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Chilling at my boyfriend's place last night when he threw on this documentary Godspeed, You Black Emperor (1976), which follows Japanese bōsōzoku motorcycle youth gang the Black Emperors as they ride in packs 100-deep, rumblin' and generally being shithead teenagers, albeit in a very organized manner. Found a blog with more detail of the film here ....

So, not only is the film super visually appealing (shot in B&W 16mm, with a handful of rad stills in the mix) but the music blew me away. Amazing Japanese psychedelic rock n' roll - but the credits don't list any tracks! I got into work early this morning and start googling the shit out of this film. One thing led to another, and I soon found myself deep in the world of early-70s Japanese stoner youtube videos. Here's one of my favorites, plus the first part of the film to get you started... 

Feel free to hit me up if you know any of the music from the documentary and how I can get my hands on it!  

This is the second week in a row I'm posting this on a Tuesday... how did I become someone who's always running late?? Dammit. I definitely KNOW the value of being on time and reflects someone who has their shit together, so I guess let's either call it a work in progress or be chill and say this column runs on island time, mon!

Super stoked our new issue just dropped! Took me awhile to choose the review for this week, but let's keep the island vibe going with a few laughs - pass the dutchie and get weird on this review for Zzbra from Color 10.1..... jah bless!

Zzbra
s/t
(camobear records)

One night after watching a Kutmasta Kurt deejay set, I was asked by an extremely drunk group of friends if I would like to go back to their house and continue our shame spiral. So, of course I say yes and go to this party, and I sure am glad I did. Instead of just sitting around and listening to a CD or record, like some kind of sucker, this kid starts beat boxing and this dude starts free-style rapping. Everyone is still drinking and basically forcing this kid to keep doing his tracheotomy/didgeridoo beat boxing, and thinking of new topics for this guy to freestyle about. Some of the rhymes didn’t make any sense and at times I’m not even sure if any language was being used, but it sounded good at the time. Turns out the guy rapping is a rapper named Evil Ebenezer, and he is in a new project called Zzbra with ex-swollen member Moka Only. If getting wasted off of moonshine wine and forcing people to perform for you at 4:30 in the morning sounds like a good time, then this record might be ideal for you.

—Justin Gradin, Color 10.1

See you next week! 

What is Soundcheque Mondays anyway? Every week, I'll be posting a music review direct from the pages of Color that deserves another go-around, plus a video from the band so you get to hear the actual music that goes along with it. Win/Win!

Previous entries:

Monday Feb 6, 2012 Soft Moon
Monday Feb 13, 2012 Cloud Nothings
Monday Feb 20, 2012 Nirvana
Monday Feb 27, 2012 Maria Minerva
Tuesday Mar 6, 2012 Royal Trux

A couple months ago, I sent a list of my favorite local Vancouver bands to our old Toronto-based music editor Saelan Twerdy (for kicks and 'cause he was feeling out of the loop), and one of my top picks just happened to be Two Towns, former Adelaide member Jesse Booi's new band with brothers Chris & Michael Weiss. Side note: Jesse was also featured many moons ago in Color 4.2 with Brett Stobbart... ANYWAY, Two Towns have been killing it recently with their desert rock stylings (ahh!! so good!) and happen to be playing a show TONIGHT at the China Cloud alongside another Vancouver local who just can't make a bad record, Rolla Olak. So stoked on this badass video for VBS' Doin' it Baja trip with Rolla's track Swamp Fang... ride with the wind, forever summer... can't wait for tonight!





China Cloud
542 Main St.
Vancouver, BC

9pm, 19+

Facebook event here

rollaolak.com
twotowns.bandcamp.com

You're probably wondering why this Soundcheque Mondays post is going up on Tuesday... don't sweat it and we'll leave it at that haha (oh! I did post something good yesterday though, read it here.)

The 90s are a pretty big blur for me - my teenage memories have really all melded into one (I usually start any story from 1992-2000 by saying "When I was 15..."), mostly due to the monotony of my upper middle class high school - and I'm guessing Royal Trux have the same problem, but replaced with heroine and record releases! 

