I don't know anything about this band, Kowloon. I see some familiar faces within the credits to this Public Image-esque musical company though. I certainly like the name, the same as that of a huge city once located in Hong Kong like a place from a cyberpunk story. I have a track with the name of the same place coming out on some zine sometime in the near future. For now, there is this.


I don't like the cover to Big Trouble! that much. I like the base image of a blue flower. However, the way that the image is copied to the left is not that interesting, and the text looks sloppy. The text is my biggest issue, no border or interesting font. Perhaps most strangely, the image as a whole does not seem to be the correct proportions for any media format. The cover has the ingredients to be pretty cool; it just needs to be put together better. Thankfully the musick greatly makes up for the failed cover.


 Big Trouble! starts with a little sound like a logo in a movie appropriately titled "Company Credits". It's a little crystal sounding blip of transference. Next is the vaporwave R&B of the title track. I really like the little keyboard stabs and the subtle bass fills. "Big Trouble!" is a very dreamy song. The only thing I find somewhat unpleasant about it is the differing amounts of reverb on the various instruments. "Tricolor Theme" is much different than the pop of "Big Trouble!". This is a slow, ambient song, windchimes somewhere that might be dark and scary, a supernatural glow on the horizon.

The second-half comes in with "True Silk", a return to that neon night of "Big Trouble!". The keyboard and saxophone are beautiful, and the bass provides an awesome counterpoint to the rest of the musick. The vocals are unfazed and don't follow the song closely. It's really great. "Eyes of Those (Tomorrow's Light)" continues the sound from the previous songs with more bass and no vocals. I really enjoyed it. "Company Outro Credits" closes it out with a song like a movie ending theme condensed into a minute, the waves lapping at a shore somewhere in Technicolor.

The musical employees at Kowloon certainly did a good job on Big Trouble! I enjoyed all of the tracks, and the presentational logo themes make the package. I do think that perhaps this sort of video OVA, neon, Sega Saturn aesthetic is getting somewhat played out nowadays, but I really like it at the same time. I am interested to hear the album mentioned as upcoming on Kowloon's site, Tricolor Jade. I'll definitely be on the lookout. Big Trouble! gets a Good.

On Sunday, February 25th, I went to see a show at Howlers that some friends were playing. All the bands had weird names. I didn't know one of the bands, Saajtak, at all. Mortis changes their sound all the time. Thousandzz of Beez is pretty consistent, even though I swear the first time I saw them it was totally different. Let's go!



Thousandzz of Beez was first. Hunter played a good set that seemed especially mesmerizing. I was glued to the musick. I liked that some of it was more guitar-focused while other songs were more pre-recorded backing tracks of ghostly somethings. Thousandzz of Beez is basically always good stuff.



Mortis was pretty good. They did some cool free jazz kind of stuff, all drums and horns. Unlike the other shows I've seen them do, there weren't any weird tricks - no flying plush toys or other gags. It was just straightforward, seemingly improvised jams. With a bit more, another permanent instrument or something, this would be really awesome.


I didn't like Saajtak too much. They used synths, bass, drums, and vocals to make musick you might dance slowly to. Some of the songs were really cool with musical scenes of floating thru a crystal something structure. Mostly, the songs went on too long though, and I am not a huge fan of the kind of the glissando-filled R&B singing style used.

The show was fairly short and pretty pleasant. I got to catch up with a few friends, and I felt very good when I went home. I really don't have much else to say. Sometimes stuff is just fine, and that's it. See you next time.

A short time ago, when I was red-eyed in the dawn, discovering the musick of bygone automata, I discovered something else, something more ancient but newer at the same time. Produced by the same Rich Pell of Specific Recordings as Robotic Music of Pittsburgh, Jimmy Crouse's Not To Take Upon Oneself to Say (1991 - 2017) was something special. Hearing the strange twisty songs, all gnarled and weird, I felt like I had gone somewhere underground. And the songs were actually only from New York! Despite what it looks like, the title is not composed of birth and death dates of a person; these songs were started in 1991 and finished last year. They were recorded in one take and left unedited. Sounds good to me.


