MR TRANSISTOR

MP3: Taterbug - Golden Star Brother Supper

Charles Free rambles even more than usual on his latest Taterbug release, abstracting his porch-based and jack-o'-lanterny psychedelia into some frontier-based nightmare, heavy on the ghost town feelings but with the damaged Americana and weird little brother eclectism of Boys Of The Feather. "Crash your phantom taxi into my unbuilt home". Apparently he's building some sort of shack out in the backyard of Night People/Wet Hair's Shawn Reed yard-- a perfect space for the early morning ranch wails he's so good at channeling with this modern, relatable lo-fi. Theme For Gasoline Weirdo tape is out on Night People.

myspace

LIQUID PILGRIM

MP3: The Savage Young Taterbug - Nightmare Of Party Children

I've been trying to watch Heaven's Gate for the last three days and I accidentally left it on downstairs when I found this song by our fav suburban ranch crooner Charles Free aka The Savage Young Taterbug. He's Huckleberry Finn in some failed future and this sprawling new one is real beautiful and typically fragile under those tape warbles, a total dusky lament w/ prairie imagery and displaced dusty American grandeur placed on a neighborhood porch. Bored Fortress is really right on this year!

myspace / buy

FAV 10 TAPES OF 2009

Really quite glad my iPod is really old w/ shit battery power cos I was getting soooo sick of my short attention span and never being able to settle on a song to listen to, wheeling through that thing for many a bus/train trip to find the "right song". No fun at all! My walkman is good like that; choose one tape, get lost in it. EASY. Naturally there were plenty of amazing cassettes to get lost in. Also I am really glad that Alt-Vinyl exists in Newcastle. SEE BELOW:

1. Matrix Metals - Flamingo Breeze

sample track: Tanning Salon

"It's just so weird, the neo-primitive retro futuristic FUN that oozes out of these claps and plastic beats. Taps into the 80s technology commercial feel and past ideas of the future that we're in right now with ridiculous glee and my absolute favourite sort of aesthetics. Just sounds real good."

[Last.FM / buy]

2. Monopoly Child Star Searchers - Presents: "The Aqueducts Of Channel Island"

sample track: Untitled A

Way denser than some of the other Spencer Clark releases or at least chops and changes more so it all comes off as some super labyrinthian world that feels crossed between the old (ie. Roman) and super new/scungy KFC bright lights city. A real sour Hawaii; palm trees on VHS etc., grainy as.

[Last.FM / buy]

3. Parasails - Parasailing

sample track: Skylife 3

The hand drum driven jams are best on here and clunk along with the most hazy major chord feelings. Can't work out if I like it better than the other Ducktails stuff but this more primitive/"hypnogogic" stuff is very, well, sort of have written a lot about these various projects this year but the crux of it is it "just makes you feel real nice eh".

[Last.FM / buy (sold out :()]

4. Dolphins Into The Future - On Seafaring Isolation

sample track: Lapse - Dream

Taking that New Age trip so ridiculously far but somehow still making a rad and irony-free ambient tape. It actually has literal "soothing ocean noises" but I'm not sure if anything else has changed the room/made me feel so as weird/good this year.

[Last.FM / buy]

5. Taterbug - The Savage Young Taterbug

sample track: Side A

"Tucked in the greasy folds of these super weird and trebely textures are some of the strongest feelings I can remember from this year and it's great how they're only half disguised under DIY gunk, "boys can be sirens too" for sure, and the hypnotic love on the scrawny wrists is creepy and sincere."

[Myspace / buy]

6. Sean McCann - Phylum Sigh

sample track: Spring Spill

Absolutely masterful ambient and bright noise with Solarisy contrasts between organic and space age. Real unique textures. Particularly liked listening to this on train rides with sun blurred on scratched windows.

[Myspace / buy]

7. Dunebuggy - Dunebuggy

sample track: W Thing

"Trust Ryan Garbes and Charles "Taterbug" Free to blow their mutant pop/punk in chunks like these. Can't stop obsessing over the defunct Americana and genius John Candy/family film/summer camp feelings. Somehow it drips w/ "free highs" rather than unease, interesting amongst all the wide-eyed fuzz." Also, just watched Meatballs 2 and realized that it is EXACTLY what I mean and feel like this stuff sounds like.

[Myspace / buy]

8. Sun Araw - In Orbit

sample track: Luther

Love Sun Araw's stoner haze in pop(er) form but I think it actually works better in 15 minute tape jams, real sun scorched.

[Myspace / buy]

9. Ryan Garbes - Born Under The Sun

sample track: Side A

The warm tenseness of the vibrato organs and the weird DIY/ultra off-the-cuff keyboard stammers get trapped in some prism of light with a laxed reverse prog mood running all the way through.

