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As I said yesterday in my review of their show at Roboto, here I am to review NONZOO's tape, WAZOO, which was released on Already Dead Tapes this year. I liked the tape even just from the cover art with its bulbous, insectoid mosaic. There are a few different variations of the cover, just like the shirt that I also got from the band. The actual cassettes are a gold color that, in this case, seems eerie.


 WAZOO starts with a glitchy noise anime intro called "LARVAE" that fades into the next song, "SPAMBOT RINGER", a song resembling Melt-Banana with more funky drums. There's a lot of textural guitar, computer-y noise, and drums that are thumpy and quiet. The vocals sound like a cool post-punk band (think The Slits or Mo-Dettes), shouting something like "bee! bee! bee!". Towards the end, things are pretty ragged instrumentally and vocally with some screams. The next song fades right in, "HULA-HOOP OF FLIES". At the start, there are some Siouxsie spooky vox and xylophone guitars. Before everything zooms out into the cyberspace of crystal spheres, there's some bubbling and Shaggs military drums. The title makes so much sense with this rhythm. "Alone inside her at last" (those words might be wrong), and then the song ends with a sort of "upset neighbor lady" voice from somewhere else. The "COCOON TRANSMISSION" comes in, somewhere deep inside, a scary place so confined with a green membrane. The twilling buzz is hypnotic. Maybe there are voices? It's too dark. Chants build up. "HEADLESS FARCE" is so fast and more "punk". It takes off and then "let's be quiet" and then jumps off and out again! The skittery angular guitar works well with the Macbeth-witch-like chant. The song breaks down into a slow decay, but there's one last gasp of backing vocals and springy guitars. Then it fades out in a wordless devil chant.

"They stunned her, and stripped off her garments, and lastly
They stuffed her inside a kind of a pod;
And then it was that Millicent Frastley
Was sacrificed to The Insect God."
-Edward Gorey, The Insect God

But wait, there's more! There is a side 2 (who knew? - you probably, and me too). It doesn't start here, but the next track is a noted departure from this insect story. "GREAT AMERICAN TROUGH" does not fade-in. The strong guitar line really pushes the track. There are some strange percussions going on, and the instruments remind me of the Silver Mt. Zion side-project, Diebold, a bit. "Ooh the mystery!" The vocals are similar to David Thomas' on "Big Ed's Used Farms". "SEVERE ROUGH STYLISH" is a good descriptor to this band. Whoa, there's a heavy sound barrage, but overall this song is not as dense. The vocals are chirpy. Something drips into an intercom voice saying something about being scared of yr daughter. This one is scary, and it might be my favorite track. "THE HEAVENLY CRAFT OF PURE LOVE" sounds like it could be sincere or total irony with this band. NONZOO made it the latter; this is another creepy one! Someone is telling an eerie dream/memory about an amputation, and then a man, who sounds like he might have starred in The Blair Witch Project, comes in with another story that I can't make out. Demonic voices fill the air, and then we are back to the room with the first storyteller talking about controlling yr dreams.

"CARTOON PHYSICAL" is another big break - it comes in swinging like lounge jazz accompanied with airy vocals. Then there's a very cartoony voice, a lot of vocal manipulation, and maybe backward voices (please tell yr mom and the pastor!). It ends with a cough, so I assume the title refers to a physical in the medical sense. "SECRET LANDFORMS" is a great name for a song. There are great space sounds and some zoomed out ambient parts above the fields beyond the fields that we know. This song is a little long, as is, almost, the next one, "AUTO-HOLOGRAM BONUS EVENT". The musick comes in from a different room with a really solid track full of zipper-y bass. When I thought it was getting too long, many voices spoke out around the room before screams and a horn pileup. This one has a very good end. Speaking of the end, "ROOM 202" is the last track, fading into a different world, alone outside at a temple on the edge of the world. A hot wind comes in from the left field. A spectral voice vibrates in through the veils of worlds, chorusing together to reveal itself emanating from human-cricket hybrids that begin to gather, revealed when the fog clears over the autumn leaves. Is it another holy ritual? An alien abduction? A surgical procedure? You know, I saw something staring back at me from the space between the stars, big eyes, and long hands, fingers of grey ash bones. Slime drips down my face as the many-eyed worm encircles the top of my head like a cold, damp leech. I want to scream. Distantly, there are others here, somewhere, screaming in fear. Maybe something vomits? Then the wicked laughter mocks us all before a bell rings. Time to snap out of it. Wow.

