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dustedmagazine · 1 month

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Love Child — Never Meant To Be (1988-1993) (12XU)

Love Child brings the detuned roar of Dinosaur, the nervy agitation of the Feelies, the arch literacy of Pavement, the barbed sugar of the Throwing Muses, shifting sound and style from song to song. This compilation spans the brief career of the New York City noise-punk-lofi outfit, with cuts from a debut 7”, both early 1990s full-lengths and unreleased and radio tracks. It’s an absolute riot from start to finish, even if it’s hard to get a grip on what Love Child was at its core.

The band came together in the late 1980s, when Will Baum, Rebecca Odes and Alan Licht were still students at Vassar. Licht, of course, later made a name as a critic and noise-minimalist. His work with Love Child overlapped with Blue Humans and slightly preceded turns with Run On and the Pacific Ocean. His collaborations with Jandek and Loren Connors took place later, in the second half of the 1990s.

The earliest cuts here come from a 1990 single, the brash, ragged-bassed “Sofa” (memorialized here in Love Child’s only video) and the vaguely “Summertime Blues”-ish “Crocus” (with its indelible line, “My mom threw me out until I get some pants that fit/She just don’t approve of my strange kind of wit.” ) Both balance garage-rock minimalism with a bursts of noise. “Sofa” intersperses catchy, kicky girl-boy choruses with blasts of unfettered guitar squall.

The first full-length, Okay, came on Homestead in 1991. Its tracks take up a large portion of this compilation, which is fine because they bang pretty hard, especially the multi-voiced “Diane” and “Fortune Cookie” which blends the pure blasting amp noise of J. Mascis , the yelping angst of Television and the clanking post-punk bass sounds of, say, Gods Gift. But other cuts run towards jangle pop, notably “He’s So Sensitive” a lofi girl group garage rocker featuring Odes on lead vocal. The other album, Witchcraft, followed a year later, also on Homestead. It’s a bit smoother, a bit more melodic, a bit more reliant on Odes’ buzzy, dreamy vocals. “AAA/XXX” is almost dream pop, though sharp guitar slashes prop up the verse, while “Something Cruel” jangles lyrically for a seconds before cranking up to pogo speed.

Additional, previously unreleased material bookends the album. “Asking for It,” from a 1992 Peel Session comes first, layering bratty, confrontational punk on wild eruptions of near rockabilly guitar; an oozing, sludgy noise interval bisects the cut. “Greedy,” another song from the same session exults in feedback and loose harmonies, tough and vulnerable at the same time. There are also a couple of cuts from a KSPC show, including the dreaming, droning, guitar-led “All Is Loneliness” with its shades of VU. That track was recorded in 1993, near the end of this evanescent outfit’s run, and it hints at other directions that they might have taken if they had persisted. Still no use mourning what never happened. There’s plenty to celebrate here without it.

Jennifer Kelly

#love child #never meant to be #12xu #jennifer kelly #albumreview #dusted magazine #post-punk #lo-fi #new york city #alan licht #will baum #rebecca odes

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goodbysunball · 4 months

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Best of 2023

Toledo, OH, Dec. 30, 2023

It's going to take years to unpack the last few months of 2023. Whatever mental trauma is inflicted upon those removed from the situation in no way approximates the devastation and inhumanity occurring daily to millions. That the US is funding it all, and institutions and businesses domestically are punishing those who speak out about it, is sickening and terrifying. The latest Lulu's email newsletter wrote more eloquently about it all than I could, and plainly calls for empathy at the end: "Be good in a bad world."

And we do that, pretending things are normal for the sake of others, our kids, our partners. But things are not normal, and that pressure forces other changes, because while we can to some degree control what happens within our lives, there's no fix for seeing (let alone experiencing) dead, maimed children regularly on Instagram, victims of bombings without caution or consequence. A sense of powerlessness pervades. What we can do is keep talking, sharing and banding together. Being good in a bad world.

Some notes:

Lots more instrumental, or nearly instrumental, music than usual this year on my list, which tracks with the current climate. Music without words, or without discernible words, leaves space for thoughts to become untangled, sure; but a lot of what’s highlighted below felt more transcendent than meditative.

I still listen to rap quite a bit, but very few new songs I heard stuck around past a few days. Call it malaise from living in an era where every other song on the radio has a trap beat. Starlito dropped a clunker, which shouldn't have shocked me but did, and it personally felt significant. Maybe it’s indicative of the old guard’s demise, but hopefully it removes a wall and allows me to engage with newer rap music better. That being said: Veeze's Ganger was head and shoulders above everything else; billy woods' short verse on "As the Crow Flies" made me gasp the first time I heard it (and I also loved ELUCID's verse on "Baby Steps"); and I listened to The Jacka's The Jack Artist most of all.

