Soundtrack for the end of the world. Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #127includes new material from The Higher State, Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt, Rays, Allysen Callery, Maxine Funke & more. We also revisit a few “chestnuts” from some of your favorite old-tymers like Times New Viking (pictured), Mad Nanna and The Fall. Download or stream it and make sure you tell twenty friends about the new episode.
THE CHEIFS – The Lonelys
THE FALL – How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
DAN MELCHIOR’S BROKE REVUE – You’re My Wife
TIMES NEW VIKING – Pentagram
KING TEARS MORTUARY – Crash Report
LUNG LEG – Dirty Plotte
HONEY RADAR – Niacin Man
VELO – Out
USELESS EATERS – Year 11
ALLYSEN CALLERY – November Man
MAXINE FUNKE – Wake Up Dreaming
PIP PROUD – Purple Boy Gang
ALASTAIR GALBRAITH – Milky Milo Man
RAYS – Fallen Stars
TRICK MAMMOTH – Week End
MAD NANNA – I Wanna See You
ROB JO STAR BAND – Acid Revolution
DIVISION FOUR – Doctors Wife
THE HIGHER STATE – Ten Clear Petals
THE BEGINNER’S MYND – Ego Death
CHRIS CORSANO & BILL ORCUTT – The Secret Engine of History
This 126th episode of Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio shines a spotlight on BRANNTEN SCHNÜRE, a duo from Germany who make some incredibly bewitching dark, experimental folk music, and something that I’ve been listening to constantly since hearing them for the first time, uh, two weeks ago. The show also features great new stuff from THE FUTURIANS, RAYS, SUBURBAN HOMES, COLLATE, MAXINE FUNKE, MOUNTAIN MOVERS and BLUE CHEMISE. You’ll probably want to download or stream it right now before you do anything else.
JAD FAIR – The Thing With The Atomic Brain MAXINE FUNKE – So Far Down ENHET FOR FRI MUSIK – På Väg Hem… AMATEUR HOUR – Get Fucked BLUE CHEMISE – Marcy ARMPIT – A Good Insane TRASH – Hurtin’ BRANNTEN SCHNÜRE – Das jungfräuliche Ohr BRANNTEN SCHNÜRE – Vom Baum Im Hof BRANNTEN SCHNÜRE – Schwiess BRANNTEN SCHNÜRE – Das Glatte Nackte Wickelkind BRANNTEN SCHNÜRE – Urin Deiner Bluten I RAYS – Work of Art COLLATE – Phone Call WIPERS – Better Off Dead MOUNTAIN MOVERS – My Eyes Are Always Heavy MINUTEMEN – Validation SUBURBAN HOMES – Corporate Hijack THE FALL – Wings THE FUTURIANS – P11
We’ve got a feeling you could using the healing power of sub-underground music from the last five decades right about now. Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #125’s bursting at the seams w/ new stuff from MOUNTAIN MOVERS(pictured), RAYS, LAKE MARY & TALK WEST, NAKED ROOMMATE, THE STACHES, SUBURBAN HOMES, BILL ORCUTT & CHRIS CORSANO, MUELLER and more. There’s also the usual collection of dragged-&-dropped quality from our extensive collection of mp3s.
19 songs, 65 minutes – time to get on the stick and download or stream this one.
MUELLER – Your Room RAYS – Anti-Hand Man MOLE HOUSE – Fast Moving Cars THE CANNANES – It’s Hardly Worth It HUON – Bad Friend GARBAGE AND THE FLOWERS – Catherine is Only Listening LAKE MARY AND TALK WEST – Leaving Morning ROB NOYES & RYAN LEE CROSBY – Improvisation 2 ARMPIT – Going From Room to Room MIDNIGHT CIRCUS – The Hedonist Jive REMA-REMA – Short Stories NAKED ROOMATE – John is Gone THE STACHES – Ur Still a Stranger SUBURBAN HOMES – What It’s Really All About Is…. RED CROSS – Burn-Out THE SPITS – Autobahn BILL ORCUTT & CHRIS CORSANO – Bargain Sounds NIG-HEIST – The Nig-Heist MOUNTAIN MOVERS – This City
Dynamite Hemorrhage #124 leavens 50 minutes of mellow-harshing with about ten minutes of anti-harsh, adding up to 1 full hour of sub-underground music from the last five+ decades.
New music this time comes to us from SUBURBAN HOMES, SARAH MARY CHADWICK, CONSTANT MONGREL, NEO NEOS, FÅGLAR | BUR, SAUNA YOUTH, THE SHIFTERS, NAKED ROOMMATE, BLUE CHEMISE and THE STACHES. Plus The Rats, Hand Grenades, Loli & The Chones & much much more!
SUBURBAN HOMES – Magazine NEO NEOS – Politic Tempo FÅGLAR | BUR – Platt NAKED ROOMMATE – Lube Boys HOUSEHOLD – Never After RUSSELL ST BOMBINGS – Homicide Squad THE SHIFTERS – Andrew Bolt THE STACHES – Great Depression DEAD ANGLE – Why Don’t You? SAUNA YOUTH – No Personal Space MISSION OF BURMA – OK/No Way LOLI AND THE CHONES – Everybody Hates Me A-FRAMES – Neutron Bomb CONSTANT MONGREL – Birch SCIENTISTS – There’s a Monster in Me THE RATS – The Rat’s Revenge Part 1 HAND GRENADES – Cocoon HONEY RADAR – Rebirth of the Cornell Forestry Club BLUE CHEMISE – June SARAH MARY CHADWICK – It’s Never OK
The annual Cropped Out music festival just wrapped up in Louisville, KY this past weekend. I wasn’t there, but I did get to pen a little thing in the festival program about Mr. Bill Direen, who came from New Zealand to play a set there.
