' begins things on a percussive note, with Caitlin Cook's voice definitely in 'caterwaul' territory and stretching over a nervous thumping bassline and what sounds like a bunch of cans being kicked around in a bin liner. It's really, really messy, but the rhythm section knows what they're doing and they shift into different movements, which gives it just enough of a centre to lurch along. I don't know when or how this was recorded, but when I listen to it, I just feel hot; perhaps it's because every time I remember being in Brooklyn it's always somehow summer so it's sticky and muggy. This, I can imagine, came out of jam sessions during this time, scraping away at distorted guitar strings and pounding on drums just as a way to stay cool. No lyrics are intelligible, and it's lo-fi enough to distort in all of the right places. The guitar playing sometimes has this weird slide sound, sometimes there's an incursion of low end that glows underneath it all, and sometimes the cymbals cut through everything else in a really unbalanced way. 'Hard to Handle' is not a Black Crowes cover, but a big mess of a song that is kinda fun to listen to. I keep coming back to the word 'lurching' to describe things, even though it kinda swings. The Sightings guys are the rhythm section and you can tell they're an ongoing musical relationship, and I should really listen to Sightings more because they're somehow underrated after all of these years. 'Black Rock Way', the longest track, is also the furthest away from a cohesive song though I'm not sure how much, if any, of this record was composed to begin with. This reminds me of the Godz, Cro-Magnon or some other primitive 60s thing, and has an oscillating keyboard/electronics part to take this firmly into bad trip territory. It slows to a crawl, with nothing but static and bumping notes and stammering, and it conjures an element of madness that's weirdly fun. I think back to that Hospitals LP discussed back in August and how these both come from a similar place, but one is quite clearly West Coast and the other quite clearly from a more high-octane lifestyle. Insayngel might be a terrible name, but if madness is the state attempting to be portrayed by this music, they kinda nailed it, or at least aspects of it. 

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.

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - 'Easy Teeth' (Impossible Recordworks)

A bootleg! The first of the Underbite I think - filed here, before Doc, because it dates from 18 February 1978, where these 4 shoddy-sounding sides were recorded in Huntington Beach, CA. Yep, the Shiny Beast tour. Now the fidelity really blows here, which makes me realise how conservative I've gotten in my 'old' age -- I don't really give a shit about bootlegs anymore. I guess there's enough "proper" music to listen to and I just don't get much of a thrill about hearing a Walkman-quality recitation of songs I've heard a million times. There's exceptions galore, but I figure all of the truly great bootlegs cross over - the Walls Have Ears and Stray Slacks;; I guess the original Basement Tapes is the greatest bootleg ever, in rock-writer terms (which I just can't seem to shake!). But anyway, I'm satisfied to sit and wait for the few crossovers to reach the 'regular' market. Easy Teeth certainly doesn't belong in that category - this is a Beefheart bootleg for diehard fans only. There are a few depressing moments, such as DVV's voice as he tries to growl out 'Eeeeee-leeeehhhh-triiiiiih-cehhhhh-teeeee' like it's still ten years earlier. This band isn't the most shit-hot of his career either, though with 'Bat Chain Puller' they get the stomp going. On the Shiny Beast tracks, there's glimmers of the raw power that was sucked out of the album through its glossy production, etc. There's another point on side 1, I think, where Beefheart recites the classic 'squid eating dough' line and the audience cheers - talk about going through the motions! There's some other banter throughout the 4 sides of this set, including a story abot going to eat ribs with Roland Kirk in the middle of the night. Oh, California. I don't want to jump ahead but I think the reason Doc at the Radar Station is my favorite of late Beefheart is because John French re-enters the picture, even if he's not on drums. Not to diss Robert Williams, who is quite competent here, but French gives the band something they're lacking. There's some obligatory Trout Mask hits on here like 'Pachuco Cadaver', an extended, somewhat extemporaneous 'China Pig', and a crunchy, brief 'Dali's Car' -- though this band is at its best when performing their own material. 'Owed T'Alex' has a great undertow that survives the murky heat of the audience-made recording. I have two other bootlegs on this "label", which hails from the mysterious place of 'Légerdemain, USA'. Closes out with a weird 'Golden Birdies' as a final set or encore? Who knows when the bootleggers decided to splice (and how they choose to sequence).