Of all the books I read this year, two books by Fernanda Melchor, Hurricane Season and Paradais, stood out. Melchor’s prose is incredibly powerful, bleakly funny and vicious in equal measure. The sharp, frank assessments by characters in often ludicrous situations feel like a product of the contemporary but imbued with some ancient wisdom. Shout out to Julia S. for the new and notable South American literature tips.

In the midst of holiday/short day doldrums, amidst endless bleak news reports, it was difficult battling back cynicism to listen to anything, especially back to all of these records and tapes listed below. It ended up being oddly therapeutic, highly enjoyable and maybe necessary, the same as when I force myself out to shows when it's easier to stay home. That feeling chips away at the notion of this list-making exercise as futile, for me certainly, but hopefully also for you. Thank you for reading, and I hope you find something you like, too.

And so:

LP

Lewsberg, Out and About (12XU)

Equipment Pointed Ankh, From Inside the House (Bruit Direct Disques)

The Native Cats, The Way On Is the Way Off (Chapter Music)

Water Damage, 2 Songs (12XU)

VoidCeremony, Threads of Unknowing (20 Buck Spin)

Emily Robb, If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection (Petty Bunco)

CIA Debutante, Down, Willow (Siltbreeze)

Olimpia Splendid, 2 (Fonal/Kraak)

Nusidm, The Last Temptation of Thrill (Bruit Direct Disques)

Incipientium, Undergång (Happiest Place)

Witness K, s/t (ever/never)

Leda, Neuter (Discreet Music)

12"/10"/7"/CS

Chrome Cell Torture, Laugh Then Lie 7" (Scarlet)

Joe Colley, Acting As If 10" (Substantia Innominata)

Disintegration, Time Moves For Me 12" (Feel It)

Life Expectancy, Decline CS (Iron Lung)

Gabi Losoncy, Lieutenant single-sided 12" (self-released)

Peg, We Know Who You Are and Everyone Is on the Lookout CS (No Rent)

Romance, Seven Inches of... 7" (self-released)

Sial, Sangkar 7" (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Slow Blink/Stomachache split CS (Hectare)

Howard Stelzer, oh calm down you're fine CS (No Rent)

Troth, Idle Easel 12" (Digital Regress)

Mark Van Fleet, Vordenal CS (Refulgent Sepulchre)

Stress Positions at the Pilot Light, Dec. 9, 2023

Shows

Bill Orcutt & Chris Corsano duo at Jackson Terminal, Knoxville, TN, April 1

Hell & My Wall at DRKMTTR, Nashville, TN, April 7

Cyberplasm, X-Harlow & FKA Ice at the Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN, May 18

Lewsberg at JJ's Bohemia, Chattanooga, TN, September 27

Stress Positions & Utopia at the Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN, December 9

Five songs favorably commented upon by my 3 y/o daughter*

*Something that happens so rarely that I try to take note when it does

Dua Lipa, "Levitating"

Martin Frawley, "Heart In Hand"

Mount Trout, "Hang Around"

Witness K, "In Knots"

The Young Senators, "Ringing Bells (Sweet Music) Part II"

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bandcampsnoop · 3 months

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2/8/24.

I saw that my friend Conrad had bought this summative 2 LP album by New York band Love Child. They were active in the early 90s and released two albums on Gerard Cosloy's Homestead Records (right before he created Matador). Now Cosloy brings us the "Never Meant To Be" on 12XU.

It's hard not to hear early Yo La Tengo, Versus and Pavement. I wish I could have seen "Greedy" live. I have a hunch that my knees would have buckled a few times once the pedals kicked in.

#12XU #Love Child #New York #Gerard Cosloy #Homestead Records #Matador #Yo La Tengo #Versus #Pavement #Conrad

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12xurecs · 2 months

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Love Child - "Asking For It" from 'Never Meant To Be : 1988-1993' out March 8

#love child #12XU #rebecca odes #alan licht #will baum #brendan o'malley #homestead records #trash flow records #Bandcamp

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rastronomicals · 5 months

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3:24 PM EST December 2, 2023:

Manic Hispanic - "12XU" From the album the menudo incident (1995)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

One of the odder Wire covers you'll ever hear, Holmes.

