Drop of Blood in the Bucket - Les Vamyprettes

Outside of "Thriller" there's not much popular music geared towards Halloween, though I'm probably forgetting a ton of stuff as I'm not a fan of Metal music and don't have much time to investigate.  Last year I focused on Slang's album The Bellwether Project, and while that's a really good album its not exactly horror-based.  Greetings from Burkittsville was closer but wasn't always creepy (though that last track was pretty chilling).  Luckily I combed the bowls of my computer and found a group not only explicitly horror-related but also expertly creepy, the enigmatic one-single electronica project Les Vampyrettes.  A one-off collaboration between Holger Czukay of the seminal Krautrock group Can (whose solo electronic projects were already pretty stellar) and producer Conny Plank (who did production on most of Kraftwerk's stuff and Devo's album Q: Are We Not Men...), Les Vampyrettes only existed long enough to release one 12'' single, putting them in the class of Karen Verros and Geechie Wiley who didn't even release a whole album before fading into the night.  As per the oblique moniker, it's not only common but practically industry standard for electronic artists to work under pseudonyms, such as Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada, but in the case of Les Vampyrettes the lack of a human face only furthers its cause.  Not that the deliciously unsettling music needed any help, though.

Side One has the song "Biomutanten" which gets things rightly foreboding right away with metallic drumming and a slow bass flange, making me think that tomandandy had the song on their mind when writing the soundtrack to The Mothman Prophecies.  This continues steadily throughout the track, with random sirens, klaxons and screeches peppered along for good effect.  At the center is a deep, reverbed voice incanting what is apparently nonsense, though I can't understand him and wasn't able to find the lyrics online - but does it really matter what he's saying?  He might as well be reciting a lasagna recipe and I'd still have to order express delivery on several pairs of brown pants.  The best information I've been able to find on the single comes from the excellent mp3-distribution goldmine Egg City Radio where, as you can see here, he includes both tracks for download.  The guy who runs it is usually really good at unearthing info on super-obscure artists but he was at something of a loss, aside from a hilariously translated paragraph I won't spoil for you.

"Menetekel" swaps out metal for a swamp, the bass slow-marching along on two notes while underwater beasties burp into your ears.  Somebody forgot to turn of a metronome in the other room and Plank is having a lot of fun warping record scratching and radio noise with the bend dial.  This results in the song being shorter and a little less spooky but nonetheless not something you'd like to meet in a dark alley adjacent to a discount chainsaw store.  Once again I haven't the John Carpenter's The Fogiest what the singer (?) is droning on about, so I'll just have to assume it has something to do with wearing someone's sideburns as coattails.

If there's one thing this record really reminds me of, especially "Menetekel", it's "There's a Planet in My Kitchen", one of the two B-sides on the 12'' single of Siouxsie and the Banshee's cover of "Dear Prudence".  My Dad had this single and the song remains one of the most goofily enigmatic LP's I've come across, but I'll let you make the decision with this handy YouTube recreation:

It's funny how the digi-processed ramblings of potential serial killers can bring back the memories.  The problem with assessing Les Vampyrettes as a group is that they only have two very similar songs to their credit, though that may have been their intention anyway.  Perhaps some questions are better left unanswered, such as how a pair of such spooky tone slabs escaped from the bathouse, and since every re-release of the single has gone under we may never know for sure.  I'm thankful once again that YouTube exists so obscure wonders like this can go straight for the jugular.

~PNK

Drop in the Bucket - The New Mexicans

Seattle has long been a haven of indie rock, one that I've shamefully stepped into extremely rarely.  I've seen more rock concerts in Boston, but those were for established acts that tour nationally (Tortoise and Lightning Bolt), and maybe my reluctance to pop into local clubs has something to do with not wanting to drop a pile of money on a group I've never heard before (but mostly the cost of parking and driving).  It might also be due to my laziness in following current rock music, so whenever I hear something more up to date that I like I cut another notch in my In Touch With The Kidz pole.  

That being said, let's talk about a forgotten Seattle group whose sole album came out ten years ago, one with a cracked sense of art design:

(People who've seen Ari Folman's The Congress should be snickering right about now)

Founded in 2001, The New Mexicans managed to crank out a 7'' called Coleslawholywar in 2002 and the album I'm talking about today, Chicken Head Talking Diamonds, in 2004 before breaking up in 2005.  Guitarist Rob Hampton and drummer Creighton Barrett ended up in the Grammy-winning dream pop Shins-wannabes Band of Horses while bassist Jeff Montano ended up with Grand Archives, a group headed by a guy who used to be in Band of Horses.  Guitarist Joe Crawford presumably fell off the face of the Earth for how helpful Wikipedia has been in researching these guys.  The internet seems to agree that The New Mexicans technically existed, which is as much as I know about them now and knew back when I found out about this album, when my brother bought it at a garage sale.

