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!

Klen House Radio #19

This week I bring you a mix for the whole family, starting with (who else but) The Young Fresh Fellows, a band that inhabits that same sphere of snotty rock and roll that Billy Childish and The Soft Boys do; while it's no longer cool to wander around Seattle with Nirvana blasting in your ears, if you got the Fellows in there you'll be just fine. Von LMO, like the earlier-played Boris Police Band, was another one of those fixtures of the New York No Wave scene that everyone forgets about, stylistically similar to The Contortions, and everyone loves them, right? And finally let's not forget the Rick Potts Band, from the other end of the country at the same time The Contortions and 8-Eyed Spy and all them were terrorizing NYC. If I ever get a 'real' radio show, I'll put this song at the end of every episode, like Rodney did with The Porpoise Song (another great track there, by the way).

1. The Young Fresh Fellows - Rock'n'Roll Pest Control
2. Schmuel! - Ebony Concerto
3. The Rick Potts Band - Platform Swimfins
4. The Real Pros - Teenage Queen
    -Commercial: Fairy Liquid-
5. Von LMO - Crash Landing '88
6. Æther Technicians - One of These
7. Scumtron - Locomotive 3D
8. What Capitalism Was - A Windy Sea

Enjoy my junk, here!
Schmuel, along with many others, can be found for free at Headphonica!
The voice of 'Keven' in Locomotive 3D now makes video games here!

And new for the show, introducing The Klen House Addendum...too busy for the whole show? Check out a choice cut from your friend and mine, YouTube. Sometimes it'll be a different mix (like this time), sometimes it'll be something totally different...

Klen House Radio #18

Has Autumn officially started yet? It still gets too sticky and disgusting for me, and yet now I plan to make a pilgrimage down to the hottest and stickiest of all place, Los Angeles itself. We start with one of my new obsessions, the oh-so-aptly-named GOAT. The best way to describe them is that they are what you expected Jimi Hendrix to sound like before you finally heard him, polyrhythmic and funky, screaming psychedelic guitar flourishes, and echo-y, intense vocals sing/chanting God knows what. Isabelle Adjani is one of my admitted actress crushes; she absolutely made Posession the work of wonder that it is, though it's only recently that I discovered she had put out an album. It's goofy, catchy, kind of Abba-esque, a must for anyone who digs on French pop (and everyone should, really). Steel Leg is Keith and Jah Wobble of the ever-loved Public Image, Ltd. cutting an EP of noisy, experimental dub reggae with punk movie director Don Letts...it's mostly forgettable, but I have a special fondness for this one, so here it is.

1. Goat - Goathead
2. This Heat - S.P.Q.R.
3. Roy Ayers - Ebony Blaze
    -Commercial: Pan Am
4. Isabelle Adjani - Ohio
5. Steel Leg - Haile Unlikely by The Electric Dread
6. Shizuo - Blondo

It's a perfect Fall soundtrack, right here!
Grab the Goat album here! Wait...they're Swedish? Even better!

Klen House Radio #17

This week starts out with a track from Gareth Williams' post-This Heat collaboration, Flaming Tunes, a clattery slice of avant-catchiness that proves that  Charles Hayward wasn't the only member of Heat to be able to skew pop music. Lost Sounds features the late, great Jay Reatard on guitar, and Marc Almond sings lead on Coil's take on Soft Cell's take on Gloria Jones' seminal soul slice 'Tainted Love'. Coil slows Soft Cell's dancefloor beat down to a dirge, and it's amazing that a simple tempo change makes it's goofy sexy lyrics much more uncomfortable and disturbing. Red River Dialect is a new find; delicate acoustic guitars, slight psychedelic shading, and wistful vocals brings to mind the British Folk Revival I have such love for, without the overt hippie trappings that the 'Freak Folk' banner hoisted upon the scene in recent years.

1. Gareth Williams & Marie Currie - Beguiling the Hours
2. Lost Sounds - I'm Not a Machine
3. Coil - Tainted Love
4. Dog Shredder - Battle 07
    -Commercial: Typhoo-
5. Dymaxion - Chase Scene W/ Transistor Radio
6. John Zorn - Igneous Ejaculation
7. Nora Dean - Night Food
8. Red River Dialect - Dependence
9. Black Mountain - No Satisfaction (Campfire Mix)

Enjoy the creamy sounds here.
Red River Dialect's Bandcamp page has 'Dependence' as well as a lot of other glorious cuts!
Dog Shredder's got one too! Even I have a Bandcamp somewhere!
Marie Currie still maintains the Flaming Tunes official site, where the album was just released on glorious vinyl!

KHR #16: Spotlight on Ergo Phizmiz

Ye gods...where to even start? I discovered Ergo Phizmiz thanks to the Music for Maniacs blog when the ever-wonderful Mr. Fab put up a download of the album Nose Points in Different Directions, and was very impressed by the opening number 'Pangolin', which seemed to be some sort of drill'n'bass song put together with samples of Jew's harp, accordion, banjo, and the like, though I didn't really give it much thought past that at the time. It wasn't until later when I discovered both his 15-hour-long album The Faust Cycle and a one-man-band rendition of Bon Jovi's 'Livin' On a Prayer', complete with a modified teapot in the rhythm section, that I started to seriously take notice. What I found was mindblowing: a one-man pop kaleidoscope, spinning out radioplays, operas, audio collage, children's music, Syd-Barrett-inspired pop, accordion-led takes of stupid radio hits from the late 90s, all being churned out at the seeming rate of an album or performance every month. The well is endless and it's neigh-perfect, it's only because I try and limit my shows to 30 minutes or so that I can't give examples of some of Ergo's more out-there works, and hopefully this taste (admittedly of his more pop-oriented stuff) will get you troweling the depths of the Free Music Archive for more. Of special note is 'Food & War', which has to be among my favorite songs now, featuring a rhythm section of handclaps, a malfunctioning cuckoo clock, and a bike horn over just some of the best 60s-style acoustic pop as you could imagine. Go listen!

1. Pangolin
2. Food & War
3. Livin' On a Prayer
4. Celia (Live)
    -Commercial: Dippity-Do-
5. Music for an Underground Circus
6. Feel Yr Dzeez
7. The International Birdie Song

Prepare to let Ergo fondle your mind here!
Ergo's official website is here.
You can find hundreds of his songs for free at the Free Music Archive!
Ergo's blog is a great source of info on his many, many current projects.
His YouTube channel has a few songs and alternate versions that don't seem to be available elsewhere.

Happy 100th Birthday John Cage!

“I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.” 

John Cage's official website.

Bradford Werner, who conducted the above video.