fat little bastard - idiosyncphony

Fat Little Bastard met while studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in the late 90's.
They are a dynamic, eclectic guitar trio that crosses diverse musical boundaries with a unique rock sensibility. Originally joining forces in a full rock band, the group frequently snuck away to play sessions as a trio while they spent countless hours jamming, inventing grooves, exploring texture, melody and time signature. Various influences were brought to the table and a sound was born... a bastard if you will. What came about was something special and unique.

With influences ranging from Hendrix to Raymond Scott to Thelonious Monk, the band's original music is laced with wit and infused with turn-on-a-dime improvisations. There is a definite rock foundation, but you’ll also come across signs of jazz, klezmer, country and the avant.

Idiosyncphony is a continuation of the trio's adventurous foray into the realms of what one can only describe as "bastardly". From gospel-ish tunes to African inspired jams, funky slide guitar to avant waltzes with banjo and theremin, the new record really has it all.

Live performances from the Lizard Lounge and Harper’s Ferry in Boston to CBGB’s in New York to the Waiting room in Burlington, VT have racked up many enthusiastic listeners.

idiosyncphony

samus - desengano

Desengano is a surreal landscape of mutated freaked-rock comprised of lumbering sludge riffs that contort into tape/turntable manipulations amidst melodious keyboards and sustained guitar tones/drones. Ranging from the crushing droning doom-laden EARTH-esque guitar thud of "The Happy Sultan", and the bountiful melodies that playfully flow under the sugary electronica and plunderphonic jazz of "Super Orthopedic Caravan", to the expansive Ennio Morricone-influenced slide guitar ambience found in "Who's Pumping Estrada" and the wall reverbating drones and tape oscillating backwash that drifts into the no-wave dissonance of "Bone Ape Tit", SAMUS create a cohesive, multi dimensional soundtrack comprised of heavy duty psychedelia, avant-rock experimentalism, and opium-den cartoon soundtracks.

desengano

twelve20six

Comprised of six performers who are not very funny, twelve 20 six more successfully makes music that could be new to you or at least a friend of yours.

These concubines of sound, all born a few years after Steve Reich bought a razor blade and an XL-1, after Cannonball Adderley recorded "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" before Paul Motian shaved his head, have taken advantage of the information technology of their youth and assimilated a broad range of approaches to music into a new pluralism that aims like hell to inspire your children's children.

This pluralism will admit that it reaches mostly into American traditions from the last century which have barely weaned themselves from Europe and Africa, but who's counting? The music pours out of a highly improvising mindset even though extensive arrangements have become a staple for this group.

The most rampant influences are from the harmony and concept fathered by Ives and Copland, the open improvising music of Ornette Coleman and Paul Bley, the highly composed sound of George Crumb and Tan Dun, the rock and roll, the hip-hop, the folk singers, the film scores- all of these things they grew up with.

You will hear stretches of possibly pretentious harmony, quirky and/or romantic melody, unlikely sounds from our environment and elsewhere, and, oddly enough, even a groove at times.

12206

bift [wildman glassmeyer moran]

Sean Moran (guitar), Jason Wildman (drums) and Matt Glassmeyer (saxophone, buzzaphone and other miscellaneous sounds and samples) surgically drop convention in instrumentation and composition while piquing curiosity through ten tracks. The trio's unencumbered improvisation is the three-legged planchette that pulses around the Ouija Board, spelling out any number of calming to shocking results.

bift

species being - orgone therapy (2001)

The only thread linking Orgone Therapy to Species Being's first opus Yonilicious is the presence of the band's leader, drummer Frank Grau. On Orgone Therapy, Grau is surrounded by a brand new team of musicians: Eli Good (guitar), Jai Young Kim (keyboards), and Kenseth Thibideau (bass).

Stylistically, this second album marks a clear departure from Yonilicious. The music is entirely improvised and deeply rooted in the space rock idiom. The band is still driven by Grau's ferocious drumming, but, unlike what happens on Yonilicious, he does take a rest once in a while.

Fans of Mushroom will feel at home here, although Species Being doesn't share the Krautrock influence. Yonilicious sounded very structured and was quite varied in style; Orgone Therapy is the absolute jam session. And even though the former was more impressive in terms of form and contents, the latter remains an enjoyable space rock CD. -amg

orgone therapy

species being - yonilicious (1998)

This CD is wild, raucous ride for anyone interested in new approaches to recording, improvisation, and composition.

Yonilicious is a collection of musical vignettes which mutate various genres in an unpredictable manner. The selections are not quite songs nor improvisational free jams! They are strewn together to make a discontiunous whole, leaving the listner capitvated by the high energy rhythmic force and unpredictable twist and turns.

