#brian case

[senorboombastic]

Track By Track: FACS - Wish Defense

Words: Andy Hughes(Photo Credit: Evan Jenkins) As we highlighted in our latest podcast episode, Chicago based trio FACS are a cooler than cool outfit that have been on our radar for a number of years now, putting out consistently good releases one after another, each better than the next. This week sees the release of their sixth studio album ‘Wish Defense‘ (via Trouble In Mind Records), a…

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[senorboombastic]

‘Wish Defense’ – Listen to episode 28 of ’60 Minutes or less’, the new podcast from Birthday Cake For Breakfast – featuring Brian Case (FACS)!

Words: Andy Hughes Welcome to ’60 Minutes or less’ – the podcast from Birthday Cake For Breakfast – where for our second episode of 2025 we look to Chicago, joined by our very special guest, Brian Case of FACS! Cooler than cool, FACS have been on the radar for a number of years now, with each new release better than the next. No strangers to Birthday Cake For Breakfast, we’ve had a back and…

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[senorboombastic]

This One Song… FACS on Slogan

Tell you what – we love hearing from artists when things go right. We equally love hearing from artists when things go dreadfully wrong. A song that was a piece of piss, written in 20 minutes? Or years in the making and a bastard to write? Whether it’s a song that came together through great duress or one that was smashed out in a short amount of time, we’re getting the lowdown from some of our…

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[spilladabalia]

The Ponys - Get Black

[spilladabalia]

The Ponys - Shadow Box

[senorboombastic]

a/s/l: FACS

Remember the days of the old schoolyard? Remember when Myspace was a thing? Remember those time-wasting, laborious quizzes that everyone used to love so much? Birthday Cake For Breakfast is bringing them back!  Every couple of weeks, an unsuspecting band will be subject to the same old questions about dead bodies, Hitler, crying and crushes.   This Week: Ahead of releasing their fourth album,…

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[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 660: Brian Case Parallel Voices

This is an album highlight of 2020.

There’s been a certain consistency across Brian Case’s various bands. 90 Day Men tapped into a post-punk sound that regulated the guitar to a stabby, dissonant, textural component. Disappears scaled the guitars back even further, testing the limits of how austere a song could be while still feeling like a proper song. With his latest band FACS, Case leans into both the anti-riff aspect of 90 Day Men and the reductionist principle of Disappears, manipulating the guitar into some alien-sounding instrument that creates a backdrop of unease that allows the rhythm section to provide the primary musical information. So how does this approach work when Case opts to make an entire album of guitar instrumentals?

It winds up it’s pretty damn compelling. Parallel Voices has a bit of an ASMR quality about it---we’re listening to Case’s unorthodox guitar playing under a microscope. But fortunately, Case does such a fascinating job of obscuring his methodology that the sound sources on Parallel Voices sound like they could be any number of instruments other than guitar. The album’s five songs all sound like hazy transmissions from some distant location, and the various pulses and swells and percolations of sound that make up the compositions seem somehow completely random and accidental, yet tonally and harmonically compatible. There’s an element of chaos in the disregard for structure and rhythm, but there’s also a master’s touch at wrangling these haphazard sounds into something that still holds considerable melodic weight.

If you’re in the mood for sublime droning instrumentals but still want something with an edge of tension and potential unravelling to it, I highly recommend Parallel Voices.

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: FACS

Chicago’s FACS formed out of the remnants of drone-kraut-punk Disappears, centered around guitarist Brian Case (90-Day Men, Ponys) and drummer Noah Leger. Their 2017 debut Negative Houses was dark, claustrophobic and haunting. In her review, Jennifer Kelly observed that it “clank[ed] through haunted technological spaces, the scree of effected guitar shining a klieg light on moist, abandoned underground corridors.” Void Moments, the band’s latest, adds a bass player in Alianna Kalaba and considerably advances the sound. Said Kelly this time, “The space is still thick with ghosts and luminous with dread, but the music moves with new purpose and focus.” Here Brian Case lists the music that matters to him.

Fugazi—Steady Diet of Nothing

I made myself listen to this over and over again until I fully understood all of it. Still my favorite.

Talk Talk—Laughing Stock

Every time we finish a record, I always say the next one is going to be our Laughing Stock. Absolutely perfect and completely out of reach.

Sonic Youth—EVOL

I have such a vivid memory of the first time I heard this; I can still go there very easily. I hope to make a record that does that for someone. "Tom Violence" is the best song ever written.

The Smiths—The Smiths

Someone let me borrow this and I never gave it back, it instantly became that important to me.

Alice Coltrane—Journey In Satchidananda

My wife introduced me to this album and for YEARS I thought it was part of the Vincent Gallo album the CDR was labeled as. Insane on all levels.

Raincoats—Odyshape

As mysterious to me now as it was upon first listen.

David Bowie—Low

I've spent more time listening to this album than anything else.

Unwound—Repetition

Still ripping this off 25 years later.

My Bloody Valentine—Isn't Anything

Better, weirder, more everything than Loveless.

Robert Wyatt—Old Rottenhat

Essential listening in 2020.