Haberdasher - Quarry/Day Two No Sleep 7' (1996)

So I wrote about Haberdasher's only LP quite a while back in a post about Slint inspired bands. This single is their first and only other release. Although the B-side is a bit "slinty" sounding the A-side is heavier in more of a Shellac or Tar vein. I think it's the best song they ever recorded and it has a great David Sims'ish thudding bassline.

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Switchhitter - Fer de Lance (2003)

Switchhitter is David Uskovich's third band he formed in Austin after Distorted Pony and Sweet Pea. The CD's sleeve is made of hand-stitched felt and limited to 500 copies. A bit cleaner sounding that his previous bands and little more on the Math Rock side. I've been listening to a lot of David's music lately after having seen one of the Distorted Pony reunion shows here in LA a little over a month ago. It was such an amazing show and I'm really hoping they continue on and possibly record new material. I asked David himself at the the show and he said there's a possibility of new material in the future. I also have a request. Does anyone have any material from David's latest band "Rex X Red M?" They have an album called "Between Your Prayers And My Curses Our Kind May Triumph Yet." I've been looking everywhere for it and just can't seem to get my hands on a copy.
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Shiny Beast

So there was some interest shown in Shiny Beast in the comments from the Regraped post from a while back.  Like Regraped they are also from Raleigh, NC and share the same intensity.  This is a collection of just about everything they ever recorded.  Here's a brief history of the band that I've taken from their Myspace page: 

Shiny Beast started in Raleigh North Carolina in the summer of 1991 after the demise of a band that guitarist David Sullivan and myself were involved in for the previous year and a half, called Willard. I remember that David had come to my apartment one day to show me all of these cool ideas that could have saved Willard but alas it was too late. We found a bass player in the form of one Chicago area resident named Mike Meadows. Mike was a kickass drummer that recently re-located down here to play in his childhood friend Andy Freeburn’s band, Erectus Monotone. So we rehearsed a lot and settled on this name from an old Captain Beefheart record that David liked. Since none of us wanted to sing, we asked Mike Carden of the band Garbageman to sing a few songs, which he did. His caterwauling fit in nicely. After a few shows with Mike, we recorded the first demo. Five of these songs ended up coming out on Tom Flynn’s BONER RECORDS as a cd-5 and a single. It was too bad that SHINY BEAST never recorded anything that sounded anywhere as good as this stuff. This is why we never did a follow up with Tom. Afterwards, Mike had to leave our band due to his situation with Erectus Monotone, which is a story I don’t want to get into. Lets just say that even though Mike was an amazing musician, personality wise it never would have worked. Kim Walker ended up teaching herself how to play bass in literally a month, which was pretty amazing to behold. She joined the band and this is the lineup that most people saw if they ever in fact did see us, with the exception of Mike Carden leaving or us kicking him out, I don’t remember what happened. We never found anyone to replace him, so we just stayed instrumental out of laziness, probably. We recorded lots of demos and four tracks that no one ever heard because either they weren’t great or because we were lazy or because we didn’t bootlick the right people that could help us out. We tried, though. People seemed to like us around the Triangle area but it seemed to be more of a “musicians” band meaning that we had heard a lot of nice stuff from people in other bands in the area, big and small. We were also lumped in with the whole MATH ROCK thing, which was pretty accurate I guess. We liked stuff like the Melvins, anything Pen Rollings played on and a bunch of other stuff. Eventually towards the end of our existence, we were able to record some more music for a split album with us on one side and our friends Regraped on the other. Regraped were a mighty two bass driven power trio that we played with millions of times. The record came out on current Birds Of Avalon members Cheetie Kumar and Paul Siler’s label, BLAST O PLATTER records. Sure it sounded like shit, but that is no ones fault but the bands. We eventually called it a day and did a “last show” here in Raleigh that was captured on tape. Mike Carden even sang on a few songs. And that was all she wrote, kids. God bless and Amen.

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Gnu - Milimetry Ticha (2002)

Another band from Czech Republic that's also on Silver Rocket Records.  Pretty much the same description as Lyssa (see below) but maybe not quite as noisy.

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Jeff Mueller - Fold And Perish (1999)

So it's a nice sunny day, it's Friday and I'm in a overall good mood so I though I'd post something a little lighter and more relaxed for a change.  Fold And Parish is the one and so far only solo record by Jeff Mueller of Rodan, June Of 44 and The Shipping News.  It's simple acoustic recording could be best described as June Of 44 "Unplugged."  It came out the same year as JO44's disappointing Anahata which was the only JO44 album that I didn't like.  So this album kind of made up for that letdown a little.

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Regraped

Regraped is a band that I've recently discovered and I'm amazed that I've never heard of before.  They've been broken up for over a decade and I'm hearing their music for the first time just recently.  All I can say is that it's a shame that this band has remained so obscure.  Regraped are from Raleigh, NC and play dual bass like Cop Shoot Cop or Dianogah but they don't sound anything like those bands.  They're more along the lines of maybe Enemymine which also has two bass players where one is played more like a guitar a lot of the time.  And like Enemymine they have more aggression than the typical Math Rock band which seems to be the genre they get most lumped into from what I've read online.  This link contains some self-released cassettes, compilation tracks and split records including one with another great band from Raleigh called Shiny Beast which I'll probably write about some other time.  Thanks to Gus at The Dust Bowl for introducing me to this band and check out his blog because the guy has great taste in music. 

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Pinebender - Working Nine To Wolf (2006)

Pinebender do the whole Chicago math-rock thing but at a slower sludgier pace.