#Manic Hispanic #the menudo incident #12XU

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still-single · 3 months

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Lupo Città s/t LP (12XU)

RECOMMENDED

Here's ten songs from a fairly new, positively charged trio from the Boston metro that got me thinking about the emotional times the directive, the historical times the experiential.

A duo of Jenn Gori and Sarah Black (guitar, bass, drums, vocals) share history performing together in four previous bands in a variety of settings and locales, and met guitar deity Chris Brokaw at a post-lockdown gathering (there's the experiential, and honestly much of what puts such a cracked-mirror disconnect on those years was that not being able to exist in person), starting a tentative collaboration that grew into a whole album. Brokaw has history all his own, bordering on the Biblical in terms of legend and importance; any body of a person's library of recordings that doesn't feature at least some his work extensively in the CO's (Codeine, Come, Consonant), to say nothing of his untouchable solo albums, soundtracks, and perhaps that GG Allin & the AIDS Brigade 7", ain't all that buff at the end of the day. Now the three of them build history out of this experience, linked forever at the psychic fingertips.

So it's hard to figure out where two start and the other stop; best not to think about that at all, because we're watching this history unfold. And one of the things that history/experience is doing best is underlining the needle-to-thread of a song versus the hammer of performing it. The tension within Lupo Città – which is a primary distinctive of what makes this record so memorable – exists in the space between these actions. Every time I jump into this thing and hear the buzzsaw of something like "Shawano Pickup" I'm thinking, here's a band that's jettisoning the moods and going for the shiv. Then I listen to something like the melancholy in "Gallup to El Paso" or "Only in Love" and realize a shiv can be made of many things and can pierce a variety of objects, some better adapted to the materials than others, and that by doing so they have merged the emotional and the directive, via a process of tailoring.

On tailoring: getting something the way you want it because you have the ability to make it so is a feat of human dominion. It's an abstract, but you'll know when it's happening. It's something The Breeders always have been good at, and something Sleater-Kinney used to be good at, and with a debut like this it's one of the primary distinctions between Lupo Città and (generously) 99.7% of the shit you'll encounter passing for rock music lately (not to mention a comparable percentage of people you'll see around said activity, rolling and cuffing their pantlegs instead of permanently editing them to fit). The bespoke approach to genre and artistic control comes off as fresh as it is vital. Everyone needs this; nobody doesn't. (Doug Mosurock)

#lupo citta #boston #12xu #bandcamp #still single #mosurock #review #journalism #shmournalism #album #2024 #Bandcamp

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bruce-adams · 1 year

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Do you really need to show us that?

I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something I just don't like when people post a picture of an LP jacket next to their record player with the record playing. Do I look at it as showing off? Ostentatious? Valorizing vinyl over other formats? Or is it the inundation of pictures on my social media feed of the new Yo La Tengo album? It bothers me.

Anyway, here are some recordings that I've been enjoying lately.

#playlist #orinadal records #12XU #kranky #kmru #claire rousay #sweet cobra #chris brokaw #music writing #hum band #shadowy men on a shadowy planet

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butoncito · 4 months

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Wire

Records I like

#wire #Mannequin #12xu

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mrbopst · 5 months

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#Wire #Pink Flag #12XU #1977 #Harvest Records #Genius

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aktionpak · 11 months

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youtube

Lewsberg - In Your Hands [2021]

I've been falling hard for this album. I love the spoken/half-sung vocals and the repetitiveness that doesn't try to be more than it is. Some days, I'll sit with my guitar and play sort of in the way these people like to play. Enjoying the simple strum or repeating a thing over and over. The song "All Things" is another banger.

#lewsberg #in your hands #12XU #Youtube

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alanlicht · 3 days

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First Love Child show in 30+ years! June 9 at Union Pool

Love Child is playing our first show since 1993, celebrating the recent release of the 2xLP comp Never Meant to Be: 1988-1993 and the forthcoming digital reissues of our albums Okay? and Witchcraft, plus the complete 1992 Peel Session, all via 12XU Records. Sharing the bill is Thalia Zedek's current band, E, and Subskin Cables. It all happens June 9 at Union Pool in Brooklyn--tickets are here.

#lovechild #unionpool #12xu records

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dustedmagazine · 12 days

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Water Damage — In E (12XU)

Anyone who plays guitar or bass is familiar with the key of E. It’s the lowest string in standard tuning, so if you’re planning on jamming, E is a pretty safe bet to get the blood racing and the air waves humming. On their new 80-minute, four-sided album In E, Texas instrumental noise-rock collective Water Damage explore various grinding permutations of the key of E, recorded live to tape. The result is a seething, sense-obliterating squall, to which the listener must willingly submit.

