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K Records Friends & Neighbors Report

Posted Labels:
Top 4 CDs in the set
A K warehouse-clearing deal put a big stack of CDs in the mailbox for less than the cost of one at retail. The friendly mail order department "miscounted," so I had 14 new discs to spin. First time through, I picked blind. Second time through, I better knew what was coming, but still had things to learn and opinions to form. As a result, I've made a keep-or-pass list that looks like this (rated against each other, not all of musicdom):

Sylvain Sylvain & The Criminal$: Bowery Butterflies (2000) Munster vogue
***** Not-too-raucous rock'n'roll straddling the boppin' '50s and punk '80s.

Various Artists: Shipwreck Day (2002) Knw*Yr*Own web
***** That original What-the-Heck-Fest musta been some kind of fun.

the Weeds: The Faraway Flying of Broken Beating (2004) independent? web (arc divers)
**** Emily Ana Zeitlyn leads. Some genre hopping. Most works.

Landing: Oceanless (2001) Strange Attractors Audio House web
**** Dark sonic ecosystem with layers of rhythmic space noise.

The Gift Machine: …don't turn me off (2002) Knw*Yr*Own web
*** Hooky rockin-pop with an uplift and a wink.

Supersnazz: The Devil Youth Blues (1996) Time Bomb info
*** Pop-punk out of Osaka. Starts strong but fades.

Sarah Dougher: Day One (1999) K web
*** Easy on the ear. Bella Abzug and a couple more rise above the neutral.

le ton mité: Tickets to Real Imaginary Places (2006) Zicmuse, Richmond County Archives, K
*** Striving, occasionally achieving. Voice straining, instruments stabler.

Bryce Panic presenta… Better Bizness Bureau (2006?) self
** Infrequent clicks in this vocab-rich hip-hop shtick.

Josh Bucci: Pan Da Mix Tape II (2005?) self-produced web
** Oddball gets B for effort, but results lag in 1991-2005 retrospective.

Wolf Colonel: The Castle (2000) K
** Messing around after a bad breakup. Keep practicing.

Various Artists: Balance (1999) Readyrock
** Short-of-middling rap, often quite.

Various Artists: Wade-free Wherever, A Schtufff... Compilation (1995)
** Speedpunkmetal of insufficient interest.

Miranda July: 10 Million Hours a Mile (1997) Kill Rock Stars
* Poemish egocentric artpunk fails.

All these someones committed something to semipermanence, suspecting sometime somewhere someone else would take it in and care. The hits reveal where I do. For those most potent, I wish I'd been there then.

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