LP Edition of 250 Co-Released with Crash Symbols. OUT OF PRINT First LP by this rather berserk Portland Oregon duo, made up of vocalist/electronics-scrambler Noa Ver and drummer/electronics-scamperer Zach D’Agostino. Our experience with Portland music had led us to believe it often has a mellow and/or gentle edge, but Sea Moss offer none of that. Their raucous, face-to-face approach to duo dynamism is as weirdly aggressive as anything that’s ever come out the dag end of Brooklyn or Providence, and that’s saying something. Using homemade electronic devices that generate vast heaps of splutter and careenage, employing a percussive technique that would make Fred Flintstone proud, and singing into a microphone that makes everything sound like someone howling curses through an… Read more »
Search Results for: Guerilla Toss
II
LP Edition of 150. Numbered. Second outing for Shawnie (Bugs & Rats) and Arian (Guerilla Toss) under the guise of Ketamine the Benevolent. As with their preceding cassette, the moves on this record recall the outer fringes of the Euro underground dance scene of the 1980s. Think of Germany’s Tommi Stumpff or Sweden’s Cat Rapes Dog and you’re in the right bathysphere. Some of the tunes are skinned and peeled as naked as early Suicide, others bring to mind the smaller destructo units on the KK Records/Play It Again Sam/WaxTrax axis. But the basics remain the same. Guitar + drumbox + vocals = aggro galore. It’s the just kind of thing Tesco Vee would have loved to grind his hips… Read more »
Of Thousands
CS17 Edition of 150 Of Thousand’s bandcamp Debut release by this very hep Boston duo made up of Arian Shafiee (Guerilla Toss) and Mia Friedman (Hollow Deck). Not particularly reminiscent of any of their ur-groups, the music from Of Thousands blends keys, strings, voices, electronics and loops into avant garde chamber sput with surly attitudinal content. One is reminded of the opening line os X Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!,” at least in terms of conceptual approach. Because while the audience is anticipating a tongue load of sugar, what’s delivered is a load more resembling porcupine quills. The most facile comparisons are to small bits found on the albums of European art rock legends like Slapp Happy and Vibraslaps, but… Read more »
Live in Nashville
LP. Edition of 800 FACTMAG IMPOSEMAGAZINE Guerilla Toss Live in Nashville reminds me of the Frank Zappa You Can’t Do That Onstage Anymore series where the arrangements and delivery on the studio versions were so near impossible that they could not possibly be recreated live. Zappa and Co. gladly proved all naysayers wrong. Remember that time when Bill Graham bet the Grateful Dead they couldn’t pull off the Blues For Allah album live? Sure you do. The Dead went into the Great American Music Hall and kicked Graham’s ass. This is what G-Toss achieves here. What a band. I mean damn, what a band. Like one of the first great bands of the new century great. Who would you compare… Read more »
Jeffrey Johnson
LP REPRESS. Edition of 500 in five different colors: Transparent Purple, Transparent Red, Clear, Clear Beer, Transparent Blue Debut LP session by a young Boston-based quintet who hit with all the Dionysian power of a young Harry Pussy, squared and electronified. Kassie Carlson’s vocals have all the upper register urgency once manifested by the great Adris Hoyos, and her bandmates manage to create large stugs of post-punk-angularity, overlaid with truly dithersome electronics. The result is one of the first transcendent post-no-wave records of our era. Live, Guerilla Toss create an amazing and beautiful disruption of all known truth-fields. They function at a level of pure discordian creation so pure it is guaranteed to melt all but the stoniest witnesses to its… Read more »
Hobson’s Choice
LP Edition of 400. Co-Release with WeirdEar The debut LP by this Western Mass duo is a masterpiece of fractured air. The two performers are Andy Allen (from the original line-up of Guerilla Toss, among many other places) and Mia Friedman (whose collaborations apart from this include Lichen and appearances with Lauri McNamara’s Carbuncles). Previously issued as a cassette, Hobson’s Choice, is a blend of traditional and experimental approaches that alternately puts us in mind of several units inhabiting the landscape of Strange Maine over the last decade, and the animated ’30s cartoons of Max Fleischer. And Hollow Deck have a unique way of quivering between their two main style poles guaranteed to put hair on anyone’s chest. From its… Read more »
Muriel : Utter Perfection
CS-24 Edition of 150 Out of Print! Lily and Kassie both have their own bands (Palberta and Guerilla Toss, respectively), but they also share an unhealthy fascination for the berserker wing of the electo-pop underground. Kassie has previously explored this side of her personality on the Jane La Ondo/Size Queen “split” (FTR180), but here she uses her own name proudly. And why not? Lily shows that she’s as much of a weirdo with her pulsing, bubbling mix of vocals and stubby pulse-rondelays. At times it sounds as though she’s making music for the devil’s own roller rink. And we can only say, “Olé!” Kassie’s side is more summery, like a beach party for the staff of K Records with music emerging… Read more »
Kicked Back into the Crypt
Guerrilla Toss / Sediment Club “Kicked Back Into The Crypt” LP Edition of 600 Co-Released with Sophomore Lounge Out Of Print Although the cover makes this look like there’s a goddamn Voi Vod reunion afoot, the sounds are a mighty pleasure to behear. This release pairs Boston’s amazing quintet, Guerilla Toss, in their most explosively whacked set yet, and NYC’s Sediment Club, a trio with literal blood roots in the late ’70s Lower East Side grunt scene. The Guerilla Toss side is a bit less high-pitched than previous efforts, and manages to create a bizarrely shifting clot of sideways-moving aural-mung that is obliteratively perfect. They craft and destroy riffs, rhythms and melodies faster than most bands can turn on their… Read more »
The Thirteen Kisses EP
Tredici Bacci “The Thirteen Kisses EP” EP (180 Gram Black Vinyl) with Insert / Download Code Edition of 300 Co-Released with 100% Breakfast Photo Cover by Zach Lanoue Painting Cover by Golden Sweet OUT OF PRINT! First vinylization of the great debut by this large Boston ensemble, helmed by Simon Hanes (ex-Guerilla Toss) and dedicated to reinventing the sounds that drove Italian cinema throughout the ’60s and ’70s. Their touch is goddamn perfect, including technical tropes you’ll recognize as updates of everyone from Nino Rota to Ennio Morricone and way way beyond. Largely instrumental the sound blends mysterious lone trumpets, plonking percussion twangers, syrupy organ bleeds, swathes of strings (real or imagined) and clomping rhythms in a way that’ll make you sit… Read more »
Smack The Brick
Guerilla Toss “Smack The Brick” 12″ (45rpm) with download code Edition of 400 Slight line-up change in GT brings new faces to keyboards and bass, resulting in a rather plumper (and, dare I say, more soulful) bottom, without removing any of the pony-rending upper register dynamism we have all grown to love. This new width also adds a certain slinkiness to a few of the evil cheerleader routines that are part of Kassie Carlson’s magic kit. The band spins out streams of thick repeato-riffery, while Kassie’s vocals exhort everyone to explode. Word on the street is that GT’s new label has big things in store for them. So Smack the Brick is either gonna be veiwed as the end of… Read more »