The cover of Not To Take Upon Oneself to Say (1991 - 2017) is a piece of a map. To me, it looks like it shows where Antarctica would be. It's not there. This is before the discovery. This is uncharted land. This is terra incognita. When I was a child I read from an old encyclopedia tales of the extinction of the dodo, poems of the ghost of the great auk, and other stories about rocky shores on far-flung 19th century lands. Here they are.

"From What One Can Gather" is the first track on Not To Take Upon Oneself To Say (1991 - 2017). It becomes more musical as it goes along, but it's good the whole way through. It's simple, barebones, just vocals and stark guitar from somewhere out on the prairie, an old log house and smoke etched in metal via acid to show to future kids. "Tell 'em all I tried." The next track is "At Any Rate", opening with some shuffling. This album is the real deal. Crouse's vocals are long and ghostly on this, a strange chant to what could be uplifting musick. Despite the minimalism, there is a lot of depth here. "Each In Its Turn" has some interesting wordplay and some old words too, words from back in those folklore days before the lithographs were made. I like the short segment of bare instrumentation at the end. The final track is "By Way Of Example". It has some more weird wordplay and long drawn-out vocals and minimal, beautiful guitar, another ghost song. I can't make out what the song means too much, but I feel like my mind opens by listening to it. It ends suddenly.

Not To Take Upon Oneself To Say (1991 - 2017) is amazing. I feel like the world opened up after hearing it. I feel like there is so much more to the Earth than what I thought. Somewhere, maybe in New York City, maybe in a hole in the Appalachian Mountains, maybe somewhere far from here on another continent, there is more magick. It's everywhere, really, if you take the time to look. I love the raw sound on this album, the simple but profound nature of it, the almost grim aesthetic. It reminds me of two friends, Reid Magette combined with Dean Cercone. There's not much else like this. Not To Take Upon Oneself To Say (1991 - 2017) gets a Good.
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Salad Boys is a band with a cool name that I came across in my electronic travels through the internet one day. They had just recently released an album called This Is Glue on January 19th, but I couldn't review it right away due to other commitments. Also, since Salad Boys are from Christchurch, New Zealand, this review had to be for the international review series Outside In(fluence); here it is.


The cover to This Is Glue looks like, well, glue. Paint and glue all grey mixed, maybe there is a whale on a beach looking rather upset. Are there clouds, a black creature soaring in from the right, some infernal sky shark grown from a hell womb in a fiery mountain? It's all sloshed up confusion, grey matter and mist, dreams and death and nothing at all. This Is Glue.


The first track on This Is Glue is "Blown Up". It starts kinda plain, with an electronic bass sound, but things pick up with energetic fuzz guitar. I don't understand what the song is about, but the lyrics are not muffled in any way. The second track is "Hatred", a song that sounds like The Bats or The Chill, that classic Flying Nun Records sound. There is a very nice guitar solo on here, long and winding. The lyrics are beautiful and not subtle - "If I could ever be under you would you enjoy me?" The next song, "Psych Slasher", sounds like The Jesus and Mary Chain with it's dark and self-critical lyrics of madness and despair. That name is a great play on words. Though it is a very energetic, dancey track, the way that the singing drops off at the end of each verse is fittingly unnerving to the theme. "Right Time" goes back to jangling territory, almost hitting country. I have to really focus to understand the words here; the vocals are quiet, muffled, and overshadowed by instrumentation. I'm sure that the band's accent doesn't help me much either. I like the musick quite a bit. "Choking Sick" opens with the phrase, "little fucker", which I find mildly hilarious. The song is fast with repeating lyrics about kids doing things they shouldn't. It seems somewhat sympathetic but critical of said children. "Exaltation" is the last track on the first side, going back to that "Smoking Her Wings" sound from earlier. Again, the lyrics are harder to make out, but the way they are done, they have a mystical quality. This is some kind of dreamworld, occupied by The Cure, R.E.M., The Church, and other post-punkers and dream-poppers. It reminds me of the first band ever got into, the pillows. This is one of my favorites on the album.

