Not in my house you don't! Holy SHIT these bastards must be bored! I mean it. These songs are long long jams played on illogical combinations of instruments. It's annoying and funny at the same time (Bobcat Goldthwait anyone?). Freshmanic humor abounds. Though whoever is playing the "popping bunny" and the "mock drumset" should take more solos. - Ian C. Stewart

Day 2 Alliance 2073 SW Park Avenue #118 Portland OR 97201 USA

Distorted acoustic folk with....sound FX? Cheesy keyboard rhythm presets and occasional noise. Equally fascinating and annoying. The singing isn't so great but all of the experimentation is good. It's a good thing. I don't mean it's good to listen to. - Ian C. Stewart

Folk Assassin Tapes Sami Pennanen, Portuaninkatu, 10B39 00530 Helsinki 53 Suomi Finland

Or maybe it's "untuned" by Eyefilthyate??? Motherfuckers need to label shit better. Not that it matters in this case. A guitar and possibly a bass plugged into amps and NOT played along with ambient room noise (a TV mostly) are what these schlubs are calling their "ART." That's the best you can do? Get the fuck out of my face. I'm dubbing THE SPICE GIRLS over this. Twice. Fuckers. - Ian C. Stewart

619 N. Magnolia, Lansing MI 48912 USA

AAARRRGHHH. It is quite aggravating when a lead singer has a flat voice when the song requires some inflection. The listener's ears are waiting, hoping, praying that the singer doesn't suck. Then the listener's worst fears are confirmed... This guy needs to get someone else to sing while he plays guitar. Please, Mike, don't make me hate your band---the songs have a great Ziggy Stardust quality-- don't ruin it by singing! Find someone else to do it and you can concentrate on writing and playing! Then this stuff will be killer. - Howard Cowell

Throwrug Records P.O. Box 579100 Chicago IL 60657-9100 USA

Two songs, nicely recorded on a 4-track. Pure black metal! Band members Tribulator and Ashlar look to King Diamond for makeup inspiration and recruit one of the Martians from Mars Attacks! to sing for them. Ashlar (who, by the way, is second born of the second brood) performs graven tones, nocturnal atmospheres, preternatural percussion and arch fiendish shrieks while Tribulator (third born of the first brood) performs abysmal tones and grieving wails of eternal torment. Roll your eyes as you may but anyone who can be so brazenly, fantastically korny and then rock as hard as these guys do gets my respect. Maybe, in all seriousness, they really do believe that they're demons sent to Earth to bring about Armageddon, or maybe they're really true believers in theatrics and artifice. Either way, sign me up for the Vitam Eternam fan club. This even get's my girlfriend's seal of approval. Burn THAT upside down cross in yer forehead!!! - C. Reider

Ashlar 811 Wildwood Drive, Ottumwa IA 52501 USA

Here's the 59th new Warser Gate this week! And guess what! It sounds like fucking Warser Gate! Amazing, isn't it! These dudes are fucking prolific for a non-improvisational rock band. "Misery Slope" is real nice. The guitars twang like mad---Keef & company got nothing on Kev Flynn etc. This sounds like a live recording as well. I want some Warser Gate gigs of my own. Now. They should play here. - Ian C. Stewart