Royal Trux
singles, live, unreleased
(drag city)


I love Royal Trux. Founding members Jennifer Herrema (vocals) and Neil Hagerty (guitar, vocals, tapes, and synthesizers) are amazing. This 3-LP, 2-CD collection, Singles, Live, Unreleased is a distorted, blissed-out collection of some amazing music that spans their career, and it is essential! It is almost like air. In high school band class, the teacher should just give the students a copy of this album and say, “Somebody made this. Try and see if you can even come close to making something remotely like this, and then contemplate killing your parents.” The attitude that pores out of both Jennifer and Neil through out every single song is something that is both dangerous, and very real. You feel like you would be scared of these people if you met them in real life, but in the coolest possible way. They sound like how switchblades look.
—Justin Gradin, Color 9.6

See you next week! 

What is Soundcheque Mondays anyway? Every week, I'll be posting a music review direct from the pages of Color that deserves another go-around, plus a video from the band so you get to hear the actual music that goes along with it. Win/Win!

Previous entries:

Monday Feb 6, 2012 Soft Moon
Monday Feb 13, 2012 Cloud Nothings
Monday Feb 20, 2012 Nirvana
Monday Feb 27, 2012 Maria Minerva

Best 3am find in a long time: OMMA COBBA 

When Omon Ra split, Zachery Fairbrother added a "II", released a few rad records, then moved south and put together the best fucking band outta Philly, Lantern*. The band's other half, Dan Miller, started a lil' project called Omma Cobba with Dave Sell & Denis Kierans. Hazy, tripped out, dreamy rock n roll... right up my alley. Came across their single Police Man late last night (released on Halifax's Craft Singles cassette label) and haven't been able to stop listening to everything these guys have midas touched since.

* saw Lantern play a late night warehouse jam in van a couple months ago... these guys ruled, too bad only 30 people showed up. You snooze, you lose!

Pretty into this video Jay Zaretsky made for our buddies PLAGUE/VENDOR (PLG/VNDR) from LA... watch on fullscreen for best brainmelting results!

Comune & Corey Smith brought these guys up to Vancouver in January for Ray Gordon's epic photo show Throttled at Know?Show, and they ended up staying an extra night to play a set & party with us at HOUR HANDS.... dammit, I miss these guys! PARTY

When I first moved to Vancouver, I made two promises to myself: I'd finally learn to drive a car and to speak Estonian. Here we are 15 months later and nothing has happened on either front - that is, until now! Hanging out with someone who drives an old, bare bones, manual Japanese pickup who has generously offered to teach me everything he knows plus free use of the truck once I've got a handle on things (keeper??), and recently started teaching myself Eesti keelt. There's a part of me that maybe thinks it's bad idea to rely on basic (read: free) online language courses, but ya gotta start somewhere...

ANYWAY, this brings me to this week's Soundcheque Mondays post: Maria Minerva. Who? I didn't know either until I read Mark Richardson's review in our latest issue of Color 9.6, but she is Estonian and apparently a big thing in Europe. Sounds like Grimes, but I really just like that she's been described elsewhere as 'gloom disco'... Naudi!

 

Maria Minerva
sacred & profane love
(100% silk)


It’s only been a year since her debut appearance on a limited cassette that was quietly released by Not Not Fun, but Maria Minerva has since been making huge leaps and discoveries within in her aesthetic. Since the recent release of her full-length, Cabaret Cixous, the London-via-Estonia producer, still in her early 20s, has recently been slotted alongside the likes of Nite Jewel and Glass Candy, though Minerva eschews the more direct pop stance of her contemporaries in favour of a more abstracted bliss. Her debut, Tallinn At Dawn, was a fairly muted and hazy affair, while Cabaret Cixous expanded on that and nudged it towards the dance floor. This artistic growth hasn’t slowed, as Sacred & Profane Love is so much bolder and confident than anything released previously. The alien disco of tracks like “Another Time & Place” or “Kyrie Eleison” burst out of the headphones and onto some distant interplanetary discotheque. With thumping, low-end bass, her trademark drifting vocals and an array of imaginative, quirky synth squiggles, Sacred & Profane Love tickles the mind as easily as the lower lumbar.
—Mark Richardson, Color 9.6

See you next week! 

What is Soundcheque Mondays anyway? Every week, I'll be posting a music review direct from the pages of Color that deserves another go-around, plus a video from the band so you get to hear the actual music that goes along with it. Win/Win!

