Keeping it trim, for your sanity and mine. Too much good music released this year, again, but nothing topped the swirling, weighted haze of "Everyone Thought You Were Dead.”
While I'm very strongly in favor of buying music and supporting artists, consider also a donation to Gaza Soup Kitchen and The Sameer Project.
Happy New Year, and thanks for reading. On with the show:
“...faultless heart intrusion from a guy that you should fucking well know about. Simple.”
BILL DIREEN & THE BUILDERS review by JIMMY JOHNSON, Editor
FORCED EXPOSURE #16 1990 (page 79), Jimmy Johnson, Editor
Whoa, Bill Direen. He maintains a great stand alone web site at http://william.direen.free.fr/ and he is a very busy man.
Jay Hinman interviewed and featured Bill as the cover story in Dynamite Hemorrhage #2 (November 2014): “An interview and career-spanning retrospective with BILL DIREEN, the New Zealand-based musical iconoclast and creator of some of the most weird and wonderful underground pop music of the last 35 years. Great old photos of Vacuum, Six Impossible Things and more - with Direen's take on his many recordings, bands and general outlook on creation & creativity.” STILL AVAILABLE!
Although Forced Exposure #16 is no longer available at Forced Exposure, try these Amazon dealers if you dare: 4 used from $19.99 as of 1/1/18.
From the new vinyl reissue of 2008′s “Chrysanthemum Storm”. Put out by Austria’s Zelle Records
It was winter in Dunedin. A snow storm hit Bill Direen as he was driving home, and the huge flakes spread out across his windscreen like white Chrysanthemums. He was living in the attic of a boot shop with a sniper’s view of Otago Harbour, and he just had to walk out the door for the songs to arise. There are songs about a guy who installs heat pumps, a night nurse who follows local bands, a young right winger who thinks of society as a marketplace. It has humour, eg. about the waiting time on telephones (Try Again in Ten Minutes) and it addresses more serious issues, such as some people’s mistaken belief that criminality is genetic (Criminal Minds). Every song on the album was inspired by people, stories and events going on at the time in New Zealand.
The band practised for a week in Auckland and hit the studio armed with some very good musical equipment and mikes. The high resolution master was never released on vinyl as intended, and seven years later it is now a reality thanks to a friendly collaboration. The movers are Zelle Records (an Austrian label that specialises in vinyl releases of New Zealand music), Powertool Records of Auckland (champion of dozens of New Zealand underdog bands) and South Indies (Bill‘s rights company). Each album has a poster sized insert of lyrics and photos.
Chrysanthemum Storm vinyl is a bundle of portraits of people, their problems, habits and saving graces. Above all it is the right format for songs developed and recorded with great care by a band that was that special mix of flair and experience, of talent and raw ability which characterises all Bill Direen‘s ‘experiences’. His bands are always greater than ‘the sum of their parts’.
The 2008 band has moved on to become parents, teachers, and record company and live venue managers. Andrew McCully (piano/organs) is music teacher at Cockle Bay School. Andrew Maitai (drums) runs a record shop and the venue UFO in New Lynn. Brett Cross (bass) has moved to the Waikato where he is bringing up a child and making books. Bill remains in Middlemarch, Otago, working on more poems, stories and above all songs.
Perfect timing, right in the midst of list season. There's a lot waiting in the queue, though these records seem to have made the most impact. More in the line soon, a bunch of 7"s and cassettes and maybe a few more LPs, and eventually the obligatory look back. Mounds of plastic await:::
Anadol & Marie Klock, La Grande Accumulation LP (Pingipung)
Debut collaboration between Turkey's Anadol and France's Marie Klock, and it's an inspired one. I was familiar with Anadol's work from two prior LPs, but Marie Klock's intentionally absurd, voluble electronic music I've only recently discovered. On La Grande Accumulation, Anadol's kosmische-jazz comfortably sidles alongside Marie Klock's mostly spoken, sometimes sung stream of consciousness vocals, and the effect is deliciously intoxicating. Sometimes MK swims against the current of the music, as on the opening title track, and sometimes the pattering drums and synths pull her in, resulting in the bangin' disco-lite of "Sirop Amer (La Goule)" or the chanson-meets-giallo soundtrack on "Sonate Au Jambon." The first five tracks glide almost frictionlessly despite the sometimes frantic sing-speaking, but the final track throws a wrench into the proceedings, something that happens on every Anadol album (check out "Adieu" on Uzun Havalar, for example) and almost undoubtedly welcomed by Marie Klock. "La Reine Des Bordels" begins innocently enough in washes of synthesizer, but shifts into a double-timed square dance, then blaring ominous church organ music, and finally a demented waltz, Marie Klock breathlessly covering the proceedings throughout. It's sort of a fitting end to the record, something jarring to tie together a record which at points can feel like an ASMR exercise and even meditative. Gotten a whole lot of mileage out of La Grande Accumulation, a record greater than the sum of its parts, immediately satisfying without sacrificing the avantgarde leanings of its makers.
