China Shop

 

CHINA SHOP

“Nothing”

7.5

From 21 Puffs On The Cassette (AnthologyRecordings.com)

Of all the worthy albums in the first round of Anthology Recordings rarities,

 China Shop’s 21 Puffs On The Cassette is the most compulsively listenable.

 Try to duck in for just a track or two, and you may well find yourself pulled

 through all 77-odd minutes of this time trip. True, there are some familiar, 

1979-stylish post-punk quirks and bends among the initial markers, but 

China Shop’s not too dated. All the way to 1990, they got some sagas,

 or at least some reports, still hot off the wire, of a comely agent of their 

cartoon Muse. Oh, she’s real enough, she only looks like that because 

she’s sketched quickly, as the Shop lads try to keep up: so she’s traced

 in waves of no/yes/maybe/when, pursued through turns in tonality, 

texture,and tunings, as nerdy neediness pushes its way through holes in 

China Shop’s Downtown party mask. CS also require pop oxygen 

and helium to to fuel and express the quest, so there are, at times, 

some daringly mainstream elements, that might have offended some 

of their more insular boho fans (of this appealingly little-known band, 

or group) but certainly there are no crass/desperate grabs for the

 hitmaking sounds of Talking Heads, for example

 (to whom China Shop do sound like they were listening).

In “Walk On Lightning,” art & pop express this release and relief:

 “When you’re near, I can walk on lightning,” and the chorus’s

 chords seem to turn up even as they resolve, and the following 

riff is indeed like little strokes of crayon lightning, zigzagging 

while pointing the way, as “you float through my fears.”

 In “If It’s New,” the singer realizes, once again, that a new

 sensation is always a challenge; it’s what he wanted and

 worked for and achieved and lucked into, so now he’s running

 around on the curvaceous-to-convoluted verge of getting it on. 

Or so he seems to think, but really, he is getting it on, at least in

 terms of musical panache. Though one kiss, one challenge met, 

leads to another, of course, so he’s taking practice swoops, of phased guitar 

and vocals---“psychedelic Bromo-Seltzer,”

 Captain Beefheart called this whooshing,

 spiraling effect, but on 21 Puffs…

 it’s more like jetspeed skywriting, legible enough.

The basis of all this might be past the middle, in “Nothing.”

 Here, a kid declares, quite credibly, that he loves his parents,

 and even that he “enjoys their company.” 

When’s the last time you heard somebody say that? 

He sounds sincere. Everything seems right, but, to him, everything is wrong,

 at the same time. “If I forget everything I know, would I just fall,

 wrinkled to the ground?” He needs his roots, though he can’t help 

looking where they seem to lead, elusively. Because 

“everything I know” includes knowing that his talent and skills 

need a different launching pad, they need difference itself, 

and whatever it takes to make a difference in every day. 

China Shop’s usual sonic turns are simplified here, but 

they provide a sense of underground tests (bass and drums), 

succinctly allowing room for twitchy inner vistas, as the

 phased guitar, for instance, sounds more speculative

 than ever, cruising the dusty fishbowl, like every night 

about this time. No big climatic conflict, because he’s home,

 and could stress here forever, or quite a while 

(but it’s a fairly short track, cut just deep enough

 

 to make another mood ring around the moon).

P.S. China Shop included Naux Maciel (who played with

 Richard Hell and The Voidoids on the existentially excellent Destiny Street).

 Maciel co-wrote “Nothing” with bassist Steve Cohen, and

 sang most lead vocals on this collection. 

He and guitarist Mike Allison both sing “Walk On Lightning,”

 and Allison sings lead on “Newer Homes.” 

Cohen and Allison play bass duets on “Seems Waiting” and “Think Too Much.”

Keeping these three musos and all listeners on their toes were a 

succession of four drummers, including Richard Edson (who plays on “Nothing”),

 Jimmy Allington, Jeff Baker, and John Fell.

 Edson is probably best-known for his role in the movie Stranger Than Paradise, 

where he was the likably antsy Panza figure to John Lurie’s uptight non-Quixote.  

Also, in the printzine Why Music Sucks, during a debate about whethe

r Sonic Youth had ever actually rocked 

(up to that point, with the issue date being ca. 1990), 

WMS editor Frank Kogan claimed that when he saw SY with Edson

 on drums, “they did rock.” Jeff Baker rolls later China Shop songs

 like “Million Names Of God” from an alternate universe, 

in which Bowie and the Stones enter a more fruitful union

 than our own ‘verse’s mere Bowie-Jagger cover

 of “Dancing In The Streets.”

