Klen House Radio #21

I've made if safe to sunny L.A., so now's the time to celebrate. Porno Porkchop is a perverse, semi-guilty pleasure, a drums/acoustic guitar/acoustic bass setup that reminds me of a much more profane, filthy Violent Femmes (and I mean that in the best way possible, of course). Praxis was, at this recording, a supergroup consisting of Bill Laswell, Buckethead, John Zorn, Bootsy Collins, Yamatsuka Eye, and god knows who else, making hellacious clatter before settling into the creepy dub that Laswell and Zorn would master with Mick Harris in Pain Killer. Splodgenessabounds was a bizarre hanger-on in the London oi punk scene, but to my ears they have a kind of goofy vaudeville revue sound that seems totally out of place among the too-serious oi kids.

1. Porno Porkchop - Sgt. Squishy
2. Praxis - Cold Rolled/Iron Dub
3. Splodgenessabounds - I've Got Lots of Famous People Living Under the Floorboards of
                                        My Humble Abode
4. Voltaire - Cannibal Buffet
    -Commercial: Rockefeller for governor-
5. Disque 9 - The Vision The Gift & The Question
6. 23 Skidoo - Quiet Pillage
7. Gary Higgins - Cuckoo
8. Riyou Kinugasa - Life is Beautiful

Life is beautiful when you listen to Klen House right here.
The guy from Porno Porkchop has, you guessed it, a bandcamp.
Not much info on Disque 9's creepy collage, but you can find their album on Amazon, surprisingly.

And for the addendum this week, let's all clap hands and sing along to Metro City Ransom:

No post this week, just goats!

Going to be moving to lovely Los Angeles in a few days, so to placate you here's a video of a man playing a goat like a musical instrument...

Wait, I missed last week too? Damn!

KHR #20: Spotlight on Spookey Ruben

At the risk of sounding repetitive, Spookey Ruben is another unheard pop maverick, and you should all  drop whatever it is you're doing right now, because Spookey's music is guaranteed to be better and I can pretty much say without worry of being proven wrong that none of you have ever heard of him until now. Canadian tunesmith Spookey put out one album on TVT, the very, very good Modes of Transportation, Vol. 1 before giving up on major labels forever. He's put out 3 albums and a handful of EPs since, and each and every one of them is wonderful, combining the best of Grand Royal Records with XTC, a dollop of prog and a very bizarre sense of humor. The prog in this set comes from the title track to his most recent album, Mechanical Royalty, a 15-minute behemoth that would make Robert Fripp grimace with jealousy, whereas we kick off with 'My Female Friends', up there with the previously-mentioned 'Food & War' by Ergo Phizmiz as one of my favorite songs ever.

1. My Female Friends
2. Don't Take Your Dog to the Park
3. Growing Up is Over?
4. Kubla Khan
    -Commercial: Ultrabright Toothpaste-
5. Mechanical Royalty

I wish I had more female friends. If you do too, click here and enjoy!
Spookey's got a tumblr where he posits philosophical musings. Fun!
He puts out his stuff through Hi-Hat Recordings these days.
And you can get all his albums off of his bandcamp as well!


Our addendum today is Spookey's video for his first single, 'These Days are Old'. It's a great song, and if you go far enough back on the comments you can see a comment I made like a year ago making fun of his totally 90s braids!