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Bellini - Small Stones (2005)

More Uzeda was requested a while back but I've decided to refrain from posting any Touch & Go/Quarterstick Records at this point.  They never seem to stay active for very long and if they feel that their bands need no more exposure or praise by blogs like ours I will oblige and no longer post records by their label.  Although I don't entirely agree I want to respect the label's wishes.  They've put out some of my favorite records of all time and I own "physical" copies of maybe half the label's catalog including all of Uzeda's releases.  So for those of you looking for Uzeda's music can purchase their MP3's at the Itunes music store or head on down to your local record store.  What I will post is Bellini which features Uzeda's Agostino Tilotta and Giovanna Cacciola.  If you like Uzeda there's no reason you shouldn't like this.  I honestly can't tell much of a difference between the two bands.  The original line-up featured Don Caballero's Damon Che who is one of my favorite drummers of all time but from what I hear is major douche-bag and difficult to deal with as a fellow bandmate.  Having never met the guy, I say this purely based on what I've heard and read.  According to Wikipedia he left the band in the middle of a show and bailed out on the band mid-tour.  They replaced him with Girls Against Boys drummer Alexis Fleisig and to be honest I actually prefer the album they recorded with him (Small Stones) over the one they did with Che (Snowing Sun).  After the return of Uzeda with their fantastic album Stella, I kind of thought that that was it for Bellini but according to their Myspace page  they are still very much active and have a new album in the works.

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The Shipping News - Claws (2006)

After reading Yansmd's previous post about Big Black's performance at T&G's 25th Anniversary Festival, it reminded me of how great of a time it was.  I was at the festival and I have to say that it was three of the best days of my life.  With Big Black being the highlight for me, seeing as that I never did see them play when they were still together.  Those 4 songs alone were worth me traveling almost 2,000 miles to hear.  But there was also a ton of other great bands playing that weekend which brings me to Claws.  The Shipping News were the band that started off the festival and really got the show off to a great start.  The band features Jeff Mueller and Jason Noble of Rodan.  With these two being the core members of Rodan it really is almost as if Rodan never broke up in the first place.  After their great set they announced that they had a free single that they made specifically for the festival and were giving them away to whoever wanted one.  I'm not sure how many were made but they were all gone maybe a hour later.  My guess is the song was probably an outtake from the Flies The Fields session.  The song itself isn't anything particularly special which is probably why it never made the cut in the first place. It's still not bad though and every time I hear it it brings back memories of the festival.  I know that Touch And Go hate blogs posting their albums which is why they never seem to stay up very long and I understand that.  Although this song was never really in print in the first place and there was no money to be made off of it so I really can't see why they would have a problem with me posting this.  But you never know so I'd still grab it quick before it's gone.

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Bastro - Antlers: Live 1991 (2005)

The music that Bastro was working on before they broke-up.  These live songs never made it to a studio and was released 14 years later.  Kind of a different direction with them toward the end.  Most notably being no vocals on any of the tracks.

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Dis - Small Fry Sessions 1&2 (1993) & M386.D57 (1994)

I was uploading this for someone and I figured I'd just throw it up here while I'm at it.  These are Dis' first two albums which have been long out of print and I really don't see them ever coming back into print.  So this is another "guilt free" download for all of you.  I guess you could describe Milwuakee's Dis as being on the poppier side of math-rock. 

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Taylor (Brand Abrasive Sound Structure) - S/T (1997)

This band could give Technician a run for their money for the most "Shellacish" sounding band ever!  I have no idea what the Hell their name means.  Sorry no album artwork.

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June Of 44 - The Anatomy Of Sharks (1996)

This EP came to mind while I was posting The Crownhate Ruin link (see below) because it features the only song (Seemingly Endless Steamer) that bass player Fred Erskine ever sang for the band.  It also has Sharks & Sailors which might be JO44's best song ever.  JO44 is probably most well known as Jeff Mueller's (Rodan, Shipping News) band but also featured Sean Meadows (Lungfish) and their amazing drummer Doug Scharin (Codiene, Rex).  This EP is a must for any math-rock fan.

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My Disco - Cancer (2006)

They sound exactly as you would expect a band named after a Big Black song would sound like.  Which isn't a bad thing at all.

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Slinty Bands

Remember listening to Spiderland back in '91 for the first time?  I had never heard anything like it before.  I remember thinking it was so unique and different at the time.  Just the dynamics and the odd vocals where it seems as if he was talking his lyrics as opposed to singing them.  Washer in particular just seemed like such a strange song.  I couldn't tell if the vocals were brilliant or kind of embarrassing.  Since then there has been hundreds of bands that have taken elements of Slint's style and some pull it off better than others.  Here are a couple of the good ones...

Ativin - Pills Versus Planes (1996)

I read a Ativin interview a while back where the members said they sort of bonded over the fact that they all had a love for Spiderland back when they first met in college.  And the band just kind of took off from there.  This is their first release and also the most aggressive one.  Later releases would fall into the more typical instrumental post-rock as we know it today.

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Haberdasher - Songs On Love nos. 48602-48608 (1997)

Probably the most Slinty (I'll be using this as an adjective) of the records I'm posting.  Definitely the best example of the "talking as singing" on the rare instances when there are vocals.  The Baltimore band only released this one LP and I really have no idea what the story is with the album title and the song names.  Members went on to form Oxes and More Dogs.

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Engine Kid - Angel Wings (1995)

This is Engine Kids last record and probably the least Slinty of theirs.  Their most Slinty would be their first EP.  But I'm posting this one because I think it's their best.  They were heading more into metal territory that guitarist/singer Greg Anderson (Sunn O))), Goatsnake) is more known for by this time.  But songs like Jumper Cables and the overall dynamics of the album still have that Slinty appeal.

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A Minor Forest - Inindependence (1998)

A Minor Forest was a math-rock band from San Francisco although they seemed to fit in more with the Chicago or Louisville scene back in the 90's.  This was their final and in my opinion best album.  For fans of Slint, Rodan and Don Caballero.

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