The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Gig #142: Of late 47: Youth Code, Ubik MCDXCII, WaqWaq Kingdom, Aki Onda & Paul Clipson, Rainbow Crimes, Heat Signature, Deathprod, Pod Blotz, Guerilla Toss, Galen Tipton, Bad Jesus Experience, Frataxin, Blanck Mass, Costes, Cattle Decapitation

 

Youth Code
Ubik MCDXCII
WaqWaq Kingdom
Aki Onda & Paul Clipson
Rainbow Crimes
Heat Signature
Deathprod
Pod Blotz
Guerilla Toss
Galen Tipton
Bad Jesus Experience
Frataxin
Blanck Mass
Costes
Cattle Decapitation

 

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Youth Code + HEALTH Innocence (live)
‘The HEALTH collaboration was a welcome change for Youth Code, who issued the following statement: “When another band hits you up it’s usually for a remix — but to be able to get in a studio and fire off ideas with someone else is a pretty magical opportunity. When HEALTH reached out to us we were amped to put our heads together and see what could happen. Two groups of noisy L.A. weirdos could only make for a maniacal track. It came together super quickly since we have a lot of the same influences and ideas but the way we execute is very different. I think it gave the track a lot of dynamics and were exceptional proud to bring this into the world.”‘ — Revolver

 

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Ubik MCDXCII Blackout Blinds
‘Ubik MCDXCII is a mysterious London-based Avant Hip-Hop/musical artist and analog photographer. His second full-form project, Blackout Blinds was recently released on French tape label, Solium Records. This is a boisterous record. The ever-present clamor making life in London claustrophobic lifestyles, the Orwellian high-tech modernity clashing with an ancient past, the parenting of an Autistic child in an autistic society; these are all important themes in this album, illuminating the schizophrenic duality of present-day urban life.’ — The Witzard

 

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WaqWaq Kingdom Circle Of Life
‘WaqWaq Kingdom is a Japanese tribal bass duo, consisting of Kiki Hitomi and Shigeru Ishihara. Both are originally from Japan. Despite their eclectic blend of sounds and oddly specific lyrical tangents, the quirkiness comes off as natural. The duo puts fun first on Essaka Hoisa, toying with unconventional concepts in a way that’s never overtly academic. Like its namesake, the record’s meaning lies in its abstract expressions of joy or rage or conviction, so sincere you’d mistake it for silliness.’ — Jude Noel

 

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Aki Onda & Paul Clipson MAKE VISIBLE THE GHOST
‘In 2009, Clipson and Onda met at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport for the first time and shared a ride to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where they presented audio-visual works in the same bill. Since then, the two artists – known for their highly personal approach with Super 8, 16mm, cassette Walkman and radio – maintained a close friendship over the next nine years. Their works deal with memory, time, space, and those reflections, and they had a lot to share. Onda and Clipson completed their collaboration work Make Visible The Ghosts—a combination of vinyl LP of Onda’s music and large-size collage artwork by Clipson—a few months before Clipson’s departure from life. The work is composed of the materials they used for their performance in New York in 2012 and developed over the three years from 2015 to 2017.’ — Boomkat

 

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Rainbow Crimes Into Sunburst Sand We Disappear
‘The trio is made up of scene veterans Katy Otto (Callowhill), Alex Smith (Solarized), and Leah Basarab, who played their first show under the moniker just last summer. Recorded and produced by Bruce Howze Jr. and released on Otto’s own Exotic Fever Records, the new album incorporates experimental sounds that range from fraught to ethereal. It’s nine tracks alternate between lyrical and instrumental, their fuzzy and crashing melodies setting a mood that’s both dreamy and urgent.’ — Dischord

 

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Heat Signature Dawning A Hollowed Gaze
‘Heat Signature’s two man onslaught comprised of Brad Griggs (Action/Discipline, Penis Geyser) and Luke Tandy (Skeleton Dust Records, Being) deliver seven tracks of previously unreleased, all new material for 2019. The duo spend their time assiduously building patterns of deafeningly satisfying, chest thudding harsh noise with profiles in feedback and hints of parametrically filtered junk scrapings.’ — Oxen Records

 