WAZOO is an amazing album. It almost becomes formulaic, but it never reaches that point with the strange soundscapes and non-rock guitars. The songs are similar but also quite varied. It sounds like the pasta, jackfruit, and eggplant dish I ate before the review tasted - alien, squishy, and too sweet. I screwed up with the food, but NONZOO did not screw up with WAZOO. NONZOO compares favorably to Melt-Banana, but this is better; I am not a fan of all of the yelps from Melt-Banana's Yasuko and the samples they use. The production on WAZOO is great, though the drums should be a bit louder. This album gets a GOOD. This rating can be in all caps - why not? Along with Aunt Dracula's Freaker, it's been one of my favorite albums this year.

NONZOO shirt front

NONZOO shirt back
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Since I positively reviewed the Radon Chong tape, I Keep On Talking To You, a few weeks ago, I was very excited to see the band's tape release show on August 26th at The Mr. Roboto Project. They were playing with some touring bands that I had never heard of with very strange names and the very cool Night Vapor. There also some plans to get a Sega Saturn at this show that got delayed a bit, but that's okay.


The first band to play was Night Vapor. Night Vapor sounds like the Birthday Party mixed with Captain Beefheart with an extra amount of nausea. This set was just gross! The green lights around the band, combined with the singer's sickening gyrations, made everything look ghastly. Everything sounded excellent with some fancy guitar weirdness and throbbing rhythm section. I swear the room was spinning.


Lake Lake, from Ohio, played second. They sort of sounded like the Melvins, perhaps a little more generic. The riffs were simple and kind of sludgey/heavy. Stuff boomed, but it never really burst out of its bubble; I really didn't enjoy this band. They did some strange Looney Tunes voices during some of the between song banter, but that was almost overdone. I just wanted them to play the songs. If the songs had been faster, more energetic, or with more significant vocals or interesting instrumentation, this would have been fine.



After Lake Lake, I went outside and then played Super Smash Bros. Melee for a second. The next band, NONZOO, was already setting up and started to play just when we were finishing the game. The sound was amazing; I was really excited to get closer to the band! NONZOO is a noise-rock/no-wave band from Chicago. They remind me of Cellular Chaos. The singer looked like they could have been hanging out with the Bromley Contingent back in the late 70s, and the guitarist had such a strange instrument. The songs were fast; space sounds ricocheted off the walls as the singer bounced around like a colorful ball from a toy vending machine. The contrast was high compared with Lake Lake. Despite all the noise and sweat, NONZOO has a very cute/friendly aura about them with a hint of danger; that's pretty much what I consider to be my own aesthetic. I got a tape and a shirt from them, both of which had numerous variations. That's so cool!



Radon Chong played last. Their set was short and to the point. The songs sounded great, their new drummer, also in Hermit Thrushes, doing an excellent job! For once, I could understand the lyrics, since I had just listened to the tape, so everything was much more meaningful to me. Sasha, the singer, did some cool moves and really made the songs "pop out", but maybe that's the tape whispering in my ear as I listened to it through headphones via an ancient portable cassette player on my stairs. Anyway, this was the perfect set length of songs played to near perfection; I was left wanting more. That's how it should be.

The show was fun, and it ended super early. Some of my friends were going to another show at Spirit afterward. I considered it, but I didn't want to pay $5 to get in after missing a band or two. There was also a reunion of the Weird Paul Variety Show at the BBT, one of the last shows there. I didn't end up going to that either. I don't know why so much stuff was this night, but I was glad to have gone to Radon Chong's tape release. It was really great to see NONZOO, and I feel like I got a better understanding of some kind of cosmic oneness from this show. I really mean that, but I can't really tell you why or what that means. I had some other plans to hang out with some other friends, but instead, it seemed best to go home. "When you gaze into the NONZOO, sometimes it gazes into you". Next time we'll take a look at such a place more closely to see the animals, eat cotton candy, and feel the heat of the noise-savannah. I'll see you then!

Chantillion is a new band featuring Jackson from Grand Buffet and some other people that I am not familiar with but have probably seen somewhere before. In mid-August, they released a single before their first show at the Spirit Summer Recess, which I had to miss, unfortunately. At least I can listen to the single.

