Re-up: Mystery Guru:

ORIGINALLY POSTED BACK ON APRIL 10, 2007
Here's a big treat for fans of Acid Mothers Temple. This is AMT-CD 001, a solo electric guitar improvisation from AMT leader, Makoto Kawabata. Two tracks are presented here, "Mai Sagarisi Negai" & "Amou No Shibuki". Both are excellent explorations in swelling drones, wild harmonics, and feedback frenzy...mind expanding stuff. This is an extremely RARE item...only 100 ever made (!) and likely never to be re-pressed.

ONCE MORE

Sweet Hearts:

Sweet little ep from the short-lived, but highly influential foursome Tiger Trap. SOUR GRASS clocks in at only a little over the 12 minute mark but it could be some of the brightest 12 minutes of your morning.

Hey Jones, remember this one?

Ear~opener:

Chances are if you are any kind of fan of jazz at all, then you are familiar with the name McCoy Tyner. Perhaps you are used to seeing his name listed as a sideman to one of the most illustrious quartets in all of jazz history. So you may have not followed his career path closely from the time that he left that sideman gig. Now is the time to correct that situation my friends with his mind blowing live album, ENLIGHTENMENT. If performance is the key word to a great live jazz album, then this one delivers in spades with pulse-shredding bass, gut-busting drumming, soul-shattering saxophone, and some of the most intense piano playing you'll ever hear! A lot has been written about spiritual jazz music and I won't get into all that here right now, but when listening to this record, it's not hard to imagine these four souls reaching a higher plane of cosmic intensity during these extended jams.

SAY WOW!

Lovin' The Night:

Yep...this is the 1981 full-length debut by Motley Crue; without a doubt one of my favorite albums as a kid, but one that totally confused me, and still confounds me a bit to this day. When I was younger, most of the confusion stemmed from the title. I would ask my friends "Too Fast For Love? What does that mean?" (Hey, what can I say? I had a sheltered upbringing!) then my friends would look at me and say "...oooh...y'know (wink wink)." and clueless, I would reply "Oooooooh...yea, sure...I get it...pretty fast...yep." But the real weirdness came from the really strange production...it sounds really dirty and scummy, yea...it's early Motley Crue, but this retained a great level of hunger, stupidity, and naivety that the band would surely lose upon getting their hard-earned fame. The cowbell alone on the album warrants a whole thesis... just..what? Why is it mixed so loudly on some parts? And the way that Tommy Lee utilizes it is SO FUCKING RANDOM at times that it's just ridiculous! There's even moments of OVERDUBBED COWBELL on here...i repeat: OVERDUBBED COWBELL. That means that one of two things must have happened during the recording of this album.

#1) Tommy Lee *really* wanted to emphasize that cowbell's ring and thought that the song deserved that special something to make it stand out...(yea, i know, we're dangerously close to crossing the line into SNL skit territory here)...but there's a deeper level of insanity when comparing "more cowbell" to "double tracked cowbell"! ~~~Aarrggh!!! How does genius like this go unnoticed in the annals of history for so long?

#2) Having completed the first cowbell track, Tommy was so wasted that he recorded it twice, then decided to go score more dope and hookers and the task of deleting one of those tracks was left to the engineer who was way too busy scoring his own groupies and blow. Thus, the track ("Public Enemy #1" if you must now) remained untouched in all it's out-belled glory.

Okay, this is a killer album of pop hooks, big crazy choruses, sleazy guitar and a total glammed out attitude owing lots to the New York Dolls, The Stooges, T. Rex. I could go into more critical observations regarding the music but I'll just let my 12 year old self let you all know that simply, this "rules."

THE LOUDER THE BETTER

By the way, tracks 1-9 are the original album.
Tracks 10-13 are the bonus tracks, most of them lackluster- except for the killer Crue version of The Raspberries' "Tonight."

Mini~Mean:

Chicago in the 90's was infamous for sprouting out all kinds of bands with members that looked like your everyday indie man, complete with no name clothing, a mellow attitude, and at least one member with all black clothes and wire rimmed glasses. But once they got on stage and plugged into some sort of noise rock rage,they were capable of destroying. Collossamite fit the bill when their full length ECONOMY OF MOTION was released upon earholes back in 1998. They featured member of Dazzling Killmen but Collossamite goes for a more streamlined approach, using space and sparse tangles of guitar chords, dizzying time signatures, and a general loose and disturbed atmosphere.

FOR YOUR INNER SKRONK