Truth be told, I stole most of it from my own intro to the interview I did w/ him in Dynamite Hemorrhage fanzine #2 (still available!). Yet I shuffled the words around enough that I thought it might be interesting to Direen fans and/or potential Direen fans who stumble across this on the internet, whenever and however you got here.
Here it is:
Bill Direen has cast an enveloping and beautifully unpredictable shadow over New Zealand’s indigenous rock music landscape the last forty years, after starting up a disjointed, all-shards experimental punk rock band called Vacuum back in 1977. His music has both skirted the edges of some dominant underground musical trends while being very deliberately out of step with them as well. Direen’s strange, abstract pop creations have been both “of” and “not of” the country’s Flying Nun-dominated post-’77 musical history.
Six Impossible Things, 1980
He’s a recognized hero to those who gobbled up anything and everything Flying Nun & 1980s New Zealand coughed up, yet those who were willing to dig several layers deeper, on the periphery of the Velvets-inspired scene, have found many incredible gorgeous, offbeat pop gems such as “Alien”, “Dirty and Disgusting”, “Girl at Night” and literally dozens of others.
For you more patient and/or musically adventurous types, those who revel in the abstract and the off-putting (tape splices, compromised fidelity, live recordings and piss-takes released as LP cuts, and the like) – and who moreover get a big charge out of records released in editions of 60 or 100 or 150 – Direen’s got a goldmine of material to offer up to your camp as well.
When challenged with others’ ideas of how his music should be played, marketed or otherwise shaped, Direen has found new ways of strategizing, whether by starting his own label (South Indies, in the early 80s); by rapidly changing band members or band names; by deliberately botching his bands’ spelling and thereby willfully obscuring his own greatness (Bill Direen and the Bilders; Builders; Billdireen; Bilderburgers; Die Bilder, etc.), or by even releasing his material on CD-R.
Bill Direen’s musical output into the 21st century continues to reinforce every aspect of this iconoclastic musical ethos: contrary, beautiful, slapdash, non-commercial, raw, spontaneous and stunningly weird.
Post-Labor Day explosion of new sub-underground scorchers and blurry messes from BLUE CHEMISE, TABLE SUGAR, JJ ULIUS, RAYS, HONEY RADAR, SAUNA YOUTH, BLADES OF JOY, BILL ORCUTT & CHRIS CORSANO, FÅGLAR | BUR, BLOWDRYER and J GALLAGHER / SAM LANGMANN. It’s Dynamite Hemorrhage Radio #123.
I’ve also made a special effort to put forth things not from 2018 as well, including favorites of ours such as Mars, Jefferson Airplane, Sferic Experiment, Pang and the Electric Eels, too. Get it while it’s still out there – download or stream it now.
BILL ORCUTT & CHRIS CORSANO – Brace Up! HONEY RADAR – Hard-Panning The Nation JJ ULIUS – Era Jävla Manér RAYS – Yesterday’s Faces PANG – Attention Deficit SFERIC EXPERIMENT – Goodbye JEFFERSON AIRPLANE – Two Heads (alternate version) BLUE CHEMISE – Violet FÅGLAR | BUR – Öppen Inbjudan J GALLAGHER / SAM LANGMANN – The Staircase GROWTH – Turn MARS – Helen Forsdale BASE – One-Way Girl SAUNA YOUTH – In Flux BLOWDRYER – Insulated ELECTRIC EELS – Wreck & Roll FUCKED UP KIDS – Road Kill HONEY RADAR – Hard-Panning the Nation (again! mistakenly back-announced as Sex Tide’s “Cleveland Avenue” – sorry folks) BLADES OF JOY – Be Kind SIMPLE MINDS – Carnival (Shelter in a Suitcase) THE UNSEENS – Shut-In TABLE SUGAR – Millions Places
Larry from In The Red Records sent me an unsolicited tape of this masterpiece in the early 1990s, and it blew me the proverbial f*ck away. It’s been subsequently widely and rightly hailed as a (the) high-water mark of the Japanese late-20th-century underground, and as a this-point-forward template for the utmost nth in blown-out psychedelic guitar onslaught rock. Any band who later dared to spurt out the sort of distorted feedback squeals Munehiro Narita patented here was immediately scoffed at and tagged a “High Rise clone” by the sort of insular, all-knowing music douchebags I have long associated myself with. Now it’s been reissued by US label Black Editions in a gorgeously none-more-black sleeve and heavyweight vinyl.
Here’s what I said about the thing on my old blog Agony Shorthand back in 2005:
“High Rise II remains their masterpiece. The debut record Psychedelic Speed Freaks was also insane & wild distortion overload, but it suffered from a Solger-like sound that was more akin to a boombox recording than something you’d wanna bang your noggin to; the 3rd record Dispersion was just fine but leveled out the chaos a bit and branched the sound into the great improvisational beyond. Others built upon that one, but continued to be a bit less frenzied and more expansive than the first few. But this one – look out.
Any true “punk” worth his punker stripes should be getting down with this record in a jiffy, because it’s one of the all-time howlers. The solos are so over-the-top distorted and the drums are caked with so much reverb, it’s a total maddening echo chamber filled with the ghosts of Greg Ginn, Davie Allen, Sterling Morrison, Stacey Sutherland and Ginger Baker. Vocals are pretty much an afterthought, but there are present on just about every track, it’s just that they’re buried under the dense layers. There’s a 13-minute “Sister Ray”-meets-“Mother Sky” classic on here called “Pop Sicle” that became a staple of their live show, sort of their own “Black To Comm” & a knockout wailer you’ve got to hear. But mostly it’s just fast, fast, fast and rawer than raw. A stone classic disc that I’d recommend to anyone with a pulse and a tolerance for maximum volume.” (Black Editions; blackeditions.com)