"Brassque" is a muscular synth-rock jam. Everything sounds so powerful, even if that isn't a word usually used to describe synth stuff. It's like Perturbator backing the Dictators. The song is kinda surfy, with hard-hitting drums, fast and surreal Dylan-esque vocals, and heavy bass synth. "Brassque" matches its cover art of four goofs on motorbikes well: weird and tough. My favorite part is when Jackson yells, "guitar" before a wall of heavy synths hit the listener. I don't know what the lyrics mean, but there is something about "coming back as a tiger snake" and a company man in the catacombs that recalls Poe's "The Casque of Amontillado" (also check out the spelling - Brassque and Casque).


I'm excited to see Chantillion live. The only show they have at the moment, according to Bandcamp, is at the end of September in Youngstown, but I'm sure we will see more of them in the future. "Brassque" receives a Good. It is a powerful start to something that seems like it will get better and better.
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This year is the 10th-anniversary of the first "serious" release by Mirkwood Recordings, Stands in Lightning's Metanoia. 10 years ago, I was still in high school, and I wasn't going to shows. I never heard this when it came out, but I took a listen to it the other day during a night when I was haunted by fever dreams of chunky drawings of small spacemen wielding enormous pencils.


 Metanoia starts out with the single-worthy "Wherein Hast Thou Loved Us", a poppy bit of noise rock, reminding me of The Wedding Present's "Brassneck" or Pittsburgh's own Arco Flute Foundation. There are some soaring highs and deep lows on this track. It's a really great opener. "Apples" has chunky riffs, burbly bass, and the sound of classic emo (Rites of Spring or early Weezer). This sound continues for the majority of the album. The two solos on "Apples" remind me of the differences in the solos on "Marquee Moon"; here one is cool/weird/warbly and the latter solo is full of staccato attack. Continuing with the emo sound, "Noli Me Tangere" does it again with the Nirvana loud-quiet-loud dynamics. There is a haunting solo here with imperfections that make the ghost real. "What It Was" is much quieter, J Mascis singing along to the Mountain Goats' folk. The titular "Metanoia", meaning spiritual conversion or the like (I had to look it up!) has some cool guitar lines like the earlier tracks, but it's a lot quieter with a very stoic bass. The song jumps up in the middle, yelling to a fiery solo. It's a strange song, kind of hollow. There's the spiritual awakening for you.

There's a bit of a break after "Metanoia". I guess we can call this "side 2", though I doubt that Metanoia had a vinyl release; 2007 is just before The Great Vinyl Resurgence. Anyway, "A Great Burden" sounds totally, tonally different from the others. It opens with a riff like "Werewolves of London" and is more of a rocker. It still has a similar downward feeling though. "Spiders and Heaven" is a great name for a track; it reminds me of a strange idea I had of cosmic spiders that keep the planets together with their interstellar silk. This one has a way different feel again, alt-country or whatever, with a waltzing tromp to the backbeat. It's a very solemn story, set to harmonica, about the afterlife. "One Wasp Left" starts sounding like something from a different album entirely - very, very lo-fi production and much lower in volume. It boosts after 30 seconds into fierce guitars, the tale of work vs love. I really liked this one - there's a lot of energy. The imperfections are kind of cool. The album closes out with "Dietrich Bonhoeffer", a priest turned spy who met his death at the hands of the Nazis. The vocals sound like Thurston Moore, and this track is more rockin' with thrashy guitar and lots of crashing cymbals.


Metanoia has great production, with deep bass tones, perky drums, and wailing guitar and vocals. It has a sound that mixes Dinosaur Jr with the emo of Lync or Rites of Spring. Though there are some really strange contrasts at times, many of the tracks are mired in downerville, washing away the mind in a thick paste mudslide. I should also mention that I don't really like the cover art. It's an abstract image, sort of like a bloody explosion. That's fine, but the text seems a bit lazy and the image is very low-res. Despite that sinking feeling, Metanoia is still a Good album; the hope comes through when needed. The songs are good, and the feelings are real. This album feels like a monolith to a time and a place and a feeling and the people that were there; the band's name fits it sharply, as it really would stand amidst falling bolts, collecting them for its own self-worth. I felt shocked myself when the musick stopped.
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On Sunday, August 20th, I was very bored, lonely, and depressed. I was really not feeling well, so I started looking at my Facebook events. "Oh yeah Dan booked that show," I said to myself, possibly out loud, "I should go to it instead of sitting at home and looking at these weird plush bears sitting in a chair together and feeling jealous." And so, I went to the show at Howlers.

