Deep Dark Weird.
Two new pieces from Sacred Bones yesterday. Timmy Vulgar brings us another full length of confrontational psych-squall with his Timmy’s Organism project, while Pop. 1280 pummels out an EP’s worth of dark cyberpunk. Intrigued? You should be. This music is straight from the undiscovered future’s past. Nostalgic darkness and danger from a time that hasn’t quite come to pass.
Pop. 1280 – The Grid 12″ :: Dark, bleak future punk with an awareness of humor. Something evil hangs in the suppressed memories of these bizarro, Jim Thompson pulp fiction inspired, noise-punks. The group has created a highly functional (and great) band built around pop culture’s interest and obsession with the noir. Picture Blade Runner. Think up the most appropriate “retro” band that would be playing at any given low-lit, dingy, drug-dimmed, beer-soaked dive bar anywhere across the city. This band exists in an over-packed, wasteland underground within yet another post-industrial age where they’ve latched unto a style of music inspired by the darkness and chaos from two decades before…as any smart band from any decade will do. They are 2100′s first band inspired by this legendary, ancient idea of “no hope.” Yup, original punk reference there ya’ll. Wait though. Let your mind melt down a little bit. This band exists right now – as in the real today. Not only are we witness to a band that has fabricated their own future, but they fabricated a past from which to be inspired within this future. Brilliance? Or shit…did I just miss the whole point. You think about it.
Pop. 1280 – Step into the Grid
Pop. 1280 – Anonymous Blonde
Timmy’s Organism – Rise of the Green Gorilla LP :: Thank goodness for Tim Vulgar’s persistence. The weirdest of the weird frantically clutch at their record room armchairs when word goes out that Vulgar might have something in the can, set for release. Insanity-stained, schizophrenic garage of this level is conceived in one of two places, Detroit or Cleveland, and lucky for us, this Organism is Detroit-born. This level of fuckedupness can only point towards sheer genius addled with copious amounts of misplaced nervous energy. The guitars burn and fizzle as if they’ve been recorded on a daisy-chained army of dying amps, but the deeply mastered sense of noisy psychedelia is mind-numbing. Outsider noises squelch in washes of reverb and delay, while Vulgar chatters on like a party-goer lost at dawn.
The Organism’s music is drenched in proto-punk garage weirdness with a direct lineage traceable back to Rocket from the Tombs, Pere Ubu, the Mirrors, Electric Eels, etc. The brashness and high volume level is a direct descendant of obvious Detroit kingpins, the Stooges and MC5. Over the last decade or so, Tim Vulgar’s work has appeared on In the Red, Goner and Hook or Crook in various incarnations (Clone Defects, Human Eye) and now comes to rest with the dark masters of Sacred Bones housed in a beautifully screen-printed package.
Timmy’s Organism – Pretty Stare
Timmy’s Organism – Oafeus Clods