Steve Cohen, source of these credits for 21 Puffs…,  

says that he once recorded an unreleased session with

 David Byrne, Arto Lindsay, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, also that

 .he “recently finished a vocal series from back in the same time

 as China Shop, with a variety of locals etc. 

Am currently working with Brad Frost on some ambient-based sounds.” 

(Mike Allison is likewise into ambience; 

in fact, he’s recorded as Darshun Ambient.) 

Cohen has a show on EastVillageRadio.com, 

every Friday, 4-6 P.M. EST. He thinks Maciel 

is mainly playing blues now.

Busdriver

 

Busdriver: “Less Yes’s, More No’s”

From RoadKillOvercoat (Epitaph)

Hip-Hop//Out Now

6.0

Busdriver has already been tracked through PaperThinWalls a couple of  times

, so you may recall that he’s what is known as a “backpacker,” rapping rants at

 presidents and women instead of police and bitches, but also that denunciation

 of trendy anti-war “hippies,” as he keeps calling them, seems to relate to his 

frustration with himself, as an artist with a politics, who’s still way out on the margins.

 He’s been a member of L.A.s Project Blowed freestyle movement since the early

 90s, and things keep getting worse. Daddy Bush’s Iraq War was kind mellow,

 compared to W.’s,and they didn’t have botox back then either.

 Oh, Busdrivers’s got stuff to say 

about that too: his perspective has all sorts of large and small peaks and valleys

 (like the quality of his writing). It’s all part of the topography of his contorted 

(and contortionist’s) mask., a fistful of lines you can never smooth out, not for 

the lineup at Gitmo, nor even eBay, if he ever gets to be a hot enough prospect for

 either. But who isn’t, really?  Maybe not just anybody can be sold, but anybody

 can be bought, with or without knowing, or anyway caught. He knows that too,

 and it’s

 another reason to be frustrated: being poor and ugly-talking won’t save you, and

 being on the outside is in, trendwise and worldwise. Just ask Osama, and/or

 that illegal alien next door, paying payroll taxes toward benefits he can never 

ever dare to try to collect (gracias).

Throughout much of this album, Budriver seems to measure his sense 

of power by its absence, but it’s a phantom limb, a grid of neon nerves, 

at times almost vanishing amidst the thematically familiar nether regions of El Lay,

 ‘til the Infernal Sunshine Tours bus bounces big time, over potholes, speedbumps, 

and botox, so that sparks fly again:  impulses, images, IDs, ideas, idioms, can get 

get thick as stars and smog, but then he hands you a knife that can cut it, not just 

part it like Charlton Heston and  the Red Sea, but carve it up a bit. 

(This is Art, not Thanksgiving, turkey.)

The blade passed along through our focus track, 

“Less Yes’s, More No’s,” is sort of a basic, b-movie prison shiv, a piece of 

a tin can, maybe, used to dig up Busdriver’s  autopsy report on what

 Merle Haggard has long called Bush Wars: in both struggles,

 “you die in high numbers, says Dr. Busdriver, because of an addiction to oil. 

“The golden teat of an old elite” is cut ‘til we can definitely 

“the synthetic mammary gland,” and inside that is “an Iraqi oil drum,”

 so even  Hollywood Jis not so far from America after all!

But if this kind of thing makes your eyes hurt, 

don’t let it keep you from listening. The words ride the bus, and okay, 

they basically drive the bus, but the bus is the music, including

 Busdriver’s voice. (Although he doesn’t sing on this track,

 he’s almost as good a singer as he is an M.C. , 

which is very good indeed.)

The words may send the music around in circles, but the words 

are rough and twisty, so the circles are like crop circles: 

freaky around the edges, but the edges are pulled  around the whole holes. 

Circles remain circles, vowel sounds, even in disguise. Keyboards,

 keywords, low and urgent, press on, in place.

 “Every emphatic ‘no’ now and emphatic ‘yes’.” 

Might  be typos in the  CD booklet, the writer might mean “an,” 

for instance, but his voice, and the rest of the circling, nocturnal music,

 seem to mean that “and”--- not that “no” means “yes,”

 as the rapist translates,

 but that both are in the same place. Where our Busdriver seems 

to open the doors to the question: is there really such a thing,

 here and now, as a non-binding resolution?