The show was supposed to start right before I got there, which made me feel anxious; I don't like to miss anything. Instead it got delayed a while, because not a lot of peeps were there. Maybe they were at Skull Fest or tired from Skull Fest or moping at home with plush bears. Eventually some people came, and the show started with the very garage-y, in every sense of the word, Spellcaster.



The members of Spellcaster look pretty young. The guitarist looks like my friend, Ocasia's, brother, who I always think of as being in high-school even though he clearly isn't now. Like his hair, this band is pretty fuzzy and imperfect. The guitar sounded pretty nice, despite using one of those multi-effects processors (yuck! so gross!). The bass was quiet, and then got a lot louder for some of the songs; it was almost like a second guitar, reminding me of Young Marble Giants. The drums were super solid with a nice deep tone on such a little kit. The songs were typical garage fair, girls and beer and stuff, which is fine. It's nothing exceptional right now, but, if these guys pushed a little more, they could be really great.



Next up was the touring band, Best Behavior. I don't like this name; it seems kind of bratty in a bad way. This band looked cool, but they did a lot of weird dance moves. Their songs are pretty dance-y though, so it makes sense. The guitarist with the sleeveless shirt did have some cool Springsteen moves, and he looks like The Boss. Anyway, the music was really disappointing. I don't like indie-dance-rock - too much like The Killers or The Strokes at their worst. Even worse, Best Behavior had some kind of drum machine or backing track. Keyboards, handheld percussion, even bass(!) and guitar(!), and other phantom sounds spread around like a curse. You guys have a 4-piece band; there is no excuse for this! I might be off on the bass and guitar parts, but it certainly looked like sometimes the band members' playing did not match the sounds emitted from the speakers. If yr gonna use a drum machine, be upfront about it, or just play it for real! These phantom sounds were clearly otherworldly as well; they sounded so separate from the material instruments. Finally, the singing was too on point; I'll take raw vocals over stuff like this any day!




Hey it's that band I like! The Spectres are raw and good! They aren't unpolished or sloppy, but they have high energy and make mistakes sometimes. This was the best I've ever seen them play! It was a breath of fresh air to hear Dan wailing "I Want Her So" over James drums and some cool guitars. You don't need backing tracks; sometimes you don't even need a bass.

This show went from one extreme to the other. The Spectres were excellent as always. It was a fun show, even though it was such a strange lineup. I got to talk to a lot of friends, new and old. Sometimes all you need is rock 'n' roll.
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Skull Fest is a huge punk festival in Pittsburgh. This year it happened from Thursday, August 17th to Sunday, August 20th. I didn't go to Skull Fest. The only time I have gone to Skull Fest was when I was volunteering at Roboto and had to watch the sound for one of the shows. That show was kind of goofy because there was a band of little kids, the kids of various older punks. It was amusing. Anyway, I did actually want to go this year, but the cost of the shows outweighed my desire to go to any of them, which was mostly based on seeing friends. Instead, on August 18th, I went to this show at Howlers.





There were only two bands at this show. The first band was Space Debacle, a two-piece post-punk/noise band. Their only instruments are a guitar, theremin, and drum machine, in addition to vocals. Their set was plagued with technical problems due to broken/lost equipment. That's not really a big deal for me - it shows the struggle. I like seeing a band that could fall apart at any moment, one step from the edge, energized by disaster. Of course that's more of the rock way, Neil Young and Dead Boys and whatever. This was more like a forgotten post-punk single found decades after being recorded somewhere outside London on a small cassette player at home and pressed to vinyl in small numbers, later to be found on a Messthetics compilation. Dani's singing and Hunter's guitar playing were very good; the theremin seemed to have some issues (I suspect it was some interference in the room). Space Debacle's songs dealt with the hypocrisy of certain safe spaces, abuse, mental health, and bad parents. "If you don't love me the terrorists win, so you better let me cum in your mouth". "Drink the Hate Water" was a list of ways we hurt ourselves, which I felt personally connected to, and "Hamburger Dad" was about toxic masculinity in a funny way. All the songs had serious topics with a sort of playful/surreal/humorous aspect to them. The last song was awesome, a future classic for sure.

There was a huge gap of time between the two sets; Big Splash was having their own technical issues. In the mean time, we got to listen to DJ Purr Ubu, who played some really great songs, many of which I knew, such as The Jam's "Going Underground". She also had some really cool Italo disco stuff that I had never heard before. Later we talked about what defines "night musick" and "day musick".



