Here we go, another free Heathen D to prime the pump.
Before we get to it, and in case you didn’t see it:
I am selling a fairly large pile of vintage rub-on / transfer lettering. Letraset, Normatype, Tactype, Meccanorma, Prestype, 3M, Stenso, all the hits. It’s all organized in a spreadsheet and available for you to purchase. US sales only, I barely have enough time to deal with stuff as it is. If you’re interested in seeing the list, email me. Prices are pretty good and get better if you buy a lot.
Heathen D PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 // [email protected]
Who gave a shit about Brooklyn Vegan anyway?
BLASON s/t LP (Bruit Direct)
Sidelong collages of static, long orbits, loose notes played like radio noise from a star unhurriedly reaching Earth with news from the cosmos speaking a language that doesn’t register. Ambient tones and envelopes get crashed into with analog synth waves of the kind my old ARP 2600 made on its own, attack and decay becoming one. Surprisingly un-chill for this kind of record, and that’s the static that needs to answer for it. If you are the kind to get up at four in the morning this would make an ideal entry into the emerging day’s dawn.
CITY DRAGON Smokes and Mirrors LP (Bruit Direct)
Thoroughly outsider collage of 30 songs/snippets/ideas from the long dark hallway mind of Max Kaario, a Canadian expat in Paris whose proficiency with sampling and arrangements lands on a singular, autodidactic innocence throughout. Not a record that plays by the individual track but from the experience, disconnected but never jarring, world audio loops and phrases that become the fulcrum of their creator’s experience. I hear nothing particularly city nor dragon-esque going on here, merely a fragile truth of a different kind, able to hide in the urban setting and behind the monster, cautiously telling its tale.
GUIDING LIGHT Fear On My Own Time LP (Post Present Medium)
A good deal thornier than Austin’s Touch Girl Apple Blossom (with whom they share drummer Charles Powell and Texas journeyman guitarist John Morales), Guiding Light returns with a jostling rhythmic insouciance that pushes their bend on post-punk towards the explosive. The instrumental interplay here recalls early ‘80s music breaking free from punk/hardcore (think Minutemen, Big Boys, Mydolls) on a collision course with Leeds 1979, completely restless but centered. Singer Elise Cook drops into flipswitch Deutsch, with a voice that springs off of Morales’ frantic guitar figures and the rhythm section, growing faster and more insistent as the record gets closer to the center. Overwhelmingly punk aesthetics thrown off by these eight songs don’t seem like they’re trying to get away from the genre so much as push other bands to try harder and do better. Put ‘em up against any comparable band in America right now (Chicago’s got five in this class, at least) and watch ‘em spin circles around ‘em. Webs, maybe. A fitting record to arrive on the eve of PPM’s 25th anniversary, the culmination of an idea seen to complete vision.
CEL RAY Cel Rayzer LP (Exploding in Sound)
Chicago has decided this is the kind of wiry punk/vegan scramble it wants to consume. It’s kind of wild that there’s a town anywhere that Consensus Madness, CB Radio Gorgeous, Clickbait, Spread Joy and Cel Ray could all gingerly coexist. There’s probably more too (Bungee Jumpers?) but Cole’s is only so big and can hold so many bands. I’d put Cel Ray firmly in the center of the pack, with Consensus Madness and Spread Joy keeping pace just ahead, but Cel Ray being the nimblest of them all. We’re a goddamn tool and die shop here, just crankin’ out bands on the queer/anarchic poles of Crass and the Kool-Aid Man. This is a big town, fretfully bikeable from one gig to the next, and Cel Rayzer serves as the wormhole between them all.
