Thursday, November 17, 2011

A-Z PROJECT: #214-220

220 days into this stupid project, and well on my way to getting through all of my CDs in jewel cases within a year. At this point I'm sick of listening to music 8 hours a day, but I'm still finding things I forgot how much I enjoyed that I wouldn't normally choose to listen to.

(*) asterisks note things that are burned copies and not an original release. CDRs without asterisks behind them were originally issued as CDRs.


Day #214
PINK FLOYD - "Obscourred By Clouds" CD (Another great album. This one's a little more straight than the others, less psychedelic. Songs are pretty much evenly split between rock and acoustic. The production on this album is awesome.)

PINK FLOYD - "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" CD (It's a shame they didn't record more stuff like this, specifically like "Interstellar Overdrive". Thank goodness the Germans picked up the ball and ran with it. Sonically, this is a really interesting album. There's lots of weird stuff going on throughout and the stereo panning at times seem like strange choices. I'm not real familiar with the psychedelic scene, where Pink Floyd fits in it's history or how well they were received at the time, but I can't imagine this was very popular on it's release. It must have been somewhat successful, though, because they toured North America on this album.)

PINK FLOYD - "A Saucerful of Secrets" CD (This was one of the last albums I picked up because of all the bad reviews I read for it, but it's just as good at the others, just a little different. Syd's songs really stand out on this one in contrast to the others.)

PINK FLOYD - "Ummagumma" 2CD (This is another one of their releases I heard in Denver that turned me around on the band. One of the discs is studio, the other is live. The live album is the better of the two, in my opinion. I haven't listened to this set very often, not sure why.)

PINK FLOYD - "Wish You Were Here" CD (I'm not really into the Pink Floyd stuff from "Dark Side..." on. I've given "Dark Side..." several chances and there's too many things about it I don't like. While I've seen the movie, believe it or not, I've never heard "The Wall". I bought this CD used for $5, and while I've heard 3 of the songs on the radio, I'd never heard the album as a whole until then. It was better than I thought it would be. For the longest time I thought "Welcome to the Machine" was an Ozzy Osbourne song. Syd Barrett's mental illness has been a source of material for Roger Waters more than it should have. Dude should fuck off and find something else to write about.)

PISSED CUNT - "Neni Co Resist" CDR (PC were a Czech noisecore band I was in contact with in the 90s. They appeared on the "Where's Your Beard?" compilation I released. Their recordings were always really lo-fi and distant sounding. These sort of bands have all dried up in recent years. I wish there were more crummy bands like this as opposed to crummy drum machine goregrind bands. There's an Extreme Noise Terror live set from London 1989 on the end of this as an added bonus. I'll never say "no" to more ENT.)

PISSED HAPPY CHILDREN - "Pissed Playground" CD (I listened to this while driving out of town, so no anecdotal summary for this one. Sorry....)

PLAGUE RAGES - "Subordinados pele Peste" CD (Awesome raw grindcore from Brazil (I think?). The recording rules, everything sounds brutal, yet clean, like it's an excellent recording of instruments that sound all kinds of fucked up. The guitar tone is especially great. C3L were supposed to do a split tape with these guys back in the late 90s, but we dropped the ball. Most of the splits we had arranged slipped through the cracks, actually. This CD is great. Bands like this should be getting more attention instead of crap like Phobia.)

Day #215
PLANET OF THE APES - "Original Soundtrack" CD (Walking around at work while listening to this is fucking weird, like I have own incidental music following me around. This soundtrack is awesome, but it's missing loads of stuff from the movie. It was reissued later with more stuff. I've seen the movie so many times I can see the scenes playing out in my head as the corresponding part of the soundtrack plays. Jerry Goldsmith's scores are all easily identified as his. They don't all sound alike, but there's an underlying quality I can't identify that gives him away. This shit is awesome.)

