Hiatus

Well folks, with work piling up Klen House is going to have to go on a vacation of undisclosed length. I don't have time to edit together radio shows right now, sadly.

If you need your dose of Ivan T. W. check out my written blog The Rest is Silence, discussing music, comics, whatever passes my fancy.  So long, friends!

KHR#30: Two Long Songs

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!

Klen House Radio #29

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:

Klen House Radio #28

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.

KHR#27: A Year in Review

Well here we are, another year come and gone. It was a shitty year for most things, but one thing that didn't disappoint was the music scene, which delivered several out-of-the-park albums, so I thought for our last show of the year we'd go through 2012 and have a platter of some of the best tracks, right here at Klen House. My love of Swans is old hat by now, their album Soundtracks for the Blind among my favorite, if not my absolute favorite, album of all time, but it bears repeating that this year's offering The Seer is mind-blowingly good, album of the year easily. Goat's "Goathead" is precisely what I imagined Jimi Hendrix sounded like when I was a kid before I actually heard his work. I was eventually disappointed by Jimi, but Goat fries like no other, one of the most cracked guitarlines I've heard in a long time. Cate le Bon reminds me a bit of a modern-day Nico, something that could easily fall into obnoxious hipster irrelevance but she skirts the line quite well, think Nico singing one of John Cale's better albums, Paris 1919 perhaps. Howlin' Rain's newest album has a serious Guns 'n Roses vibe for me, their later, pompously epic stuff like Use Your Illusion or Chinese Democracy, really it's the album Democracy should have been, gloriously huge and screaming toward the stratosphere. Keep freaky, listeners, and see you next year.

1. Swans - Avatar (from The Seer)
2. Goat - Goathead (from World Music)
3. Cate le Bon - Cyrk (from Cyrk)
4. Hexvessel - Woods to Conjure (from No Holier Temple)
5. Ergo Phizmiz - Ophelia (from Eleven Songs)
    -Commercial: Vitalis-
6. Howlin' Rain - Phantom in the Valley (from The Russian Wilds)
7. Red River Dialect - Appleseed (from Allupontheway)
8. Matthew Dear - Earthforms (from Beams)
9. Gold Motel - Cold Shoulders (from Gold Motel)
10. Would You Be My Love - Ty Segall (from Twins)

The tunes will grab you by the throat here!

Got two addendums today, a couple amazing songs that didn't make the show because they were too damn long. Up first is Epizootics! from the always incredible Scott Walker's new album Bish Bosch, which is most certainly on my top 10 list for this year...

And second is a mammoth slice of proggy goodness from Motorpsycho from their new album The Death-Defying Uniform. Prepare yourself for the void!

KHR #26: A Very Klen Christmas

You'd never expect it, but sometimes even Klen House can relax and enjoy the holidays. So in the spirit of giving, we're here to offer up a veritable Santa's bag worth of tunes, with all your Christmas favorites...C-3P0, H. P. Lovecraft, Daleks, and Mister Magoo are pulling the sleigh, and of course Steve Austin himself is filling in as St. Nick. Nothing else to say, except that I played the hell out of that Six Million Dollar Man album when I was a kid. Enjoy!

1. The Six Million Dollar Man - The Kris Kringle Caper, part 1
2. C-3P0 - Christmas in the Stars
3. The Sonics - Don't Believe in Christmas
4. The Six Million Dollar Man - The Kris Kringle Caper, part 2
5.  The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society - I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog-Sothoth
6. Gary Ferrier - Ringo Deer
7. The Six Million Dollar Man - The Kris Kringle Caper, part 3
8.  The Go-Go's - I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With a Dalek
9. Jim Backus & Daws Butler - I Was a Teenage Reindeer
10. Akim & The Teddy Vann Production Company - Santa Claus is a Black Man
11. The Six Million Dollar Man - The Kris Kringle Caper, part 4

Dig that crazy Christmas right here.

And for today's addendum...hey, let's see more of Stone Cold taking out Sinterklass.

KHR #25: Acoustic Hippie Music

Acoustic guitars (and one acoustic piano) are the theme of the day here at Klen House, a week to indulge my inner folkie and let my politely freaky flag fly.  We start off with the semi-title-track from Anaïs Mitchell's wonderful folk opera Hadestown, a retelling of the myth of Orpheus & Eurydice with Depression-era folk tunes. It's good stuff! The Incredible String Band's 'Painting Box' is another of my favorite tunes, a great slice of 60s slightly-psyche folk rock that worms its way into your head and doesn't let go. I've mentioned on several occasions my love of Michael Gira's band Swans, but he does a pretty killer solo act too, firm and commanding with one of the best voices in music today. Last but not least is a cut from poet Ian Silva, gently British-styled folk which deserves more love than it gets.

1. Anaïs Mitchell - Way Down Hadestown
2. David Morris - Shay
3. Gary Higgins - Cuckoo
4. The Incredible String Band - Painting Box
    -Commercial: QT Quik Tan-
5. John Cale - The Endless Pain of Fortune
6. Michael Gira - Oxygen
7. Ian Silva - Adam's Dream (Liebestraum Blues)

Peace, love, and sandlewood right here!
It doesn't look like Hadestown is touring, but Anaïs Mitchell is putting out an album of ballads!
David Morris' band Red River Dialect has a bandcamp. Did you forget? Here it is!
Michael Gira's Young God Records has everything you could ever want in the entire universe.
Ian Silva's album is available here for free! Why the hell not?

For our addendum today, dig The Incredible String Band...