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Deathprod Black Transit Of Jupiter’s Third Satellite
‘More than 15 years ago, Norwegian sound artist and Supersilent co-founder Helge Sten seemed to bury his Deathprod alias. For a decade, Sten barbed intricate drones with spikes of static, then stuffed it all into four essential discs in a 2004 box set that suggested a coffin. He went largely silent. Motivated by the recent rise of nationalists and strongmen worldwide, though, Sten has resurrected Deathprod for what he calls an “anti-fascist ritual” with Occulting Disk. The album is, as Will Oldham writes in the liner notes, a 10-track attempt to “address … hatred and reduce it by its opposite.”’ — Grayson Haver Currin

 

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Pod Blotz Life Like An Electric Surge
‘DD: Who is Pod Blotz for? Suzy Poling: People who like experimental music, experiential performance, full sonic frequencies, hypnotic lights and sound, stories about ghost and aliens, etc… DD: How does your artistic practice inform your sound project Pod Blotz? Suzy Poling: They are pretty much one in the same for me. I do performance art, build installations to play inside of, silkscreen clothing and make video. All of my artwork ends up in a Pod Blotz video and my audio ends up installations so it all works out.’ — Dazed Digital

 

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Guerilla Toss What Would the Odd Do?
‘Through the years the band – comprised of vocalist Kassie Carlson, drummer/producer Peter Negroponte, guitarist Arian Shafiee, keyboardist Sam Lisabeth, and bassist Stephen Cooper – has crafted a unique brand of electro-psychedelic dance punk. You have to go in with the understanding that you’ll probably be thrown around quite a bit, jerked in new, unexpected directions. At only five songs, Guerilla Toss packs more sounds and styles into twenty minutes than some bands do over entire discographies. The opener, title track “What Would the Odd Do?,” has Carlson’s vocals soaring over sprawling instrumentals, underscored by a simple and steady drumbeat; it sounds almost like a sun rising over a cyberpunk desert.’ — Michael Seidenfeld

 

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Galen Tipton tender
‘galen tipton’s fake meat pokes fun at our post-industrial alienation by accelerating reconfiguration via the absolute deconstruction of the soundscape, which is framed as a sonic polymer of samples that one can instrumentalize, rearrange, discard, etc. cut down to their component parts & decontextualized, these sonic motifs melt into a sort of primordial molecular soup whose ingredients are distinct & yet totally alloyed, unnatural & yet somehow familiar — organic & synthetic; real & fake.’ — Baldr Eldursson

 

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Bad Jesus Experience Olet meidän / Kaikki on hyvin / Lisäänny Torniossa
‘Bad Jesus Experience from Tampere, Finland who play Spaztic angry hardcore punk from with great female vocals and crazy personal way of guitar riffing.’ — The Stranger

 

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Frataxin live @ Buddyfest
‘I think Frataxin should be held in the highest regards — it’s not just some tryhard dork yelling about turn of the century individuals with deformities (or Boyd Rice talking about how he wants to kill those with disabilities), it’s a genuine and poignant look at the pain and alienation which able-bodied/neurotypical people not only can’t, but also don’t even try to grasp. This is truly powerful shit, overflowing with seething hatred and spite, and only the most casual listeners can sit through it and remain unmoved.’ — Fucked by Noise

 

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Blanck Mass Death Drop
Animated Violence Mild’s greatest success goes beyond how it manifests the intangibles of humanity’s self-automated undoing, or how it casts a melting pot of influences into singular shapes. Since Power debuted his Blanck Mass moniker in 2011, each record has been held in contrast to Fuck Buttons, his longtime duo with Andrew Hung, and rightly so. The wide scope and stratospheric heights of that group’s best work leave an indelible impression, and Power’s solo work has by turns subverted or indulged the same tendencies. For this album’s first track he seems to do both. “Death Drop” is dragon-sized and full of fire, hurtling towards the sun with a raw fury unmatched by Power’s other music. It’s the last in a spectacular series of definitive salvos. If previous Blanck Mass albums were each a step out from the shadow of Fuck Buttons, Animated Violence Mild shows that he’s outgrown the comparison altogether.’ — Patric Fallon

 

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Costes Kebab dans le cul
‘Jean-Louis Costes is a French noise musician, performance artist and film actor. Costes has been described as the French version of GG Allin, though unlike Allin’s rudimentary brand of hardcore punk, Costes’ music is largely synth-driven, relying heavily on looped beats, overmodulated vocals, and random outbursts of screaming and glitch fills. Costes is considered as one of the first punk-DIY French artists, self-releasing dozens of tapes and CDs from the early 1980s to nowadays. His discography is surprisingly rich and outlandish, melding experimental, spoken word, electronics, sometimes hip-hop or metal, often parodying the French variety-song culture. It consists of more than seventy albums, some recorded in English, German or Japanese.’ — collaged