Bilders, Dustbin of Empathy LP (Grapefruit/Sophomore Lounge)
Patois Counselors, Limited Sphere LP (ever/never)
Rarely bundle reviews together but these two seem of a piece. Both are loquacious, expansive, lyrics-first records, and both artists have graduated from biting, angular post-punk to a more relaxed sound.
Bill Direen's long-running Bilders dropped an LP and cassette this year, and he seems to have found the sweet spot between the songs and the poetry presented in recent live performances. The band backing up Bill on Dustbin of Empathy mirrors, catches and gets out of the way of his vocals, their music consisting mostly of brushed drums, softly strummed guitars and the occasional keyboard or organ. At first blush it's almost definitely too slight to appeal to a broader crowd, but Bill Direen is nothing if not a captivating showman and engrossing storyteller. His lyrics cast a wide net, spanning the globe and touching on war, age and morality with the light, deft touch enabled by his 60-some odd years of life experience. His delivery is usually muted, but he occasionally breaks out a caricature or odd pronunciation, as on "Scaribus" or "Caprice and Nemesis," and "Obedience" is as worked up as he allows himself to get. Direen's lyrics feel wise and matter-of-fact, and are unobtrusively slipped in, like the lines "Some voices I will never hear again/Did not live, as long as I do" leading off "Comrades." As a good documentarian, the facts are presented but the margins are, inevitably, colored in with his own feelings. Repeat listens turn up more lyrical gems, and in the end Dustbin emerges as a quiet triumph against the attention economy.
Patois Counselors' Bo White possesses a similarly keen, sharp eye for detail, and if anything Limited Sphere seems to partially claw back any notion of "skewering" detected on previous PC records. There's a sense that White is equally charmed, intrigued and bewitched by the ecosystem of any given local underground arts scene, including the outsized forces restricting and suffocating them. The band plays things with a softer touch and wider palette, ending up somewhere like The Art of Walking-era Pere Ubu crossed with the National's quieter moments across Alligator and Boxer (see: "Fountains of UHF" or "Wrong Department"). The drumming across Limited Sphere is the engine, crisp and busy, deftly navigating and directing sheets of guitar, synths, woodwinds and piano throughout. White's low, nasally delivery make the lyrics tough to make out at first, but the utterance of "Is this what we like?" on "Accoutrement" feels apropos to a world ever more excited by Spotify Wrapped. More natural and less tense than The Optimal Seat, Limited Sphere feels like a collection of short stories, the complex-yet-smooth music a Trojan horse for Bo White's lyrics to be fed inside your skull, lingering and rattling for weeks. Sounds like homework to some, but I'll happily be revisiting, untangling and piecing together Limited Sphere for months.
The Body, The Crying Out of Things LP (Thrill Jockey)
A new LP by the Body, sans official collaborators, is generally a shoo-in for mention as one of the best records of the year around these parts. But, to be fair, the last few "solo" records on Thrill Jockey feel somewhat uneven with age. The most recent, the torrential grey-out of I've Seen All I Need to See, felt like the serpent eating its own tail, a powerful but defeatingly cynical record that seemed to serve as an endpoint. After a number of collaborations, the band returns and sounds refreshed, even bright amidst its shockwave-emitting cymbal crashes and tortured howls. There is a clarity across The Crying Out of Things not heard since I Shall Die Here, resulting in a lean 36 minutes that flies by, dexterously shifting between hard, distorted beats, mantle-cracking chords and samples caked in static. While it's hard to improve upon a track like "End of Line," the Body's contributors more than leave their mark: Ben Eberle's searing vocal contributions feel especially caustic on "Removal," and the back half of "The Building" bursts through Felicia Chen's quietly powerful turn in a way the trio didn't really allow themselves on Orchards of a Futile Heaven. Things still feel dark and cavernous, at times even bleak, but the overall effect is that of the band blasting down walls and letting some light slip in. As usual, the duo turns in one of the best records of the year, but this time it feels invigorating, a call to arms or at the very least a shot in one. If you're unfamiliar, here's your entry point.