 “Every emphatic ’no’ now and emphatic ’yes’ “!?

Z

Z “MUGEN”

From Mikabe (Transduction)

Subterranean Lyricizm/Out Now

7.5

Yeah, Subterranean Lyricizm, like when it’s a little late to be whistling past the graveyard, 

so you do it anyway, because you name is Z, the last letter, a good place to start,

 or continue, and maybe you can keep yourself awake so you can think about 

the situation. As it turns out, Z’s Mikabe is a good album to hear right after you get

 that call from family that you never, ever want to get, so make a note.

Z, most of whom were in a reputedly post-punk band named

 There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (honest), have now found another

---still punkmarked, now jazz-fueled—way to carve and gouge and  and travel

 through graffiti, dug deep and raised high, but that’s partly because it’s still 

in a mountainside: behind and beyond and between the heat and the light

 and velocity they generate, the darkness is pretty dark, the silence is still 

silent, and patient. Not that things ever get more claustrophobic than seems

 appropriate when they do, and indeed, despite the low tunings, 

Kei Uozu’s guitar and  Ayumu Nemoto’s drums, doing most of the

 gouging, even get expansive at times, like around the next bend they’re

 about to excavate the Stooges’ serenade of a tunnel Rapunzel 

with “Dirt.” (Spoiler: they don’t ever actually get that far.) 

Mainly, they like to leave a little breathing room, a little thinking room,

 to let the consequences of lighting up underground sink in.

Jun Nemoto is the only one at a disadvantage, having switched from

 guitar to sax only a few years ago, and is a less distinctive stylist than t

he others, but he’s way past any uncontrollable urges to reinvent the 

squeaky wheel of retro-avant clichés. He’s still relying on a relatively limited 

vocabulary, but also a blue, tensile tone, into which he usually inserts notes

 chosen carefully, applied boldly. Nemoto is the one who sounds like he’s

 pushing the rest of the band, when necessary, and makes sure that the

 atmospherics go round and round, that the shadows have to scramble 

 to keep up. His occasional vocals, though in Japanese, are instructive enough.

 “Death go next door,” he seems to be saying at one point.

“Mugen,” which apparently means “infinity,”

 is also the name of a company that tunes Honda engines, manufactures auto parts,

 and designs and builds racing cars; they’re very involved in all classes of racing in Japan

. And Mugen is the name of a swashbuckling manga character, and another one in anime

, amd M.U.G.E.N. is the name of a game program in which you can generate your own characters 

(along with other game components). Then there’s the Mugen Mutant Mice, 

who run and/or run through a genomic project, dedicated to solving problems of

 (human?) immunology. Most of all, “Mugen” is the name of our Z featured track.

First, there’s a vibration so soft and deep that it must be from (and in)

  something that’s utterly still. And yet drummer Ayumu doesn’t s

eem impressed. He’s soon bouncing a beat right on top of the soft-deep. 

It must be a trick of the tape, the way the beat seems to bounce right back

 into his hand, which closes so tightly, and then eventually he stumbles, 

or does he? If so, the tiny crack in his timing becomes part of the way

 he shifts and regains and keeps his balance, as the guitar jumps all over him,

 and likewise the sax, itchy even as it reaches toward stoicism, playing 

call and response, talking to itself, responding to the others, as they all continue,

 but not too long. Or short.

 

TOLCHA FEATURING MAXX AND NOELLE POELLER

 

TOLCHA FEATURING MAXX AND NOELLE POELLER

“Black Record”

Dub Rap//Our Now

from Gestalt (Meta Polyp)

6.5

“A ghetto is more than piss-filled staircases, stick-up kids and cheap liquor.

It’s more than the teenage pregnancies and broken homes.

IIt’s more than the everyday police brutality,

Or corporations exploiting poverty psychology.

It’s more than tryin’ to buy hope with church fees.

It’s more than bein’ broke in a world that’s overpriced,

And bein’ told that everyone deserves their slice.

It’s more than a climate of fear and lack of trust,

There’s beautiful people here.”

Does the last line seem too quick a script-flip, a tacked-on happy ending?

 It probably won’t, if you listen to “The World Is A Ghetto,” 

as written and performed by American expat rapper RQM, 

on his northeast (ex-East) Berlin neighbors Tolcha’s first full-length release, Gestalt.

 That relentless, uphill “It’s more than…” is the key that cuts and carves and 

ignites and drives Gestalt, 

 which means “Shape,” after all. Here it’s always a verb, present tense,

 as much as a noun, a process, and—!