The second side of This Is Glue opens with "In Heaven", which I don't like that much. It still has that airy sound, but the lyrics are not very intricate or interesting, plain words without much punch or pop. The chorus bugs me - "But you're not buried yet, so just play dead." The incredibly fuzzy, almost plush, guitar is beautiful at the end. The guitar solo also turns this around, making it almost an epic or something. I wish the rest was better. "Under the Bed" seems almost formless to me, though I think it's just me having trouble hearing and understanding the lyrics. I like the warbling guitar. "Dogged Out" has a scrunched up, wide-open sound, a song wearing a scarf out on a cold hillside. I like this one a lot with its simple lyrics, synth or string sounds, and clattering drums. "Scenic Route to Nowhere" is the third to last track, a Beatles sound of surreal adventures outside and inside. The circus guitars make this one especially strange, almost like Pink Floyd's "Corporal Clegg". I really like this one, another favorite. Next to last is "Going Down Slow", a cinematic piece of sad gloom, Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. This is a bittersweet something or other, epic by means of strings and despair, an ending theme of some future film. We're all stuck in glue sometimes. "Divided" is the final track, opening with an awesome hollow and fuzzy bass(?). The lyrics seem familiar to me, just getting out of a dark depression and failures that cling to the skin like static'd plastic. The electric singing of some strange tones as the song closes ensures that this chant carries through to the end. It's a beautiful song.

This Is Glue is just like it sounds like. It's a sure downer, but it is a bright and dancing and loud and epic downer. Everything works perfectly together, the title, the cover art, and the songs. Though the lyrics are at times subpar, they fit the tone and are sometimes brilliant. The instruments glide along in the clouded sky; sometimes they are the clouds, sometimes the bright blue. I really liked this album overrall. This Is Glue receives a Good.
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On February 21st, I played at the Experimental Guitar Night #1 at Howlers in Pittsburgh. I was not originally on the bill but got on when I asked after Sadie Powers had to drop. I hadn't felt good most of the week. I still don't feel too great right now. I'm talking about mental health mostly, but I was actually physically ill the morning of the show. I threw up after eating breakfast, presumably from some old mustard I put on a sandwich.

I was pretty tired during the day and slept for a lot of it. I woke up just in time to leave for the event. I should have left earlier. I got there right before the first performer, Aaron Myers-Brooks, played.


Aaron Myers-Brooks played a sort of classical/speed-metal. I wasn't a huge fan. He obviously worked pretty hard on it with big musical scores written out and some fancy samples. It really didn't connect with me at all though. I don't really appreciate things that seem overly complex to me. I'd rather see someone sort of mess up or play something that's simple and emotional in some manner (preferably not something that is particularly melodramatic or angsty though).


Next up was Derek Bendel, who I have seen and played with many times. Derek asked the audience if we wanted to see improvised musick or written pieces. I don't like the classical, somewhat indulgent idea of a "piece" so to speak, I mean it's basically the same as just saying you wrote a song, so I voted for the improvisation. The audience seemed to agree, but it was close. A few people, myself included, suggested he just split it, and he did. Derek played dreamy, minimalist semi-blues to a more gritty sludge pseudo-noise. There were some cool tremolo effects.



Dave Bernabo was the third performer. He always seems like a very well-respected and important artist in the community. His set was pretty cool, with blues and jazz chords and then some drone tones, quiet during the first half and loud and distorted in the latter half. This was accomplished using two Freeze pedals. I thought it was interesting and enjoyable.

I played fourth. I started with a more melodic sequence that descended into a dark lurking max of a dry desert. Buzzing drones and storm clouds filled the air. I played my guitar with a pop can and threw it into the audience. Ghostly chimes interrupted the sound followed by more storms. It was not a long set, shorter than I thought, but I'm happy with it. I streamed it live on my Facebook.



Devin Sherman played a really interesting song last, using a Digitech Whammy pedal and an EBow sitting on an untouched guitar to generate tones. He played a few ambient, Eno-meets-Dave Gilmour songs after that, but the first really stood out to me for being so unique.

It was fun to see all of the different things at the first Experimental Guitar Night. I am also glad that I got to play. A lot of people were at the show and most stayed the whole time. There will be a second one in a few months, and I hope it is just as successful.