If you like intense rhythm, progressive/experimental music, and music which overflows with creativity, this is a must have! -cdbaby


I read somewhere that Yonilicious — an album of instrumental space-rockish vignettes — started off as a 40-minute-long solo track by drummer and mastermind Frank Grau (also formerly of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), over which Grau and various compatriots overdubbed parts on a variety of other instruments. Listening to this album with that in mind, it seems entirely plausible, because Grau's drumming is pretty much off the hook the entire time. He's all over the place, seeming to propel the music to new heights every time this mostly improvised affair seems in danger of bogging down or becoming tedious.

As one might guess from the title, the musicians on Yonilicious don't take themselves too seriously. Having initially heard the more sober Orgone Therapy I was a bit taken by surprise by the moments of whimsy here — the Yoshida-like vocals on "Pt. II," for instance, the brief use of a touchtone telephone as a melodic lead instrument in the very RIO-like "Pt. IX," or the tongue-firmly-in-cheek clichéd ending to "Pt. XI," which closes the album. Many of the melodies have an almost circus-like feel to them, adding to the sense that these guys were just having a lot of spontaneous fun in recording this.

While Grau's rather maximalistic drumming is a constant, the style of music is hardly so. In fact, while the entire album flows together as one long improvisation, each of the eleven parts is distinctly different from what came before, making Yonilicious a pastiche of individual vignettes united only by Grau's percussion. There are free-jazz blowouts, slow folky shuffles, post-rocky tension building, moments of symphonic grandeur, and hints of everything from Latin jazz to klezmer to absurdism. Most pieces are brief, with the notable exception of "Pt.X," a beautiful ten-minute ballad that takes the listener on a journey through dreamy percussion, gently meandering flute melodies, and a perfect, quiet two-minute comedown after a slightly more energetic saxophone solo.

Although it's not as compelling or coherent as the improvisational masterpiece that was to follow in the form of Orgone Therapy, there's plenty of good stuff on Yonilicious for fans of off-the-wall space rock. -from progreviews.com

yonilicious

trenchant - life of stone [ep] + s-t + live on kspc 88.7

trenchant was one of Jason Corley's (16, maxmillion, fistula, scumchrist, king travolta, etc) side projects.

from their myspace:

"Trenchant was a heavy band.

We played heavy music.

There was no theatrical pose, pop trend, political stance or fashion show.

We tried to create musical weight and we didn't talk much."


self-titled

life of stone [ep]

live on kspc 88.7

animal - lp1 + live on kfjc radio

Here is the long awaited avant-crazy Animal explosion. The self titled album, LP out on UNFUN is the combined efforts of Patrick and Alexander, both destroying the minds of NY gangsters and NYU dropouts with their improvisational fury. The two piece features a barrage of guitars from Pat, and Hella-esque ranting drum beats by Alexander. All proceeds of this album will benefit the bands conquest of the Americas as they plan their Summer 2006 tour. Tracks on this album range from conceptually frustratingly, to intensely trippy. Not for the weak or immature musical taste.

animal - lp
live on kfjc radio

organz - the cuts!

Here's a wheel barrel-load of low-end insanity from these screamo-inspired youngsters from the Midwest. Like Lightning Bolt, Organz only make use of bass and vocals, but they up the ante on that critically lauded band by employing no less than three four-string-pounders, giving them two more net strings than your average three-piece rock band.

Honestly, if I hadn't taken the time to read up on Organz I never would have realized that they had no guitarist; the three bass players make use of varied enough techniques that the band sound extremely full. At any given time there seems to be one bass player holding down the rhythm in standard bass player fashion, one bass player playing some kind of "lead" that might have worked equally as well as a six-string guitar part and one bass player making crazy ambient noises that add to the general atmosphere.

This is a pretty gross generalization, though, as Organz are capable of making their instruments sound like everything from Masters of Reality-era Black Sabbath to Darkest Hour and with surprising song structures that incorporate everything from death metal to post-punk this record won't be boring you anytime soon. A keeper for sure. -Deep Fry Bonanza

organz - the cuts!

lobe - shellack the merkin

Heavy bass on bass action. As if a bass player had grown two heads and four arms and managed to find a drummer that didn't mind the weirdness.