(But before reflexing too far into stereotypically “German” lectures, 

the American reviewer must flash back to the fact that Gestalt Psychology 

earned its caps by becoming a groovy movement, a school’s-out old-school

 dedication, to tracing and massaging the knotty connections of mind and body 

to  each other, and to other minds, other bodies.)

Just as dedicated to “sincerity and a good time,” as Janis Joplin 

replied when a reporter asked her what the youth of today are looking for,

 is Tolcha, made up of DJ Shira Khan and a steering committee of studiologists

/musicians.

 They are: Le Lars, “computer nerd” and drummer, Smiler, who plays double bass 

and “E bass,” and Rasda, responsible for percussion, live-dubbing,” and melodica. 

This last he sometimes uses for the Far East Sound associated with dub pioneer 

Augustus Pablo, but  he doesn’t push the historicism or the sound too far; 

melodicas are pretty limited

Rasda, who;s worked on projects with several of Tolcha’s other Gestalt guests, 

exemplifies this album’s dub hub: what reviewers like to call the “shapeshifting”

 implications and explications of remix as the mix, when it’s done righ

t (enough to suit us reviewers): the indomitable slipperiness of the truth!  

And dub loops around the the

 many-skilled skulls of the men and women on Gestalt, eventually taking

 listeners more than one Tolcha-toke over the line, and past usual zones,

 of comfort, for instance.

Which is not to say that the ambition of “It’s more than…” ever gets too greedy.

 On Gestalt, Tolcha opens an inner space that’s effectively, though not too literally,

 like Duke Ellington’s “Harlem Airshaft,” with diverse voices, themes, dreams, 

and other sounds floating up to converge and resonate, in the shape of things as 

they are and things to come (in the next beat, and however you might measure). 

True, it’s often a gray-black space, a bone-tone poem, a stained container of 

bon temps and mall palls, but it’s roomy, and not too doomy. Not too much echo, y

et we do get homely energy, like big ol’ floppy boot drums kicking the dirty boom 

of dumpster bass. The boom can swing like a mic, though, and the drums aren’t too floppy

 to flip paradiddles like bicycle pedals in the sky, when appropriate. Rusty appliances 

can quack gastric and more drastic, like something you’d have to put up with in real life.

 But never too long.

Thus, nothing in Gestaltspace upstages the rappers, nor vice-versa. 

There’s no clutter of words or other sounds. Voices include those of  RQM,

 his friends and colleagues like Ride Shafique of Pressure Drop, Ras T-Weed 

of of Rockers Hi-Fi and Overload Soundsystem, Sasha Perera of Jahcoozi, 

along with Maxx (AKA Madd), of Philly’s own Goats. Also the Al-Haca crew, 

who are practically a band-within-a-band, in Tolcha’s generous (and astute) 

function at the junction. (Al-Haca’s waiting at the station, with RQM, 

bout 20 minutes and 30 seconds past the “end” of Ras T-Weed’s “Benediction,”

 and now you know. But you don’t know what they’ll do when youtube there.)

“Squeeze your third,” suggests RQM in”Focus,” to see the world a bit better.

 But the pressure of his pleasure principle of his “third optical” floetic mode 

gets crunched into the painfully clear visions of “Crushed Ice.”  

The bad vibes that have so carefully timed and otherwise distanced, nibbling 

around the edges of Gestalt’s shapes, even in the basically hopeful “World Is A Ghetto,”

 now take over.

Especially when Sasha Perera raps and sings her verse. As the voice of Jahcoozi, 

on 2005’s Pure Bred Mongrel, Sri Lanka-to-London-to-Berlin Pereras

 (“The M.I.A. of Germany, “ Mojo Magazine proclaims) was satirical about

 race, sex, and money, presenting “Black Barbie,” “Ally McBills,” and 

“Asian Bride Magazine.” 

But on “Crushed Ice,” the serious core of her satire cracks the track open. 

“There’s a chill in the air,” she begins, and the chill factor, 

the eerie entertainment value, in RQM’s and Tolcha’s balance 

of light and dark, begins to develop hairline fractures.

 Ah, right-thinking listeners and performers, what if that 

good rapper over there, the one with the major label deal, idolizes Jay-Z, 

and bites lines and themes from the movie Scarface, while you’re so cool 

your whole atmosphere is inspired by Blade Runner? (Or Augustus Pablo, 

or Bob Marley, or Bob Dylan?) What if you’re both ultimately suckers for 

“corporations exploiting poverty psychology,” 

as others were diagnosed in “The World is A Ghetto”?