With the Velvet Underground’s seminal White Light / White Heat as an obvious precursor, opener “Reel E” features violin as the main texture of variance, sawing and screaming over the churn of electric guitar, bass and drums, all throbbing in the red. There are several minutes of respite at the start of “Reel EE” as the bass and drums slam out a minimalist groove before a wave of guitar feedback sweeps up the remainder of the track’s frequency range. There’s more breathing room again on “Reel EEE,” with some almost-pretty dulcimer glimmering in the mix at points. And finale “Ladybird” is a cover of a song by Shit & Shine, featuring indecipherable vocals that sound like they’re being emitted by a broken radio.

Though it’s difficult to discern the individual contributions of the 11 listed players — including Thor Harris (Swans) and Jonathan Horne (Jana Horn) — that’s beside the point. What matters here is the collective maelstrom, the saturated tape, the surrender to the void. If you’re in the mood to lose yourself in the sound of a jam-room burning to the ground under the intense pile-driving weight of volume and distortion, look no further.

Tim Clarke

#water damage #in e #12xu #tim clarke #albumreview #dusted magazine #noise rock #instrumental

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goodbysunball · 5 months

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Title lost

A coupla hitters for your end of Novembs—

Body Void, Atrocity Machine (Prosthetic)

I caught Body Void on their massive tour with Primitive Man, Mortiferum, Jarhead Fertilizer and Elizabeth Colour Wheel last year, and they stunned me with their singular-minded approach to make music as heavy and seething as possible with a guitar-bass-drums trio. In the live setting, they reminded me of bands like Fistula (the riffs) and Indian (the vocals), but for me, Body Void's recordings didn't stack up. Now, having augmented their setup with heaps of abrasive electronics to fill every space on Atrocity Machine with glass, rust and asphalt, I can definitely say they've captured the power of their live shows. The first two proper tracks, "Human Greenhouse" and "Flesh Market," are similar in spirit to their old tracks (slow leaden riffs, maybe a fast part, less concerned with structure than texture), albeit trimmed in length and twice as caustic. It's "Cop Show" that really announces the band's arrival, a nauseating see-saw whirr accompanying every downstroke, grinding the listener down for over six minutes until a slightly different version of the riff comes back for the pile-driving finish. The flip features two songs stretching over 10 minutes each, again recalling earlier recordings, but made whole with electronic noise. As exhausting as "Divine Violence" might seem halfway through, it's an agonizingly slow build to a blinding finish, and you'll be inadvertently headbanging throughout. The title track closes the record out in similarly smothering fashion, electronics whipping up sand storms while the band hammers out a riff swinging ominously like a pendulum, everything except the drums eventually ceding to the painful electronics over the final minutes. This is admittedly a tough sell in an oppressively bleak world, in a society intent on destroying itself, but it's a feat to make music this physically and psychologically punishing. As suffocatingly dense as the sound can be, it's no surprise that when Atrocity Machine ends, you're exhausted; but when it's on, and you're immersed in their onslaught, you don't want it to end, either.

Lewsberg, Out and About (12XU)

If there's a sound that will evoke memories of summer/fall 2023 for me, it's gonna be the warm drone introducing "Angle of Reflection," the opening track on Lewsberg's latest record Out and About. Anyone hoping the band would return to the comparatively uptempo self-titled and In This House LPs will be disappointed, as last year's In Your Hands proves itself to be more than a transitional record. At the time, that record seemed intentionally pared down to reflect the group's ranks shrinking from four to three, but the approach appears to have been instructional for the band in some sense. Everything on Out and About feels intentional, very little left to chance, not a hair out of place. Yet even with such a seemingly calculated approach, the band played one of my favorite sets I've seen this year, covering most of Out and About with equal parts precision (Michiel Klein stock-still delivering the searing solo on highlight "An Ear to the Chest") and an infectious enthusiasm. I'm not sure if that enthusiasm bleeds into the record for anyone who hasn't seen Lewsberg live, but I think I've come to prefer this refined version of the band, prone to roomy, sparkling guitar lines, simple floor tom accompaniment, and softly delivered vocals. It is very much a pop record, one that works as social or background music, but there's enough going on under the surface to satisfy a close listen or 20. Shalita Dietrich's rich bass line on "A Different View," the vocal interplay between Dietrich and newest member Marrit Meinema on "Without a Doubt," and Ari van Vliet's violin on "Canines" show a band that is very much buttoned-down, professional and yet still finding new spaces within a well-worn pop framework. Yes, I can do without the precious spoken word of "There's a Poet In the Bushes," but I'm glad they took the swing; this band is nothing if not outwardly bookish. The lyrics across Out and About - funny, pensive, never maudlin or self-pitying - point to a more complicated humanity behind it all, of course, and Meinema's contributions in that department fit right in. It's clear that Lewsberg have transcended the VU influence and have grown into their sound, and they arrive fully-formed on Out and About. One of my top favorites from this year, and easily my most listened to record of this year.