After some mic issues, a broken guitar strap, and whatever else, Big Splash exploded - wow they were loud (but actually not too loud)! Compared with the queer and weird Space Debacle (awesome name!), Big Splash is the traditional rock band of four guys on guitar, guitar, bass, and drums. They sound like Dinosaur Jr, Andrew as a hoarser J Mascis, his hair falling around him just the same. Later, Dan, the bass player told us to "stick to the road" in the last song. This song was more poppy and driving, some of the others mired in sludge, but all the songs were great.

Though I almost reconsidered going to this show, it was really cool. The musick between the sets was great, and I had not seen either of these awesome bands before! Big Splash seems to have a lot of stuff coming up, and I plan to see them at some point soon. I hope Space Debacle plays again soon too. Be on the lookout for these sick bands!

Radon Chong grew from the remains of Skinless Boneless, a band I mention here quite a bit. It is a worthy successor. While Skinless Boneless could be a little sloppy sometimes, Radon Chong is very tight and more jammy. The dual guitars, hopping bass, and drums, accompanied with some lifting sax, make something more than the sum of their parts. The vocals, from Actorcop's Sasha Weisfield, are so varied and more musical than most bands. And it really is a band, not a one-person show, everything working together like the gears in a grandfather clock.


In this month of August 2017, Radon Chong is releasing an album on Single Girl Married Girl Records. I got a copy for review purposes, and it is a fine piece of work. Everything is so solidly crafted, with tight, clean production and good sound. The release has calming/creepy color scheme of yellow/purple, the cover adorned with a manikin pillow person next to a small lamp. It is an eerie and lonely picture, but it's also just a room in every house, white walls, darker carpet, and enough light to bring that known feeling.


The first track, "Faith-Based Charles" has some bouncing bass and geometric guitars. The vocals are loud and quiet, dynamic but not like Nirvana, saying, "I really miss you". I like the crispy sound of the cymbals and the slow fade out of the guitar harmonics accompanied by a sort of bass solo. "Grandma Anthropology" sounds like Pere Ubu mixed with R.E.M., David Thomas singing about explosions. It starts with some fancy guitar lines and really bouncy bass and follows with some NYC Ghosts & Flowers ambiance. The vocals are really nice here, incredibly musical and growing to growls. "Farm Pays for Me" might be my favorite with its, "c'mon, the farm pays for me" and more Pere Ubu sounds (vocals a little like the similarly titled "Big Ed's Used Farms" from Song of the Bailing Man) and springy guitars. "Seaform" is a bit slower, a small whirr before building up to some cymbals and then heavy drums. It's not a slow, epic build like Television. This song really shows Radon Chong's pop sensibilities, which, though buried, they do have. It's in the corners, behind all the scattered things, but it is there in the end "living in a steel mill". "You're a Kid" starts with Stooges drums, going into some Texas art-punk vocaloids before saxophone sounds, the color of a blue city painting, ride along the guitar and other vocals join harmonically. I like the outtake at the end. "Second to One" is kind of a continuation of the last, sonically but with some breaks. The drums are really energetic. The album ends on "Cold Hands", the title of which describes, to me, exactly what I said about the cover art, distant but warm in the end (cold hands, warm heart). This track goes from a downer to a real rocker that descends into guitar drone and more rock 'n' roll, Skinless Boneless style. Screeching, textural solos come up around like Humbaba's Cedar Forest at sunset. Then it ends, like everything else, at least in theory.

I Keep On Talking to You is an excellent album. It drags on a tiny amount, the songs sounding similar towards the end, but the actual end is well done and these are interesting songs with many things to find. The production is crisp, not muddy or blown out as is too common, and every instrument, including the vocals do their part to make something monumental. This is an epic, a tiny epic, "it's like sitting at home and risking yr life". Radon Chong's I Keep On Talking to You receives a Good.

If you're in Pittsburgh, be sure to check out Radon Chong's release show for this album on August 26th at the Mr. Roboto Project. They are playing with the always excellent, and sonically similar, Night Vapor along with two touring bands, Nonzoo and Lake Lake. Here's a link to the Facebook event. I hope to see you there!

EDIT: The album title was incorrectly written here as "I Can't Stop Talking To You" (hence the web address); it has been changed to the correct one.
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