And what if, in or out of the ghetto, all coping mechanisms, 

ll safe distancing of  disorienting negativity, turn out to be a kind of

 dislocation, at least when you bump into your set limits, and are no longer so

 complacently miserable, or even so comfortably numb? (And yet your music 

is so much hipper than Pink Floyd’s.) When somebody wakes you up to

 blame the messenger, whap the rapper, and dammmn, did you know it all along?

But Blue Maxx to the rescue once again, with comic relief,and then something else

. When he was still Madd, he quit the Goats, reportedly disgusted with their partying,

 and also also denounced their pre-trend political-satirical rap-punk-metal approach, 

just as that became the next big nexus, Furthermore, his next rap band, Incognegro, 

also eschewed Jay-Z’s corporate rap endorsement of “money, power, and respect to 

black people,” as Madd-to-Maxx put it in Philadelphia’s City Paper.

Now he’s living in Berlin, and first shows up on Gestalt with “Tomchak,”

 which at first seems like a low-key,‘wry, everyguy balance to RQM’s intensity.

 All about how he’s never gonna drink again, until he does, and on a work night,

 and then references to various party misadventures are eventually replaced by, 

“My job blows, your job blows, everybody’s cool cause everybody knows.” 

Actually, it also sounds like he might be saying “cold,” “coal,” or “code,” and 

the more he repeats this refrain, the more all of those words seem appropriate:

 he and we (whoever) may be tools and fools, but somehow, the whole track is so 

simple and subtle, that its political point doesn’t seem as cold and scary as “Black Ice.”

 (Where some might be distracted by RQM whispering, 

“Take a look in my eyes: crushed ice,” like Tricky might. Maxx doesn’t do that stuff.)

“Crushed Ice” is followed by another Maxxterpiece, “Black Record.” 

Starts a s low-key as “Tomchak,” but he sounds a little older and wiser,

 or maybe just resigned to the reasonably hopeful (?) slog of living. 

“You can’t find it man, but I know you been searchin’. 

Steady on the grind, but I know you been workin’. 

He even advises himself and/or his buddy to 

“Keep it inside, the sunshine the center.” Keepin’ it inside is the concern here, 

no inspirational flights on this track. 

Then he suddenly sees the electric light, is shocked to find the same old party’s going on! 

“The masses sit back like nothin’s goin’ on, look through rose-colored glasses, every other

 song ‘bout Cristal and asses!” So now he’s smashing false gods, or at least boasting against

 the boasters, “My style’s like acid, almost subliminal, take a moment to grasp it.” 

Yeah, and then he gets even more subtle, from boasting to rapid fire toasting

 (at least making actual “banana fana” type rhymes, not unlike the ancient 

Top Forty novelty hit, “The Name Game.”) 

But theme to the point of being a sucker for the material: 

“Dingin’ for the dolla, ya livin’ in squalla, falla mah meanin’, 

you gotta live in your means, you gotta lotta.

 YOU GOT GUCCI YOU GOT PRADA!””

Devastating, but then just in case we don’t get it,

 he dumps even more outrage on a hapless hootchie in “Colorada.”

 (That’s another rhyme in “Black Record,” not another song.) 

She’s making nice to “your own black landlord,” 

 paying her rent the hard way. Seems like Maxx is taking it even harder,

 and going way over the top. 

But at this point, pop house singer Noelle Poeller suddenly chirps up.

 Her entrance is as startling as Sasha Perera’s in “Crushed Ice.” 

Poeller’s  phrasing rocks back and forth, its rhythm like that of a 

damaged rocking horse, emphasizing and pausing on the last word 

of each line, 

as if stuck for a second, then rocking back, for the frail, unstoppable delivery

 of the next line, “Gimme love, Gimme drugs, gimme slugs,”

 repeated many times.

Or is it “sugs,”as in “sucks”? 

 Beyond the possible alternates in“Tomchak,”

 and even more than as a stand-in for “sucks,”

 “sugs” gradually  takes on a meaning and identity in distortion itself.

 So does Poeller’s beat-down bimbo, done by the forces of 

society, and self, and by Maxx’s heavy hand.

 But she makes her presence signify, and soon she and he 

are chanting softly together, “Gimme Gimme Gimme.”