Fridays are release days and guess who just put some new tunes out?? Our Franzia-loving friend The Necrosexual. He released his sophomore offering The Gory Hole Overture in F# on May 17th, and dare we say that it has more polished production than Grim 1? While all the campy fun of the debut continues, the recording is much brighter with a more distinct guitar tone — The Grim one even revisits a song from his debut, “The Lair Where No Light Enters,” to do it justice.
Favorite Track: “In Ancient Daze (Black Widow).” Necro calls upon his rock n roll roots with a headbanging verse riff, classic ‘Merica lead guitar, and even a brief drum solo at the end! God Bless Grandma’s basement.
Next up in this morning’s listening is Stone Machine Electric’s April 2019 release, Darkness Dimensions Disillusion (via Sludgelord Records) — and I have to say, it’s not what I expected. The distorted guitar doesn’t even make an appearance until four and a half minutes into the thirteen-minute opener. The Texas duo’s music is indeed spacious, building from ambience to up to mammoth riffs and back without letting things get draggy. They may have some lengthy songs, but Stone Machine Electric doesn’t let the grass grow under their feet. For instance, second track “Sand” rides in with bluesy guitar that carries the tune, a complete contrast from the vibe of “Sum of Man” (the opener).
Favorite Track: “Circle.” It’s the bluesy-est and the shortest. What can I say, the Robot Takeover (i.e. my smart phone) has killed my attention span and I don’t smoke weed.
I’ve now got almost two hours until Trader Joe’s opens (it has become seven-ten), and the final listening adventure of the morning is a bandcamp Daily recommendation: Yellowstone by Canada’s Digawolf, a garage rock band that mixes English lyrics with lyrics in the indigenous language Tlicho. According to the article, Tlicho is “spoken by fewer than 2,500 people—a statistic that qualifies it as an endangered language.” So what does the music sound like? Imagine a gentler Tom Waits with lots of interesting, sometimes hard to identify instrumentation underneath sparse, singing guitar lines.
On the track “Astral Travel,” Digawolf’s lead man Diga says, “There is a language of art, and there is a language of music. There is a language of love…” He told bandcamp that he doesn’t enjoy being a poster child for indigenous language revival efforts — but whether Diga likes it or not, this is music that will carry far beyond the Northwest Territories.
Favorite track: “Elexe (Together).” This must be one of the ones in Tlicho, because I don’t know what the heck Diga’s saying. But with dreamy guitar and his morning coffee voice, I’ll imagine it’s something nice.
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