Welcome to the second Artist Special! As I mentioned last month, Artist Special is an interview series that runs the third Sunday of each month. These interviews are with those who make musick and another kind of art (plays, films, sculptures, paintings, and more!). This month I spoke with another poet, Mick Malone, about his new book Cave Body.


I first encountered Mick Malone when he was in the band Worn Colors. I also played with some of the members of Worn Colors in the revolving Diamond Breaker. I only played with them once or twice. Some time ago, I saw that Mick had published a book on Amazon. I thought that was pretty cool and liked the title and cover art, so when I saw he was releasing a new one, Cave Body, I knew that I wanted to ask him about.

Cave Body is a series of short and eerie poems with accompanying illustrations of monsters and expressionistic images of horror. I thought it was awesome when I started reading it. I read about half of it one morning and brought it upstairs to finish later in the day. I have not seen the book since. I rarely ever lose anything, I still have most of the toys and games I had when I was a child, so this must be the work of some entity from either the 34th or 51st dimension. I'm sure I'll find it again one day. You can get one from our evil overlords at Amazon, though. You won't even need to do any inter-dimensional warfare.
Top of FormBottom of Form

What kinds of things inspire yr writing? I feel like it connects with me quite a bit and is similar to some stuff that I have made. Why all the bugs?
I spend a lot of free time reading about weird shit that supposedly (or definitely!) happened. The other day at work I read a story about a woman in New Zealand who woke up to gnomes trying to drag her body into a wardrobe. I was floored. I came home and drew a weird creature and wrote "the gnomes try to drag my body into the cupboard but I am too heavy." A lot of odd cults, missing people, conspiracies, and creatures make their way into my artwork and writing. I like channeling my personal life through these fantastical elements. My last two books, DOPE GRAVE and Cave Body, deal with a lot of my feelings of hopelessness, that nothing is ever really going to be okay, feeling like a broken person, constant worrying, knowing that everything is meaningless and pointless but you still have to exist and deal with it. But I can never just say "I'm having a hard time right now." I kind of have to make it more absurd, a little tongue-in-cheek. It's probably not healthy. As for the bugs, I honestly don't know. They always just show up. They're fascinating but creepy. I wish they wouldn't crawl on me while I sleep.

You used to make musick with Worn Colors and I know you have played with some other bands too. Do plan to make more musick some day?
I hope so. Playing shows is absolutely my favorite thing to do, and I really miss it. Towards the end of Worn Colors we were all just so busy with full-time jobs and other projects, and all of our new songs were really weird and super long; I think we just kind of burned ourselves out and needed a break. I still hang out with those dudes, and I wouldn't be surprised if we end up doing a project together again at some point.

Did you turn any songs into poems or vice versa?
Whenever any of my bands would get together and start writing something new, I would always look over poetry I've written and see if any of it would fit. It was pretty common for me to kind of cannibalize that work and borrow a few lines from different poems and mash something new together. I find writing lyrics to be very limiting, I've never had a good experience sitting down to write lyrics knowing I'll have to fit this to music. Poetry can just be what it is, and I really enjoy that.

Between the two (musick and writing), which came first?
I've always dabbled in both, but writing was first. I used to love writing short stories - they were usually only like a page or so long and almost always ripping off Jurassic Park or whatever anime I was into at the time. I remember in fifth grade my friends found this stack of like 50 handwritten pages, my "novel", in my desk and were like, "Wait, what? You're writing...for fun?" I never thought it was weird. I just liked being creative.

I didn’t realize it until I got the book, but I, of course, noticed the illustrations inside. They remind me of illustrations I used to make when I was half-asleep, which made them especially strange. What inspired the scratchy style? It fits well with the grotesque and vulgar imagery of the poems.
Honestly, my lack of artistic talent. I have a major disconnect from what I want to put on a page and what my hand can actually do. There's actually a poem in Cave Body about a person being forced to edit speedboats into television shows to not-so-subtly sell more speedboats and I initially came up with that idea as a comic I wanted to do. I mapped the whole thing out and realized I could not draw a speedboat no matter how hard I tried. I even looked for tutorials on how to draw speedboats and still had no luck! Eventually, I decided I could keep trying to learn how to draw things for real and still be awful at it, or I could just kind of embrace this sloppy, messy, abstract weird style and just have fun with it. It's much more in line with the art I enjoy anyway. I love starting a drawing while having no idea what it'll actually be.