[Myspace / buy]

10. High Wolf - Animal Totem

sample track: Un Abrazo

Gently percussive with tonnes of creeping rhythms coming out w/ New Age harsh ambient stylistics. SOUNDS LIKE WAVES/THE BREEZE/CRYSTAL BALLS and meets some happy medium between zoned outness and head nods, way way lush and smooth psychedelia.

[Myspace / buy]

ALSO REALLY LIKED THESE:

Dirty Beaches - Dirty Beaches

Rangers - Low Cut Fades

Tonstartssbandht - Maihama

Blue Sabbath Black Fiji - Night Hawk

Heavy Winged - The Thinner Air

Yves/Son/Ace - Yves/Son/Ace

Mark McGuire - Guitar Meditiations

Peaking Lights - Imaginary Falcons

Best Coast - Where The Boys Are

RICHARD'S TOP 20 SONGS OF 2009

Gotta say I've found it kind of hard to remember/figure out which "songs" are my absolute favs this year because a) THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY GOOD BANDS COMING OUT WITH ONLY JUST A HANDFUL OF EUPHORIC AND INVENTIVE SOUNDS and b) most of them are submerged inside 15 minute long tapes or LPs and thus harder to post on a blog. But whatever, I've had to go with those anyway to "stay true to myself". I think I've lost track of heaps of stuff this year from working craploads and putting on shows in a small English city; I either couldn't remember if these ones were from this year or couldn't fit them on to the list:

Miami Horror - Don't Be With Her
Smith Westerns - Tonight
Black Joker - Watch Out! Part One
Dum Dum Girls - Catholicked
Toro Y Moi - Blessa
Truman Peyote - Sara Delta
Cow's Lips - A Complete Diagram

BUT YEAH, totally loved these next twenty in particular:



1. James Ferraro - Chrome Wave Arena
from Edward Flex Presents: Do You Believe In Hawaii?

I was enjoying all this Skatersy stuff earlier in the year but it wasn't until seeing James Ferraro and Spencer Clark each play solo in Newcastle's ridiculously mystical Mordern Tower that it really clicked. California Games dreams and VHS transcendence glow out of the Zangiefy roars and carbon gnarls, peyote grandeur and a vision that for me is more coherent and instantly relatable to both my own childhood (brings back 6am Saturday morning cartoon sessions, joystick obsessions, KFC towering over teen streets like a "dark tower" indeed) and current aesthetic interests.

[Last.FM / buy]

2. Najavo Bixby - Moonlighting
unreleased

Kind of impossibly ecstatic and I'm not sure how Judd Hower has put this one together, alls I know is every time me and my pals have had two to three beverages and are about to "head out" I'm always reaching for this one. And the second half party drop; sheesh.

[MySpace]

3. Taterbug - Chemical Vacation
from The Savage Young Taterbug CS

Tucked in the greasy folds of these super weird and trebely textures are some of the strongest feelings I can remember from this year and it's great how they're only half disguised under DIY gunk, "boys can be sirens too" for sure, and the hypnotic love on the scrawny wrists is creepy and sincere.

[MySpace / Buy]

4. Real Estate - Atlantic City
from Real Estate / Atlantic City Expressway

There are a handful of versions of it and I'm almost tempted to post the Parasails version (the first version?) but this lush indie pop jam is so homely and warm and at once pastoral and beachy. Totally addictive and subtly inventive in an enormous canon of pop greatness.

[MySpace / buy]

5. Matrix Metals - Flamingo Breeze
from Flamingo Breeze

It's just so weird, the neo-primitive retro futuristic FUN that oozes out of these claps and plastic beats. Taps into the 80s technology commercial feel and past ideas of the future that we're in right now with ridiculous glee and my absolute favourite sort of aesthetics. Just sounds real good.

[Last.FM / buy]

6. Speculator - We Don't Give A Shit
unreleased

THOSE BLOWN OUT DRUMS! And Jesus & Mary chain rips all converted into Hal Hartley-style emotion real sweet and broken.

[MySpace]

7. Ducktails - Landrunner
from Landscapes

It doesn't get any more 90s than this; those drums are pretty daggy (SO GOOD) and the somewhat uncharacteristic washy fuzz on this one makes it stand out from the other tropical greatness. Bodacious linear repetitions.

[MySpace / buy]

8. Dunebuggy - French Playground
from Dunebuggy CS

Trust Ryan Garbes and Charles "Taterbug" Free to blow their mutant pop/punk in chunks like these. Can't stop obsessing over the defunct Americana and genius John Candy/family film/summer camp feelings. Somehow it drips w/ "free highs" rather than unease, interesting amongst all the wide-eyed fuzz.