Previous entries:

Monday Feb 6, 2012 Soft Moon
Monday Feb 13, 2012 Cloud Nothings
Monday Feb 20, 2012 Nirvana

I'm gonna start this off by saying "WHAT A WEEK"... it's only Monday but I'm already feeling the weight of what's to come in the next couple days. Good thing two elements have come together today to stave off any ill feelings of sitting here looking at a never-ending inbox: it's Kurt Cobain's birthday AND we did a review of the 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Nevermind in our Fall issue. Whoa! Who could have asked for a more perfect Soundcheque Mondays post?! Not me, that's for sure. 

Nirvana
nevermind 20th
anniversary deluxe
edition 
(geffen records)

Ok, everybody knows Nirvana rules, and everyone knows everything there is to know about Nevermind inside and out. BUT, this is the 20th anniversary four-LP box set, and it is really all about records two, three, and four, the first being the original version of the album. Record two introduces listeners to the b-sides - of course songs like "Aneurysm", "Even In His Youth", and "School" are already so well-known it's almost as if they weren't b-sides. Then they throw us some live tracks which brings us over to record three: the boom box rehearsals. The two real jams on here are "Verse Chorus Verse" and "Old Age". Both songs are insanely catchy, and one of them even proves Courtney Love is a liar! How do songs this good not get released? Nirvana's standard for high quality songwriting is completely proven here, and it makes the rest of us look like a bunch of lazy goofs.
—Justin Gradin, Color 9.5

See you next week!

What is Soundcheque Mondays anyway? Every week, I'll be posting a music review direct from the pages of Color that deserves another go-around, plus a video from the band so you get to hear the actual music that goes along with it. Win/Win!

Previous entries:

Monday Feb 6, 2012 Soft Moon
Monday Feb 13, 2012 Cloud Nothings

In case you missed the inaugural Soundcheque Mondays post from last week, might be a good idea to read it here first and then continue with this review! Sorry about getting this up so late, I just rolled back into town from 4 days out of the city and away from anything to do with 'the internet'. Let's keep things loose around here.

By the way, these reviews usually won't have anything to do with my own personal musical tastes, more that they give me a laugh and/or pique my interest enough to go listen to the record. Round two!

 

Cloud Nothings
attack on memory
(vertigo)


Dylan Baldi (who has hair) started Cloud Nothings as a lo-fi, parent's basement, loner project in 2009. Since then he has released a series of 7-inches and tapes before releasing his debut LP in 2011. Attack on Memory was recorded in Chicago by Steve Albini, and thus results in a higher fidelity sound. As well, the band seems to have loosened up, or tightened up, and seem more confident and relaxed in their structures and songwriting. "Stay Useless" sort of sounds like a Pixies song if you were listening to it through the vibrations of someone's skull while they were listening to it on headphones, and that someone was a Julien Casablancas look-a-like. There is also a track on here where Baldi forgot to sing. Unless he meant for it to be instrumental, but why would you not want to sing when you have the voice of a precious little angel? Who really knows these days? Sheesh.
—Bobby Lawn, Color 9.6

See you next week!

OK, I pretty much always have a good laugh whenever I read the Soundcheque reviews we print in the magazine. Plus the music is usually fucken awesome. How are more people not talking about these?? SOOOOO I'm gonna start something up here: Soundcheque Mondays! Every Monday, I'll be posting a music review direct from the pages of Color that deserves another go-around, plus a video from the band so you get to hear the actual music that goes along with it! Win/Win!

Here's the first one (FYI this actually didn't get printed! what! It got cut but I thought it really deserved some credit):

Soft Moon 
total decay EP
(captured tracks)

What does a baby bat say before it goes to bed? Turn on the dark I’m afraid of the light! What is Transylvania? It’s Dracula’s terror-tory. What is Dracula’s position in baseball? Batboy. Why did Dracula go to jail? He robbed a blood-bank. Who did Dracula take on a date? His Ghoul-friend! What did Dracula’s optometrist say to him after an eye exam? You’re blind as a bat! Why did Dracula Jr. get sent home from school? He was coffin too much! What did the angry baby say after breast feeding? “I’m fed up!” After two 7- inches, and one year after their self-titled debut release, The Soft Moon are back once again with the Total Decay EP. The Bay Area’s latest post-punk, goth-industrial influenced band unleashes some dark, brooding, and bleak material here, with a newly charged and focused intensity. More developed than past releases, but if you liked those, then hey, why not like this one too? For best listening results wear neon, hang out with your lil’ sister, and look at pictures of Hawaii. 
—Justin Gradin, Color 9.6

See you next week!