Jef Mertens, No Mathematics (Feeding Tube/Kraak)

New solo album from Jef Mertens, a bastion of the noise/drone scene in Belgium and abroad. Not sure what hipped me to this release - maybe the Kraak newsletter, because who can keep up with Feeding Tube's release schedule - but in any case it's a keeper. Mertens is on guitar and shruti box, both of which give his droning compositions a warm-yet-metallic feel, a sound reminiscent of artists like K-Group. He's accompanied by Nickolas Mohanna on a few tracks, contributing "electronics, rhythmic pads and treated zithers," giving a track like "Metal" an almost rhythmic backbone, pushing Mertens outside of the meditative circles he tends to run on his own. There's more than a hint of Pauline Oliveros' influence evident, on "Hapering" especially, where it's easy to become immersed in the majestic repeating pattern. No Mathematics instills an eerie calm on record, and I imagine Mertens is similarly able to silence small concert venues across Europe easily with his gently welcoming yet powerful pieces, soothing the most frayed of nerves, or at least getting folks out of their heads for a few minutes.

Emily Robb, If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection (Petty Bunco)

A welcome return from Emily Robb, following up How to Moonwalk with a more introspective, yet no less sizzling record. If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection comes with a promise of "high-minded celebration of guitar and sound and tone and string and amp," and that's about the gist of it. No Yngwie Malmsteen-style pyrotechnics here, just a detailed investigation into the instrument, channeling a cozy scratchy knit blanket ("Hermit's Cave"), providing a generous two-track dissection of "Black Angel Death Song"'s violent instrumental ("Dispenser" and "Slowing Singing Bathing Shaving") and sometimes just capturing in high fidelity an interesting noise ad nauseam ("Bells," an admittedly strange favorite). There are, of course, some more straightforward bits like "A Kiss" and "Solo In A" that should make most musicians want Robb in their band, but I find the tracks that mine the exploration of the guitar and exploit the possibilities of the studio to be the most compelling. There is a patient, calm feel to the record, best exemplified by the stunning lonesome electric blues of "There It Goes Again" and "First Grow a Gold Plant," that has been a perfect accompaniment to early mornings. It's rare that I don't flip the record straight over after the smoldering "Rolling Electric Ball" finishes, not wanting to leave the orbit of If I Am Misery, and that's not something I can say about many instrumental records, guitar-based or not. I'd say I can't wait for what's next, but I'm perfectly content when this one's on.

#Body Void #Lewsberg #12XU #Jef Mertens #Kraak #Feeding Tube #Emily Robb #Petty Bunco

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bandcampsnoop · 4 months

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12/23/23.

Gerard Cosloy's 12XU label has never gotten the attention that his earlier labels Homestead Records and Matador Records have received. But the label puts out consistently great music. Lupo Citta "Lupo Cittá" truly sounds like it could have been at home on any of those Cosloy labels.

This is hard edged rock in the vein of The Men, Sonic Youth or Eleventh Dream Day. And it does sound like Chris Brokaw's "Puritan" which is apropos seeing as Brokaw is one of the band's three members. Sarah Black and Jenn Gori are the other members, and it seems as if both have an extensive band history of their own.

Lupo Citta are a Boston, Massachusetts based band.

#Lupo Citta #Boston #Massachusetts #Gerard Cosloy #12XU #Matador Records #Homestead Records #The Men #Sonic Youth #Eleventh Dream Day #Chris Brokaw #Sarah Black #Jenn Gori #Bandcamp

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12xurecs · 6 months

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it's on. Tomorrow, anyway 12XUrecs.bandcamp.com design by Angela Betancourt

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rastronomicals · 14 days

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2:49 AM EDT April 13, 2024:

Spermbirds - "12XU" From the album Joe (1992)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

#Spermbirds #joe #12XU

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