Time to get freaky here on Klen House: Two 15+ minute opuses for you to get stretched out on. Earthless' Isaiah Mitchell and Mario Rubacalba have to have my vote for best guitarist and drummer in rock, respectively (bassist Mike Eginton is solid as well, but I'm still a Rob Wright man myself). The group understands that, before you can noodle like a dumbass, you have to have the groove, and 'Godspeed' has a massive pulse of rhythm anchoring the psychedelic madness and giving it that much more heft. And The Young Gods' 'Summer Eyes' is a bunch of dour Swiss industrial kids doing putting out a better Doors song than Morrison, Manzerak, and all those guys ever could. Let yourself go down the rabbit hole for 40 minutes (maybe taking a great in the middle for a smooth, refreshing Kent) and come out a better person. A weirder person, anyway.
1. Earthless - Godspeed
-Commercial: Kent cigarettes-
2. The Young Gods - Summer Eyes
Psychonauts assemble here! Tee-Pee Records put out Earthless' LPs as well as a bunch of other incredible stuff.
The Young Gods website keeps one breast on any new info.
For our addendum today, Supersonic Festival has a multi-part Earthless live show for us!
A nice mix of cool evening songs to Klen you to sleep, the one and only Klen House Radio is here to provide the tunes. Three Ton Gate is the alias of Scott Putesky, better known as the original guitarist/songwriter for Marilyn Manson, of all things. As a confession, I have to admit I quite like Marilyn Manson's first album, the songs are catchy rock songs, Trent Reznor's production is surprisingly good and I wonder why he never produced any other rock albums, and Scott's guitar playing is really unique, alternately crunchy and slithery. His Three Ton Gate stuff has the same guitar sound, along with a raggedy DIY production that is pretty damn fun. Black Joe Lewis is about the closest thing to a modern James Brown as I've heard, and damn if it doesn't get your feet moving. It's weird to see a picture of Joe himself and realize that he looks like any typical modern R&B dude, like Usher or something, since his sound is so perfectly retro. Freestlye Kill are a couple dweebs doing what dweebs do best, loud and clattery and likely to annoy most people in the room they hear it...one day I might put up their 83-song debut album, sure to clear a dance floor when you slap it on. Uncle Acid is a new discovery, fantastic late 60s-style hard rock, The Beatles all became degenerates (moreso than they already were) and jointed the Manson Family to record some cracked, crackling slabs of post-Summer-of-Love madness. And finally is a hard-to-find Swans cut, only available on the out-of-print first pressing of their seminal Children of God, it was replaced by a different mix on the later releases. I actually prefer the more acoustic second mix, but this one's got that doomy sound people dig, so give it a spin!
1. Three Ton Gate - Fear Channel
2. Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears - Sugarfoot
3. Cardiacs - The Obvious Identity
4. Bis - Mr. Important
5. Freestyle Kill - The Freestyle Kill Long Song
-Commercial: QT Tan-
6. What Capitalism Was - A Windy Sea
7. Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - I'll Cut You Down
8. Swans - Our Love Lies (1987 mix)
Swing to the left, swing to the right, and download it here!
Three Ton Gate's Soundcloud is updated with cool cuts pretty often.
Cardiacs have stopped touring, but check out their website to follow any developments.
As always, What Capitalism Was offers their whole catalogue for free.
Grab the Uncle Acid album over at Metal Blade, of all places.
Check out Black Joe Lewis for our Klen House Addendum this time:
We start off the new year with a bang: a pair of songs from the creative team of Guido & Maurizio De Angelis, a pair of Italian brothers from the 70s who pumped out reams of absolutely ludicrous disco tracks for Z-grade schlock movies with names like Atlantis Interceptor and Watch out, We're Mad. The first of these, the unbelievable theme from Yor, The Hunter From the Future holds a special place in my heart because I watched the hell out of that movie when I was younger, possibly the first movie I ever watched ironically. Everyone knows XTC's Skylarking, a glossy 80s take on The Beach Boys doing the soundtrack to The Wicker Man, but recently Andy Partridge remastered it extensively and put it out on LP, with the original rejected cover art (some of my favorite cover art for an album ever, but I'd get smacked on the wrists if I put it up here, so go find it yerself). Grab your old copy of the album and then listen to this mix of 'Season Cycle', dig how much punchier the bass sounds. A few years ago I worked a miserable job at a major chain bookstore, one of the only thing that kept me going was the ability to put on 'Physical Cities' by jazz combo The Bad Plus and drive all the customers insane.
1. Guido & Maurizio De Angelis - Yor's World
2. XTC - Season Cycle (2010 mix)
3. Bongwater - The Drum
4. Masafumi Takada - Rave On
-Commercial: Chung King Chow Mein-
5. Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel - Satan Place
6. The Bad Plus - Physical Cities
7. Guido & Maurizio De Angelis - Black Inferno
Ring in the new year 8 days late with Klen House!
Pick up the new mix of Skylarking over at Andy Partidge's record label.
Ann Magnuson, formerly of Bongwater, does pretty well for herself now.
So does Jim Thirlwell of Foetus!
And for our addendum, one of my favorite clips on the internet, Ann Magnuson as Ophelia starring alongside Kestutis Nakas' Hamlet. I'm so going to rip this off someday.
