Vital Weekly Review of "MTEL"

CROW FEATHERS - MOVES TO E.LANSING (cassette by Turgid Animal)

Brandon Miller, the man behind Crow Feathers doesn't trust Vital Weekly to own their own cassette player, so he added a CDR of the music that can be found on 'Moves To E. Lansing'. Miller plays guitar, synthesizer and electronics. Turgid Animal is known to release noise music, and there are indeed moments when Miller shows his love of the genre, but not until we are well into the fourth piece 'Kursk Magnetic Anomaly'. The three preceding pieces are filled with soft tinkling guitars and likewise soft keyboard moves on 'Elegia', which ends with some force, before the real thunder starts. The noise piece isn't well spend on me, but the three tracks on the b-side aren't like that at all. Here Miller further explores the use of guitar and electronics in a rather melodious manner, but also in a free spirit. He doesn't let his sound to be restricted inside a composition, but rather sets a more free, spacious tone for them. Quite cosmic in approach, even when 'A Meditation' is hardly meditative, but a more angular take on cosmic music. Quite nice stuff altogether, and certainly should have found its way to a CDR release, me thinks. (FdW)

June Update

As described in May's posting, the cassette on Turgid Animal remains available from myself or George Proctor. The current going rate is $7 worldwide postage-paid from the RW headquarters, or if you are in the UK you can save a few bits by ordering it from George (http://www.turgid-animal.co.uk).

In other news, two new Crow Feathers releases are currently in the works--one of which is a split cassette (C-24 at the moment) with Valerio Cosi. When Dan at Sound Holes (the label handling the release) asked who I would like to share the second side of the tape, I threw out VC's name as an exercise of wishful thinking and as the fates would have it, he agreed to contribute. I haven't heard his track yet, but I'm sure it will totally devastate 99% of the music being released this summer (as always). "Saint-Hilaire Steeple" acts as my submission and audio update. In many ways I feel that this twelve-minute track represents my most fully-realized work to date--combining some of my harshest and softest moments yet to appear on tape. Once the release gets closer to completion, I'll add an edit to MySpace for preview.

"Imaginary Scores," my second full-length release will be handled by NYC label Abandon Ship (already making a big name for themselves with tapes from Non-Horse and Spectre Folk). The four extended tracks on this one will be spread out over two 3" cd-rs--a poor man's way to recreate the physical process of flipping a record. Here my krauty obsession will be most evident, collecting three dense synth constructions from this year, along with an acoustic guitar improvisation from September 2006 that still haunts me. Equally blissed out and baiting--I hope everyone will dig this one.

Also, now available from Nursing Home is the "Every Day Is Halloween" compilation, featuring the Crow Feathers track "A Bee Following Every Ghost" from back in December 2006. Other appearances by Redglaer, Wether, King Wheat, Nursing Home, Oubliette, et al. Check it out--$7 ppd. You can grab it for yourself here: http://www.nursinghomeband.com/Halloween.htm

Oh, and visit the MySpace--I'd love to be your friend!

As always, currently spinning at the R-Dub:

Iggy Pop - "The Idiot" / "Lust for Life" (Virgin, 1977) -- I absolutely cannot get enough of these two records. Very little listening outside of these Berlin behemoths has happened in weeks. The original versions of "China Girl," "Tonight," and "Neighborhood Threat" dominate the Bowie covers (in all fairness to my perennial hero--a bad period...possibly bad drugs as well), plus the masterful proto-post-punk jammers "Dum Dum Boys," "Nightclubbing," "Fall In Love With Me"...yadda yadda yadda...you've all heard these classics, I need to say no more.

That's really it.