[MySpace / buy]

9. Eat Skull - Heaven's Stranger
from Wild & Inside

Way different from anything on the ultra wasted, scuzzy and wild eyed masterpiece Sick To Death but I guess this is what happens in winter when guys like these sit down for a bit and get a bit escapist. Just real beautiful and moving ending-y/driving into the sunset-y but still gritty as.

[MySpace / buy]

10. Fluffy Lumbers - Harry Dolland's
unreleased

Perfect bittersweet teen fuzz pop w/ excitingly familar chord progressions and melody fueled distortion.

[MySpace]

11. Weed Diamond - Walk Away
from Demo

Pretty straight forward lo-fi jam but somehow amazingly catchy too me; it's got those upbeat tropical guitars at a pretty chill level with something mega apt about the name Weed Diamond and the prismic colours and light that comes out of this.

[MySpace

12. Black Dice - Bob
from Chocolate Cherry

In some ways a minor blip on their larger radar but it's just total chillage running down in their typical sludge, stretched out melodies, palm tree imagery all melted and stuff, just really into that feeling eh.

[MySpace / buy]

13. Peaking Lights - Silver Tongues, Soft Whispers
from Imaginary Falcons CS

So circular and peaced out, helped by the mythos of where these guys live (in some Jodorowsky-style valley/forest) somewhere but still straight up analog beauty.

[MySpace / buy]

14. Holy Shit - Rough & Tumble
unreleased

Is this from this year? A total banger either way; schhomp! Drugged out and happy go lucky, tapping into some mean Weekend At Bernies feelings.

[MySpace]

15. Times New Viking - No Time, No Hope
from Born Again Revisited

We all know these guys but they're seriously getting better and better and way more New Zealandy as well; dig on their cover of "Anything Could Happen" and the way the bung organs chime on this one in that summer winds refrain at the very start, pulling off relevant "world views" in a shitstorm of irony that is semi-eschewed by amazing song ability.

[MySpace / buy]

16. Wet Hair - Cult Electric Annihilation
from Psychic Chasms

There's been a few classics from these guys this year especially Ryan Garbe's solo Born Under The Sun tape but this gem is super positive and apocalyptic at once, death party styles, super jammy and loose but somehow pushed forward in that way they do, neo-prog or something right? Totally boss.

[MySpace / buy]

17. Kurt Vile - Freeway
from Constant Hitmaker

I wouldn't hesitate in saying that Kurt Vile is the best "songwriter" to come to the foreground of 2009 and it's amazing to know he's getting better at putting lyrics/chords/feelin's together increasingly cohesively. Nice and conventional folk/pop/indie rock but drenched in spring air and reverb with long hair flailin'.

[MySpace / buy]

18. The Mantles - Don't Lie
from The Mantles

Crazily intricate jangles that grow and grow but burgeon nonstop and look back at our New Zealand favourites. Crazy good pop song, just enough fuzz, slightly obvious chord progression which is EXACTLY what you wanna hear and they just roll with it.

[MySpace / buy]

19. Lotus Plaza - Red Oak Way
from The Floodlight Collective

This real lucid and delay-heavy style is a favourite of mine and I think this is partially because of how amazingly synesthestetic the cover art goes with the general sound is (love the light leakage in a big way cf. my Flickr). So dreamy and with massive colour blur all over.

[Last FM / buy]

20. Blues Control - On Through The Night
from Local Flavor

People say they're somewhat sporadic in their recorded output but these krauted out rhythms matched with both New Agey/Equinochial textures are just totally delicious, submerge more than ever until ten minutes in where the liquid drums come out. Such a beguiling mix of "things" in this one, like their wider oeuvre.

[MySpace / buy]

DID YOU FRY?

Taterbug - Pipe Down (?) (via)

Psyched to nab this new free Taterbug track on such a balmy spring evening - pretty well suited to my weird state of tiredness with free energy drink buzz. Still brittle, but perhaps not as precious as last time, Charles Free strings together AM memories, dubbed radio station flips and intercepted galactic transmissions with Scotch Tape. I love how Percy Sledge cuts into midnight forest sounds into organ funk eventually into two friends on a bad cellphone line. What'd you just say?

[Taterbug Myspace]

[Buy Taterbug tapes from Night People]

LIQUID ELVIS

Taterbug - Chemical Vacation

Taterbug aka Charles Free is a memoryscaper or maybe he collected these sounds from the dusty webs of old dreamcatchers full of lucid sensations and weird formative moments. This track is full of these, transferred onto new and found brittle cassette reels, with more bluesy childhood feelings, haunted vocals, lush keyboard whistles, and slowly melting soul samples -- think a peaced-out Ariel Pink with the celestial moments of James Ferraro. Total dreamer

[Taterbug Myspace]

[Buy Taterbug releases from Night People]