PLANET OF THE APES - "Original Soundtrack" CD (This was re-released in 1997 with tons of extra stuff, not just this film, but the whole series. This one is 68 minutes, the CD above was only 26. Incredibly, "The Hunt" doesn't even appear on the other disc and it's one of the most recognizable pieces from this soundtrack. There's a 16 minute suite from "Escape From the Planet of the Apes" at the end of this.)

BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES - "Original Soundtrack" CD (Different composer, but similar style. This one might sound a little more frantic when compared to the first film. There's some great Dr. Who style electronics on this one, the mind control sound effects the underground mutants used on Brent.)

CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES + BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES - "Original Soundtrack" CD (This one is way different than the others. There's even fuzz bass on a couple of the songs.)

Day #216
PLASTIC GRAVE - "Noizy Graves & Plastic Chronicles" CD (This was a lot less noisy than I hoped it would be. It kind of sounds like a less metal version of Exhumed. When I bought this, I got it mixed up with Empty Grave from Brazil. It's okay, but probably not something I'll listen to very often. This seems to be a discography CD. I know nothing about the band, where they're from, if they're still active, etc.)

Day #218
POISON IDEA - "The Early Years" CD (I had the misfortune of hearing their best record first, then kept buying stuff hoping it would be as good. None of it was. The studio (?) tracks on this CD are really close, though, but there aren't very many of them. Most of this CD is live stuff, which is fine, I suppose. The sound quality is pretty decent on the live stuff. I just wish there were more studio tracks on here.)

POISON IDEA - "Kings of Punk" CD (I had this CD as a teenager, but it was stolen out of my car when it was broken into. I re-bought it a few years ago at Extreme Noise for $4.00. Poison Idea were one of the angriest sounding HC bands, this CD is no exception. The vocals are dripping with hate on this. The music is slower than on "Pick Your King" and slightly more metal sounding, but it works on this one. The thick production and pissed vocals make for a mean sounding album. This is the last album of theirs I can get into, though.)

POISON IDEA - "Pick Your King" CD (Flawless HC, perfect from start to finish. I must have listened to this thing 500 times or more. One of the greatest HC records of all time.)

THE POLICE - "Outlandos d'Amour" CD (I've always liked the Police, especially their earliest stuff. My brother had that "Message in a Box" CD set with all of their recordings on it and I listened to it a bunch. I bought this at Sam Goody when they were going out of business for $0.50. Too bad they didn't have more of their stuff there. There was still a lot of punk in their music on this first album.)

POLLUTION OF SOUND - "Unvoluntary Suicide" CDR (This shit is awesome, sounds almost exactly like Necrophiliacs. I don't remember who sent this to me now, but one of the members was in another band I was in contact with before this one. This is really primitive stuff, sounds like they didn't have too many rehearsals under their best before recording this. More practice would have just ruined it anyway.)

POPOL VUH - "Leztze Tage" CD (I'm not terribly familiar with Popol Vuh. Their CDs didn't turn up with any frequency when I was buying krautrock stuff 10 years ago. This one is pretty guitar heavy, for them anyway, from what I understand. It sounds a lot like "Saucerful of Secrets" era Pink Floyd, dreamy and fluid sounding with some middle-eastern influence and female vocals that aren't too annoying.)

POPOL VUH - "Nosferatu Soundtrack" CD (This one is awesome, even with all the sitar on it. This is serious zone-out stuff, almost full on ambient.)

PORCH MONKEYS - "Fear and Loathing in Denver" CDR* (I somehow missed out on this one when it came out. A friend of mine sent me his cassette tape and I made this CDR from it. If you're familiar at all with Ace's noise projects, you've got a pretty good idea of what this sounds like. All of those Dismembered Fetus and Festering Puke side projects kind of sounded the same, but thankfully so. When my band did our second tour back in 1999 we played with these guys at an art gallery. That was a great show, we'd never felt more welcomed than at that show.)