In a less kidding mode, Wikipedia helpfully linked to an article in The Stranger that preceded a show of their's in 2003, anticipating the release of Chicken and showcasing some of the most refreshingly humble and down-to-earth stuff I've heard from rock musicians.  Hampton immediately won my respect by admitting straight up that the group sucked before stepping into the recording studio for Coleslawholywar, this revelation coming right after we learn that a record label was created by its owner for the sole purpose to get the fledgling band on plastic.  Finding themselves under the harshest spotlights in town forced the band to whip themselves into shape, and thank God for that because what emerged was pretty dang good if Chicken has anything to say about it.  The other fresh breath is that Hampton was able to talk simply and precisely about their genre, namely Hardcore, a genre I'm no expert on and might have had trouble defining before.  His big motivation was to put melodic writing back into Hardcore music, mostly because he finds music primarily consisting of yelling and fast noise to be boring.  I saw drummer Brian Chippendale live twice, once for his solo project Black Pus and once for his band Lightning Bolt, and for the life of me I couldn't tell you much of anything beyond how his constant barrage of fast punkesque drumming had the ability to lull the listener into a subconscious state, at least if it wasn't so darn loud*.  Hampton's goal seems very smart in this respect, making sure the audience has at least one element they can clearly follow in a song, as that's just the way Western listeners are wired.

Before we begin, I must warn you that the only place in town to hear the album online, Grooveshark, is acting up in terms of embedding songs, so let's try out an alternative: here's the URL for the album: http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/Chicken+Head+Talking+Diamonds/4365557.  Open a new tab/window and plug that sucker in, and you'll see all 10 tracks, all playable in full.  Ready?  Kewl.  (Also, don't look on YouTube; the risk of letting Nathan Arizona and the New Mexicans out of their cursed toybox is too great to tempt).**

The article was right in pointing out the slight hypocrisy in Hampton deriding other Hardcore and Punk acts for yelling instead of singing when, y'know, he kind of just yells, too.  Thankfully, we can hear all that melodic playing he was talking about in the instrumental parts.  Stripped down and searing, the simple cells interlock beautifully and drive as hard as they can, seemingly on a mission to pierce the setting sun on some hellbent horizon.  Barrett's drumming is outasight, rhythmically intoxicating and a perfect support for the note-borne cells.  It's this carpet of fire and sincerity that supports Hampton's absurdist lyrics, unhinged by any standard and possibly improvised during the first practice session.  Hampton describes them as "add-ons", the parsley applied after the instrumental meat is thoroughly roasted.  In a way the precise meaning of the lyrics don't matter, as Hampton's delivery is so wailing, even terrifying, as to make language itself a moot point.  That isn't to say he's as versatile or inspired as someone like Mike Patton, and the 10 songs end up exposing the limitations of the band's songwriting variety.  Regardless, it's hard for me to dis on a guy who writes a song with a chorus that states "If I was a sailor I'd sail around the world!  If I was an asteroid I'd fall to the Earth and kill everyone!"

So yeah, I dig Chicken Head Talking Diamonds.   The New Mexicans Story is most likely no more complex than a band that hung around for a few years before breaking up out of boredom or disillusionment, and I can't see Chicken rising through the muck of time as a shining beacon of mid-Oughts Hardcore, but that's no reason to leave its stone unturned.  Maybe if I was a connoisseur of Hardcore groups I'd be harder on the group, as there are plenty of groups like Drive Like Jehu and Look What I Found that are way crazier than them, but Chicken delivers melody as well as drive and generally congealed rock goodness.  Summer is slipping through our fingers faster than anybody wants to admit, and while I've been spinning acts like Hoodoo Gurus and Trotsky Icepick all Dry Season long there's always room for the Hardcore Jello.  If you don't feel like wrestling with Grooveshark on this one there's always the supercheap new-'n'-used copies on Amazon to consider.  C'mon, it's not even a half-hour long, you've got enough time for that, don'tcha?  This brevity is in line with their traditionally short live sets, perhaps borne from an awareness that they weren't the most popular kids on the block.  It's too bad more people didn't show up to fulfill Barrett's sly joke that closes the Stranger article: "If more people come we might even play for 29 minutes."


~PNK

*That subconscious state wasn't worth $15 and and hour of my time, in case you were wondering.

**Just don't, people.  Every YouTube view only encourages them.