Was it difficult to get a book published and on Amazon? Since you have done this twice, what tips do you have for other writers looking to do that?
It's genuinely so easy to self-publish these days, and there are so many ways to do it. I've been using Amazon's CreateSpace just because it's free and makes selling your book super easy. But there are tons of other sites you could use, or if you're crafty you can just make your own and sell it at shows or whatever. I run into people all the time who are like, "Wow, I can't believe you have a book!" It's like dude, I submitted a word document to a website. Literally, anybody who enjoys being creative can do this. I go with self-publishing because I know nobody would actually want to publish my work, and I'm super impatient. Cave Body was very spur-of-the-moment, where I was just feeling restless and decided I wanted to release a short zine-esque book, and the next day I submitted the first draft. (I soon changed my mind on that product and basically rewrote almost half of the book in a couple days). I just love how fast self-publishing can move. The downside is you're stuck promoting it on your own... and that is a nightmare.

Will you be working on a third book? Or what else is in store for the future?
Cave Body is actually my fifth book.

Oh, whoops. What were the other books you released and in what format? Were they also released on Amazon and the like?
I released two collections of short story and poetry when I was a teenager on a different service. They are out of print and I don’t even have any copies. I have three books on Amazon: Doom Riddles (a poetry collection designed to tell a larger, interwoven story), DOPE GRAVE (poetry and artwork), and then this most recent one, Cave Body.
I'm definitely working on some more stuff. I really like writing these small zines/books and releasing them as cheap as possible. I'd like to put out some new music. We'll see. I'm constantly certain that I am going to die very soon, so I just want to be productive and work on shit until all of my bones slide out of my body or my liver explodes or whatever horrible fate awaits me. The seas will rise and wash away it all, so it's ultimately meaningless but fun.
I hope that this look into Mick's work was not meaningless to everyone reading. I'll be back with a new artist next month. I have a few in mind, but nothing is totally concrete yet. If you want to be a part of this series, send me an email at skullvalleyblog@gmail.com or send a message to the Skull Valley Facebook page. As mentioned, be sure to check out Mick Malone's books (Doom Riddles, DOPE GRAVE, and Cave Body) on Amazon. Don't let the bed bugs bite.

Big Splash is a band that I only saw once, but that show was legendary. When I heard that they were playing their last show, I knew I would have to go. The other bands were Bong Wish, a band I figured was probably some kind of doom metal, and Robin Vote, who are usually pretty cool. It seemed like it would be really fun.



The show was February 10th. It was not a bad day that day. Big Splash was playing first, and they played quite a show. They opened with Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)". It was awesome! They even did the little backing vocals. Another great one was that song about following the road or something. That's always a good one too. The set was full of sludgey guitar and bass with a clear lead guitar over the top and solid drums. They did lots of cool rock moves. And that was it.


Next was Robin Vote. The band has gone thru significant changes since I last saw them, retaining only two of the members from that time. The musick was a little more country rock than the sort of country meets post-punk of the past. They are kind of like the Pittsburgh version of The Fall. I honestly did not find this set to be as engaging as before, though it wasn't terrible either.


Bong Wish was getting ready to play last. The members looked much more like a hippie, psych band than some doom thing. That's exactly how it was too. The songs resembled The Doors and the Allman Brothers over any comparisons to Sleep or Earth. The guitarwork from the frontwoman was really awesome with a clear and bright tone and fast fingerwork. The lights stayed dim as they played, creating a different kind of atmosphere. It was a good set.

Before I left I also got a pin and a tape from Bong Wish. I like the moon design on the pin. I don't smoke weed or anything else though, so I feel strange about wearing it. I also talked with the members of Big Splash about their future projects. It seems like there will be some interesting stuff coming up.
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