Dead Door Unit, Abandon CD (Tribe Tapes)
I last checked in with Philly's Dead Door Unit (one K. Geiger) back in 2022 with Laugh at the Devil, a more than compelling suite of creaking, looping noise in the vein of Modern Jester as I recall, but this year's Abandon is on a whole 'nother level. On Abandon, Geiger's not necessarily shedding the influence of Dilloway, Hanson Records and any number of Midwestern noiseniks, but using it instead as a jumping off point to create these lingering, unsettling long-form tracks. Some in-track transitions, especially on "Clutter (Until the Flies Gather)," can unintentionally jar the listener from a trance, and the relative dearth of blistering noise across most of the CD may leave some looking elsewhere. But if you strap in for the duration, the album becomes increasingly engaging from start to finish. Somewhere between the last few minutes of "Christmas Alley" and the beginning of “Windmill Hypnosis” is where the immersion begins, and the looping, chattering, scratching noise begins to induce either a fight-or-flight response or a sort of fever dream, the listener wrapped up in isolation by sweltering noise. Occasionally the music startles and sears, like the first third of "She Knows How to Reach Us," but Geiger uses the remainder of the track to masterfully pull apart that noxious cloud of static and slowly put it back together again. The one-two of "She Knows" followed by the lonesome piano loops on "Melrose (Street of Dreams)" is one of the high points for my listening this year, a real trip within 26 minutes that's surprisingly affecting by its end. Abandon is a towering, lengthy statement, but one that signals Dead Door Unit's arrival as a potentially generational talent.
Die Verlierer, Notausgang LP (Bretford/Mangel)
Leather jacket garage rock is usually something that I avoid, unless, apparently, it's delivered in a different language. Those Pierre & Bastien LPs still hold up, and now Germany's Die Verlierer deliver another strong take on their second LP, Notausgang. The record, completely sung-shouted in German, also sports a perfect crunchy-warm vintage production, yet still raw enough to generate friction. Tracks like "Das Gift," "Attentat" and "Adrenalin" capably rip, but the production makes the songs feel like some recently unearthed singles from the late '70s/early '80s. Better yet is when the band keeps the intensity but practices restraint with the guitars: the motor-mouthed vocals carry "Allesfresser," which already sounds like a future classic, and the raw "Made / D.M.A.IP" oughta kill live. Notausgang delves even further, slowing things down and drawing in the listener on the tense title track, and even throwing a day-dreamy guitar line into the languid "Stacheldraht," one of the best songs here. The track sequencing is a bit jarring, especially across the first three tracks, but that's a criticism that doesn't hold a lot of water for music best experienced in person. Works in the recorded setting, too, and I'm still a little surprised how much Notausgang was and continues to be played this year. Die Verlierer's open-ended approach to scuzzy rock 'n roll very much transcends the notion of a Crime cosplay act, resulting in a more restrained, durable record that appears primed to reward for years to come. Killer cover art, too.
Septage, Septic Worship (Intolerant Spree of Infesting Forms) LP (Me Saco Un Ojo)
Denmark's gore-obsessed death metal trio Septage returns after two solid EPs to drop a full-length, one that's completely mowed down expectations. A lot of death metal fixated on gore, or merging with goregrind, can safely be dismissed. Too often the bands are trying too hard to be the sonic equivalent of a shocking B-movie horror film, or often even worse. Septic Worship nimbly sidesteps that trap, and delivers 20 minutes of blistering and crushing takes on goregrind without taking itself too seriously. The respective barrages that open up each side of the record are hair-raising, teeth-clenching moments, and from there the record's sides glide from full-on grind to lumbering death metal drops with ease. "Emetic Rites," which opens up the second side, packs everything Septage does so well in just over two minutes, though almost 2/3 of the tracks are left smoldering within 90 seconds, which makes differentiating songs a real challenge. It's not like you put on something like Septage to analyze the nine seconds of "Septic Septic," though; it's there to blast the cobwebs out, chip a tooth or two, and help you come out on the other side reinvigorated, if a bit raw. This is easily my favorite metal or metal-adjacent record of the year, an uncompromising yet ridiculously fun record. Clearly the lyrics out this as something not necessarily apropos to the moment, but Septic Worship is powerful enough to drown out the constant buzzing, grandstanding and distracting faux-outrage that makes up 90% of modern existence. Consider it a bit of self-preservation in an absolutely mad world, or just strap in and let it knock you around - either way, it's a strong antidote to endless doom scrolling and pointless anger.