Lobe is Dead! Long Live Lobe! Born in the fall of 2000, Lobe stands as a shining example of not letting a lack of traditional instrumentation get in your way. Bass players Marc and Isaac were eager to make music and got right down to it. Sharing a love of bands both heavy and weird, they set out to forge their own sound. After years of playing with different drummers, including a short stint with Marc behind the kit (see: Gazebo of Destruction), they found a true believer in Steve. After several years slugging it out in the underground, the band split up in the spring of 2006 to focus on other projects.

Marc and Steve both contributed some drumming talents to the legendary Medlar Doss, leading to the eventual formation of Slave Traitor, where you can find them flexing their metal muscles. Isaac and Marc continue to play a Gazebo of Destruction gig once or twice a year and hope to get some recording done sometime this century. Isaac has also joined up with the funsters of Happy Birthday Secret Weapon to play the kind of inaccessable brainy pop music he always wanted to play. As for Lobe, we would be glad to reunite if you've got a multi-million dollar recording contract for us.

lobe - shellack the merkin

nominally instrumental

Crafted with equal parts willful experimentation & hard earned experience.

Seemingly unaffected by the traditional record/release/tour/repeat routine that defines the world of independent music, the three members of INSTRUMENTS are content to let their career unfold at a pace that requires absolutely no compromises.

J. LaPointe, Jon Hutt, and Daniel MacDonald began playing together as early as 1991, formally establishing themselves as The MOTES (along with Craig Thibault) in 1994. Isolated in small town pre-internet Nova Scotia, the foursome released six albums of genuinely odd atonal rock that were, by all accounts, way ahead of their time. Achieving minor cult status fame in Canada and beyond, they included among their fans such luminaries as Sixtoo (Anticon / Ninja Tune), Eric's Trip, Patti Schmidt of Canada's legendary late night radio show Brave New Waves, and Brian Borcherdt (Holy Fuck), who named his solo act after The MOTES The Remains of False Starts album, and would later spearhead the re-release of critical MOTES material on the Dependent Music label.

The MOTES disbanded in 1998, and LaPointe spent the next three years in seminal math rock outfit North of America, touring Canada, the USA, and Europe extensively with the likes of Blonde Redhead, Trumans Water, Storm and Stress, and Fugazi, and releasing four albums to considerable critical acclaim. Hutt spent that time developing his Recyclone project, releasing three albums and collaborating with Sixtoo, Graematter (Buck 65), and LaPointe once again on the well received Numbers full-length.

LaPointe, Hutt, and MacDonald reconvened as INSTRUMENTS in 2001. Intent on realizing their longstanding goal of total self-sufficiency the trio set about building a makeshift studio in a small house just outside of Halifax, NS, Canada, and began developing new material. Circumstance and opportunity would cause this cycle to repeat three more times, culminating in late 2004 with the completion of studio number four, at The Archive, in Mineville, NS, Canada. With its environment stabilized, INSTRUMENTS was quick to complete work on its debut recording, Nominal. Juxtaposing LaPointe's inimitable guitar and Hutt's machine-like drums with an unsettling ambiance, Nominal's four pieces strengthened the band's growing mythology, drawing comparisons as diverse as Pink Floyd and Shellac. Their live debut in the fall of 2006 was met with unanimous raves, but the band quickly retreated back to the studio, spending 2006-2007 completing the score for Hutt's short film Chimera, and collaborating with Montreal based experimental hiphop label Endemik Music. Their track on Bleubird's rip usa 2LP was hailed as the standout among an allstar cast including Anticon's Sole and Alias, and their remix of Skyrider's "Hello Loneliness" extended their reach into Japan on the Granma Music label.

instruments - nominal

iced ink - there's a bee in here

Iced Ink were an instrumental surf-jazz-metal guitar-drum-bass-percussion group from the snowy bowels of Minneapolis, MN. It spawned in 1998 when Mike (guitar) abandoned all contact with outside musicians for a few years to focus on writing music he wished he was hearing more of in the Twin Cities area that couldn't necessarily be written by just "jamming".

Let's move ahead to July of 2001: Freshly transplanted to the Twin Cities from that one famous music school in Boston full of gifted wankers, VomitGod (drums) along with his wifeperson Sara T. (percussion) were lured in by shameless Iced Ink promotional bait printed on the back of Minneapolis' premier weekly alternative news source, City Pages. He contacted Mike, and 6 months later, Joe Berkman's skillful (and very audible) bass manipulations won the Iced Ink Bassist Pageant to complete the lineup. They bought a colorful bus, were driven around by their mother and manager Reuben to perform to the delight of many screaming fans, and compelled families across the world to tune in every week for a half hour of pure watery comedy and bad lip-synching. - (cdbaby)

RIYL: fantomas, mr. bungle, john zorn

iced ink - there's a bee in here