Living Market/Bullshit Room

Here's a tape that I got from the good person who runs and operates the Pop Miasma label, who coincidentally happens to be a member of the band Living Room! I've seen some fellow peers bring up their name here and there, and I was definitely interested in hearing what Living Room were all about. So naturally, I was thrilled when they wanted to send in copies of their new splits for review! Here's the Bullshit Market/Living Room split cassette, not sure how many copies were made.

This is the first tape I've got that has recordings from the newest Bullshit Market line-up. Now a duo, and pretty much sticking to straight-up noisecore at least for now. This recordings is lo-fi, nasty and fast as fuck thanks to the always ridiculous drumming from Aaron. Drums and bass with some super murky, pitch shifted vocals that kind of remind me of Ops-Psf, but without the cut up sound and styles. The bass doesn't even really sound like a bass, lots of pedal manipulation and weird feedback. This session is a nice and solid batch of short, untitled, noisecore bursts, with some entertaining little bits of in between banter/dialogue and hip-hop samples in between the blasts to keep it lively. Fun shit, I'm excited to hear more from this line-up.

Alright, so now I'm finally hearing Living Room, and I gotta say I wasn't quite expecting this kind of stuff, but I'm really really digging it. That cut-up style/editing that I mentioned up above is here in spades. This shit is a wonderful collage of various sounds! I'd only really call it noisecore because sometimes there are longer bits where you can hear traditional stringed instruments and drums. But mostly, this side sounds like a quick cut, sharp and nasty harsh noise session. I can pick up lots of various tape manipulations and recording speeds fucked with in real time. I'm unsure whether this is all sourced from recordings they did as a band, or from different members separate contributions. Not a lot of vocals or what I would traditionally call noisecore, but there's definitely enough of that rapid energy to keep the roots apparent. As a fan of crazy cut-up noises, I dig this. Think Penis Geyser's side of their split 7" with Sete Star Sept. Awesome project!

 I can tell Pop Miasma is nailing down that consistent aesthetic. The packaging is a simple, double sided J-card, but I dig the layout a lot. The tape sounds awesome too!

I got another Living Room split to write about in the next couple posts.

~VII

Another Song About Dicks

This tape came out back near the end of 2016, when Sedem Minut Strachu really started propelling into their solid status as one of the best noisecore bands doing their thing. I was really happy to find it out in the wild this past April while I was on tour. At the very excellent Torn Light Records in Kentucky. Trashfuck Records is responsible for putting this tape out, not sure how many were made.

Sedem Minut Strachu as you all should be aware have been pretty much dominating noisecore over the course of several years. Consistently putting out true, ugly, proper noisecore from tape to record to tape again. And of course constantly releasing splits with many amazing and fascinating bands from all over the world. Their side here is a 163 track effort, so there's plenty of short bursts and stops on this one. Jan is really blasting hard. It sounds like one of their practice room recordings, so the bass isn't that blown out and more in the background. Not as much ping in the snare as I normally like either, it actually sounds like a real snare drum here. Pretty awesome stuff, as usual.

Bullshit Market is a long going, genre bending band from Detroit. Patrick, one half of BsM, also runs Trashfuck Records. This is some seriously whacked out noisecore fuckery. Super fast and tight blasting, harsh noise in the vein of Nikudorei, and some left in band member banter with very tight cut up/editing. The vocals too, I love how they sound on here! Not so much screaming, more like loud moaning and grunting, but with some SUPER heavy delay or echo on them in a way I don't hear very often. There's also an amazing part in the middle where there's a reverse playback of the band chatting, and then this reversed cymbal decay just starts rising up, until there's a sharp stop into harsh fucking noise blasting. This side is just great, I really really like this a lot. 

We got a proper, old school style, whole folded sheet of paper for the cassette art. Including an iamge of the poster from when Sedem Minut Strachu and Bullshit Market played together on the American 7MS tour. The tape dub sounds superb and crispy too.

This tape is long since sold out. But if you manage to luckily find it in the wild like I did you definitely should buy it. Both sides are winners!

  ~VII

Affinities

Finally, finally, FINALLY I got my hands on a Dead Gods release. A little brick and mortar/cassette label based out of Brooklyn, NY, owned and operated by Justin Lakes (Shredded Nerve, Pusdrainer) and Matt Boettke (Scant). The newest tape from the excellent Breaking The Will, a long-going solo harsh noise/cut-up project from Stefan Aune (who also runs the excellent New Forces label). Most likely done in a run of 100.

Stefan's a buddy of mine, and now a resident of my home town. So personal bias not-withstanding, I'm a big admirer of Breaking The Will and Stefan knows how to make legit, brutal noise, straight up. Nothing but pure adoration for extreme volume, harsh feedback, and ridiculous tape manipulation. "Affinities" is yet another excellent 20 minute testament to all these traits; starting and ending 100% brutal. Mammoth waves of crushing distortion, rapid fire modulations and some of the most disgusting and disorienting sudden stops in the game. I haven't really gotten the background concept for this particular release; seems to be about war and violence and all that good stuff. So without getting to heady about this, a harsh noise tape, it's just thoroughly excellent and enjoyable. Everything is also recorded really well, you can tell that every tone is dialed in to sound exactly how it should. I love it, good work there.

As I expected, the quality of this release is outstanding. Amazingly loud dub, super crispy, and a lay-out and aesthetic to match. I also love the Dead Gods spine that adorns all of their releases. It's both cool, and an annoying thing for me; because I can't have just one of these spines in my shelf, I gotta get 'em all! It's the same thing with Smash Music spines, the consistency is just what my OCD needs to get sucked in.

As far as I know this isn't sold out, but at the time of writing this the Dead God's Big Cartel is temporarily down.

~VII