Day #219
POSSESSED - "Seven Churches" CD (I didn't get much listening in yesterday as I spent most of the work day writing lyrics. I'll try to get more in today. I like Possessed, but I didn't hear this album until much later in life, well after thrash metal was "my thing". I couldn't find it as a teenager due to my limited options here in the midwest. Because of this, I don't hold this album in as high regard as others do. I actually prefer "Eyes of Horror" to this one, I'm probably the only one who does. I don't think I realized before today how similar Jeff's vocals were to Evil Chuck's.)

POST MORTEM - "Destined for Failure" CD (I bought this at my brother's store years ago because I recognized the name from an old Ax/ction Records comp and because of the ridiculous cover art and stupid song titles. I knew it was going to sit there forever if I didn't pick it up, too. I probably should have left it sitting there, it's pretty shitty. I guess they're a punk band, but only because I can't think of what else to call them. It never speeds up past mid-paced, songs don't seem to follow any structure, there's occasional breaks for funk bass and jazz guitar, etc. Nope, there's really nothing good about this CD other than the cover art, which is rad. Oh well...)

POST MORTEM - "Festival of Fun" CD (See the description above. Everything I said about it applies to this one, too, including the rad artwork. This one is a little better, but not by much.)

POTABILIZADORA - "2004 Promo" CDR (Manuel from Genital Masticator's noise project. This disc collects highlights from his previous releases. This was my first introduction to the project. I've been dreading listening to it for a while now because I'm rarely in the mood for this sort of noise. Turns out it was a lot less "harsh noise" than I remembered it being and I'm really enjoying it. It's pretty much just short blasts of noisecore with a drum machine and pitch shifted vocals. It kind of sounds like Gruesome Toilet, actually. 60 minutes is an awfully long time to listen to this stuff, though.)

POTABILIZADORA - "Sessions" CDR (Add another 74 minutes to that 60 I just did.)

POTABILIZADORA / MELANOCETUS MURRAYI / FUNERAL MONGOLOIDS / COLICO - "4 Way Split CDR #4" CDR (Potabilizadora sound different on this one, less noisecore and more like a woodpecker hammering away on a tape of unidentified samples. M.M. are a full-on barrage of noise for a full 10 minutes, totally harsh and extreme with tortured screams throughout. Funeral Mongoloids, from Finland, do old 7MON style noisecore, for lack of a better comparison. Short noisecore bursts over near constant feedback. Colico, from Ecuador, finish this out with 24 minutes of what sounds like completely improvised silly noisecore. This is a great CD and all of these projects are a great example of strong noisecore still being made today.)

PRAXIS - "Sacrifist" CD (The second Praxis album is a lot different than the first, but just as good. The brainchild of Bill Laswell, the band had somewhat of an open line up and mostly different members on each album. Whereas the first album was more or less a mixture of funk and metal, this is a lot heavier and darker in tone. The first song on here sounds like Bolt Thrower and Naked City combined, but from there it moves into dub territory, then industrial metal, etc. Somehow it all works. Mick Harris, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Buckethead, Blind Idiot God and John Zorn all contributed to this release. It's a fantastic album.)

PRAXIS - "Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis)" CD (I was straight-up obsessed with this album in high school. I can't even find words to describe it right now, just sitting here staring off into space.)

Day #220
ELVIS PRESLEY - "Sunrise" 2CD (I've been to Memphis enough times to develop an interest and appreciation for roots music. My budget prevents me from diving deeper into it than I'd like to, but I have some great stuff I've picked up over the years. This 38 song, 2 CD set contains all of the recordings Elvis did for Sam Phillips' Sun Records label back in the mid-50s. I'm not an Elvis historian, so I don't know without looking how many of these sides were released, but there's some dreadful sounding stuff on the second disc I'm sure didn't get a release at the time. They were probably taken from acetates. The first half of the first disc is great early rock and roll, but half way through he switches over to crooning ballads and he loses me. I'm just not interested in that kind of stuff, not sung by white people anyway.)