 

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Cattle Decapitation Vulturous
‘No matter which way you look at it, only one thing in this life is certain: we’re all going to die. One day, each of our clocks will stop ticking, and there’s not a thing we can do about it. With full knowledge of this, we all take different approaches to life. Some choose to see the glass half-full, other half-empty. And some just pour the glass out and throw it on the cement, shattering it into a million pieces. Where am I going with this analogy, you ask? On the latest opus from Cattle Decapitation, there is no longer any doubt as to where they stand when it comes to the fate of humanity, and yet in the same way, there is also no longer any doubt that they are one of the greatest extreme bands of this generation.’ — Metal Injection

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I just put together a future Owen Land post after Nik made me remember that I strangely hadn’t yet. Good stuff, yeah. I’ll have to reread your chapter on him the next time I get to LA where the book is. Land and Le Grice = apple and orange. Ah, a new thing by you! Everyone, parcel off a little of your weekend to read a new article by Mr. Ehrenstein entitled ‘Five Gay Actors in Mid-Century Hollywood’ which resides here. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey, Ben. Not all of his books are that huge by any means, although I’m not sure off the top of my head which are in English and which are not. I’d read his fiction before his poetry. Cool, getting the old inspiration fired up! ** Steve Erickson, Are they going to kill the site and its history? That would be psycho. Really hope the sound work goes really well today. I just yesterday read about Netflix taking the new Assayas. Things are changing fast. ** Okay. This weekend you get my new gig constructed of some stuff I’ve been into hearing lately. This one’s a bit noisier and more raucous than usual maybe. You tell me. I believe it’s worth your time and headphones and speakers. See you on Monday.

6 Comments

  1. David Ehrenstein

    Weird Neo-Music this weekend! I think a “La Monte Young Day ” is in order if you’re up to it, Dennis. When will you next be in L.A.?

  2. _Black_Acrylic

    I do enjoy the occasional bit of power electronics abrasiveness, and Joe Satkowski is doing something interesting here with his Frataxin project. I checked out his Bandcamp and also found this great interview via his Facebook page that talks about him using noise as a way of communicating his neuro condition of Friedreich’s Ataxia.

    One person I’ve been listening to of late is Franziska Lantz, a Swiss artist based in London who creates heavily distorted techno jams on a basic electronic setup overlaid with blasts on her flute. DriftShift is a blog of her weekly show on Resonance FM and I like its relentlessly banging style a whole lot.

  3. Cautivos

    Hi Dennis. Good post again. Nice photos. I would like to say that i didn’t good times for me, specialy last christmas or last holidays. Thanks about your books, spacially i read Guide for umpteenth time. A now i’m recompensed ans i feel quite better. Finally I’m sorry about my deficinete englesh

  4. Steve Erickson

    This selection seems heavily influenced by the ambient stress and apocalyptic mood of our times.

    Ubik MCDXCDII was the standout for me. Apologies if I’ve already mentioned him here, but have you heard Portuguese singer/producer Scuru Fitchadu? His music combines punk (aggressive vocals and distorted bass guitar, fast tempos), dance beats and Cape Verdean folk music (it uses accordions in place of guitar), with antiracist spoken word samples.

    The recording session yesterday went really well. We got the main voice-over done in 90 minutes. But the actor never found a tone for the song lyric and poetry quotes which didn’t sound awkward, and I decided it is best to use them as intertitles onscreen instead of having him read them.

  5. Bill

    Bad Jesus Experience is a great band name. I remember a live film event or two with Paul Clipson, but didn’t know he worked with Aki Onda. Really enjoying the thick sensory soup of Ubik, definitely a nod or two to Erik B/Rakim, Massive Attack and other old favorites. And Costes! I remember him mostly from the Suckdog days. Good to see the old man is still chugging along.

    Looks like a gray, foggy long weekend here, perfect for reviving my performance rig, and some quality time with Shelley Jackson’s Riddance. Just found this nice interview on Riddance, and her earlier project Snow:
    https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/room-for-so-much-world-a-conversation-with-shelley-jackson/

    Bill

  6. Eddy

    Asking questions are truly good thing if you are not understanding something entirely, but this piece of writing presents good understanding even. https://photography.meyer-Net.eu/picture.php?/2158

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