My desk is literally overflowing with music at the moment. So much so that (other than listen to it) I don’t even know what to do with all of it half the time.
There are piles of CDs all around my terrestrial desk and just as many recently un-compressed folders full of MP3s that need tagging (I’m a bit fussy about such things) before they can be added to my listening library (located on a hard-drive that, thankfully, still has plenty of room) cluttering up the virtual desktop. I’ve got records in dire need of shelving. Both my iPod and my Zune are full to capacity with different styles of music so I so I have a choice as to which one I want to take with me when I leave the house based on mood. I’m almost always overwhelmed by my selection of new awesomeness when putting together playlists for my podcast. And I’m often at odds as to what albums from my listening rotation that I should blog about.
I usually keep notes on bands I plan to show love on the blog. And there is in fact a lengthy list of possible blog fodder I intended to pull something from for today’s post. But who wants to consult a list every time they put their headphones on? Not me. I just want to listen to what I want to listen to. So when I strapped my earcups on this morning I filled them up with what I wanted to hear, a record called New Raytheonport by a dude named Gary War, the sound of which has been hovering around my dome for a few weeks. Despite its replay value I hadn’t added it to my ever-growing list though because during my first listen I’d searched the net for information about the artist and come up with bupkis. Ignoring the fact that I still have next to no biographical information (and I’m not even sure I can find a picture of him) about the guy who created it I found myself penciling it in betwixt the the other recent releases on my “to be blogged about list.”
So “blogged about” it shall be!
I still know practically nada about this Gary War character. One press release-esque blurb I read claimed he’s a resident of Brooklyn, New York. This is totally plausible. But the one fact I’ve been able to verify about him is that he’s a member of a band called The Super Vacations. And while their web-presence is just as vague as Gary’s one of the few notes I’ve read about them said they’re from Norfolk, Virginia. So, as much as I wish I could tell you where in the world Gary War calls home you’re going to have to settle for knowing where he resides musically instead. And where might that be? Somewhere in a hazy, probably shady, low-rent, drug-saturated neighborhood between the genre-bending of Beck, the retro bedroom-Pop of Jim Noir, the baroque effects-laden psychedelic Avant-Pop/Chamber-Folk of Panda Bear, the rhythmic Freak-Folk of White Flight, the hipster-meets-Hippie electronic Psych-Pop of MGMT, and the uber-lo-fidelity demo-quality experimentalism of impossible to pigeon-hole DIY auteurs like Cody ChesnuTT and Ariel Pink.
For the most part New Raytheonport is a kaleidoscopic experience, warm and fuzzy with tape-hiss, where War’s heavily effected voice floats disembodied amidst undulating sheets, both dense and diaphanous, of reverb and echo-drenched instrumentation. Primitive drum-machines whirr and sputter like the mechanism that slowly spins a mirror ball straining to move the entire planet instead. And the sharp, electronically generated tones of synthesizers burst forth prismatically, in wide beams, brightly shining slivers and multi-colored shards, cutting through the clouds of incense and peppermints. It’s jazzy jamming Hippie-esque patchouli-and-herb-scented hallucinogenic psychedelia (”Clouds Went That Way,” “Good Clues,” “Cyclops Eye”) no doubt. But with an ear for the musical developments that occurred after the dayglo ’60s, like Soft-Rock (”Eye In the Sky”), Disco (”Healthy Living”), Punk (”Obscure Preferences,” “Bounce Four,” “Edge of Mess”), New Wave (”Please Don’t Die,” “Eye In the Sky,” “Edge of Mess”) and Electronica (”Please Don’t Die,” “Grown In Shells,” “Eye In the Sky”).
“Please Don’t Die” is a dubbed-out motorik-beat-driven New Wave/Funk freakout with electronic percussion ticking nervously along to a hollowed out bassline that makes the whole track — which could easily pass for Devo on LSD — sound like it’s sick in the tummy. “Healthy Living” is a dose of fuzzy lo-fi Disco/Funk that explodes in a swirl of synthesized sparkle, but with a tough edge to it’s guitar jangle and drum stomp that recalls the times, like “Magnificent Seven” and “Radio Clash,” when the punks took their antics downtown. But selections like “Cyclops Eye” — a stripped-down composition that consists only of plaintive guitars, shimmering effects and War’s disorientingly wobbly tremolo vocals — and the wholly electronic “Grown In Shells” — which sounds like a Black Moth Super Rainbow tune, something off of Bruce Haack’s The Electric Lucifer, or a bit of both remixed by Black Ark-era Lee “Scratch” Perry in all it’s spaced-out synthesized psychedelic trippiness — keep things as sludgy as any “yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dogs eye.”
Gary War “Please Don’t Die”
It sounds sort of like Gary War wasn’t quite sure what to do with all the music he loves either. But instead of listen to it all like I do he played it all himself. Which is cool with me. In fact, it’s the exact sort of thing I want to listen to, even if I have a million other listening options, because it’s a bit like listening to all of them at once.