PRETTY LITTLE FLOWER - "Pulverizing Lethal Force" CD (This CD fucking kills. The combination of blastbeats, thrash riffs and deep, gruff vocals is awesome. Strangely enough, when bands do the thrash riff and raspy vocal combination, I just find it irritating. This is "metal", but not overly so. P.L.F. are super tight and fast, the recording is excellent and punctuates everything in all the right places. It's nice when grind bands do it right.)

PSYCHO - s/t CD + DVD (One of Boston's longest running HC bands, Psycho have been around since the early 80s in some form or other, though they've veered off into almost-grind territory at times. This CD collects the "Riches and Fame" 12", "You Love Us... You Hate Us" 12", their split 7" with OUT COLD and some other stuff I can't remember, all stuff from the late 80s. They were still very much a HC band at this point, a pretty good HC band, too. The sound on the second 12" on here is so thin it's really difficult to enjoy, but the rest of this sounds fine. There was another Psycho collection with their earliest recordings, but I haven't picked that up yet. I still haven't watched the DVD that came with this, either.)

PSYCHO SIN - "The Cancer is Still Spreading" CD (Psycho Sin were one of the dumbest, most meat-headed, sloppiest bands ever, and they were awesome because of this. A couple of the members of the French noisecore band RAPT moved to New Jersey and formed this band. They released an LP and a 7", then disappeared into obscurity. I hadn't even heard of them until I saw this CD while I was in Japan. Speed State did this reissue, along with a bunch of other great collections I saw there in the shop. I assumed it would be good based on their other releases and because the CD had 68 songs on it. It was great, I'm glad I picked it up. Musically, it sounds pretty similar to Rapt, but the vocals and the thick Jersey accent sort of reminds me of Intense Mutilation doing noisecore. As far as noisecore goes, there really isn't anything else that sounds like this.)

P.T.A.O. - "4ka 1/3" 3"CD (One of the greatest noisecore band's ever. Thick grindcore production, brutal vocals and awesome drumming. Short blasts of noisecore, sometimes over some weird background noise, not unlike Sore Throat's "Aural Butchery" demo. Rather than release a full length CD, they broke it up into a series of three 3" CDs, all with nice full color gatefold covers, and housed them in a printed slipcase. The noise is just as awesome as the packaging is. More people should be buying these things before they disappear forever. This gets my strongest reccomendtation.)

P.T.A.O. - "4ka 2/3" 3"CD (See above.)

P.T.A.O. - "4ka 3/3" 3"CD (See above.)

P.T.A.O. / MELANOCETUS MURRAYI - split CDR (More excellent Czech grinding noisecore, same high calibre as always. Some of this stuff was on one of the "4ka" CD above. M.M. do one 20 minute long track of full-on blasting grind/noise, never relenting once. I'm pretty sure this is the dame session from the 4 way split CDR listed above. I hate it when bands do that. Limited to 300 copies on the great S.A.O.R.S. label.)

PUBLIC ENEMY - "Fear of a Black Planet" CD (I haven't listened to PE since Flav's reality TV celebrity. I was worried going in to this that "Flavor of Love" would have tarnished their music for me, but that doesn't seem to have happened. Flavor Flav has always been silly, so it's not such a big deal. I'm not hugely into rap music, mostly because the bulk of it is mush-mouthed posturing, but I like PE. Chuck D's vocals are clear as a bell, powerful, angry and his lyrics seem well thought out and genuine. All of the media clips I've seen of him portray him as being a well spoken, intelligent person with a purpose. That speaks a lot more to me than singing about cars, bitches money and guns. I had this on cassette in middle school, liked it okay, but it was Evolution Control Committee's "Whipped Cream Mixes" 7" that renewed my interest in PE and gave me a new appreciation for Herb Alpert.)

PUBLIC ENEMY - "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" CD (I heard this one first, traded my copy of "Licensed to Ill" for it to a kid in my 7th grade social studies class. I later traded this same tape back to the same kid for Twisted Sister's "You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll" on cassette. I still have that tape. I bought this CD at Sam Goody when they were going out of business, the same trip I bought the first Police album.)

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