Kylie 11 Shelley Road, Bath BA2 4RJ UK

Opens with disturbing sampled conversations interspersed with a smarmy gospel singer by Chortle. Next is a jangly guitar piece by Cane entitled "Restarted". Julianna Peloso presents a slice of life through a pitch-shifter and tinny 1960's pseudo-jazz in "Plants In Bloom". Hilarious! Dragon Aerogatrod + Agent's "Postcards Or Lighthouses": a bit of Laurie Anderson but rougher around the edges. The Arielle Project does "Bothways" sung by a little girl (?) about getting hit by a car because she didn't look both ways. Teddyfire sings "Homework #": Santa Claus is a KGB agent. Styrofoam earmuffs. Down River has a nice voice, reminds me of Jane Siberry a bit here on "The Roof Song". Little Debbie does "Feel Like Makin' Luv" (yes, that song) presented in a country-folk way but I sense a tongue place in cheek here; "Sometimes" is another country-folk song with badly-tuned banjo and guitar with bass and strange feedback accompaniment which I though very effective for creating a chilling atmosphere. Goddess Irena I sings "Oh Christmas Tree" and "Message Of The Gods Telepathic Receivdth", a too-long example of neo-Gnostic gobbledy-gook, all done straight. I can't tell if this is a joke or not, and perhaps that's the point. Nina K's "Spook Lucas" is an electric-folk piece replete with recorders (which I love), nicely sung and arranged. Lisa gives us "Intentional Defecation V's Incontinence", an experimental piece of low rumbling and screacking tones made by what sounds like a Magnus Chord Organ having a very bad day. Anne Heller's "Indian Summer" is a ditty for tin whistle and guitar with some kind of keyboard accompanying. Pleasant in its way, not trying to be more than it is. Quimling sings about "My Uterine Wall", a song about that time of the months, delivered with all the PMS-inspired passion possible. UGH! but I guess there has to be at least one song about this on every compilation of women's music. I just wish I didn't have to hear about it. It's not my problem, blame Eve. After some sonic interludes by Chortle we have an unaccompanied tune by Kalah Allen called "Sarah The Whale", which sounds like a WWII song sung through a megaphone or something. Neener sings about "Mentos" with guitar accompaniment. Jarboe of SWANS sings a dark a capella song entitled "Love Poem" with slight tape manipulation. Was that intentional or was the master screwed up? Chortle closes the tape with the same sonic experimentation that opened it. - John Gore

Flannel Banjo Tapes 1439 Glencoe, Mount Pleasant SC 29464 USA

Here's the deal. Back in 1995, K.D. Schmitz, creator of the TEN THOUSAND THINGS fanzine, offered to write music to other people's lyrics. Over 2 dozen brave souls took up the challenge. K.D. took their words and molded them into the songs that comprised a tape entitled WORDS IN MY MOUTH. However, having felt that he had not done justice to these songs, he asked other people to record their own versions of these songs. The compilation of these new versions is entitled WORDS IN OUR MOUTHS. 20 tracks, 14 different songs. Huh? Many of the songs are featured more than once, recorded by different artists. Of the three different versions of "A Snake And Your Car", Michael J. Bowman's version is easily the best, having a groovy early-70's feel and featuring his own off-beat vocal style. K.D. himself features, in various guises, on 9 different tracks (hyperactive or what?), with various members of the Clan Mc.Schmitz. His best contribution is "The Evil One Hates", a vaguely rockabilly track which proves the old saw that the Devil may well have all the best tunes. Good fun, but is my soul in peril for listening to it? Special mention must be made of two tracks: "You Think You Don't Know" by Michael Dittman gets all poetic over a faint metal background. Interesting idea. Elvis's appearance on the track was most welcome. Junkyard Genius' "Other Downtown Dreamer" includes the most creative use of a vacuum cleaner this side of a DIY blow job. And is that someone playing tennis? We should be told... The best track on the tape is Deleted's version of "Andree". Sounds like Sparks (where have you heard that from me before?), and one of the few tracks on the tape where the musical arrangement complements the lyrics. Dig those crazy seagulls. A track that *could* work outside the fetid, claustrophobic atmosphere of hometaping. A mixed bag, therefore. Something for most everybody. - Daniel Prendiville

KD Schmitz P.O. Box 1806, Poughkeepsie NY 12601 USA

Emil Hagstrom is an increasingly important figure on the international underground music scene, both for his considerable work in distributing hard noise and free-improv recordings by dozens of deviant soundartists through his label, and for his own brain-inflaming recordings. This tape was recorded during live shows performed by Wrong in summer 1996 in Minneapolis, Chicago and New York City. The band is essentially a three-piece (though a few tracks feature them as a guitar duo), featuring Emil on guitar and occasional vocals, his pal John on second guitar, and an uncredited sax player. These fellows love their feedback dearly, as they build wave upon wave of fuzz-drenched squeals, intertwining around and slashing through the saxophonist's madcap battle cries. All is not given over to pure roughhousing, however, for the boys know how to bathe their audiences in gritty ambient drons, with sporadic interjections of tape manipulations and hilarious found vocals from the radio. Further proof, as though any more were needed, that the electric guitar can be one of the most versatile instruments. This is a wonderful tape. - Tom Sutter

SunShip Records P.O. Box 580218 Minneapolis MN 55458 USA

The self-styled "Quasimoto Of American Literature" is out to ring your bells. This cassette is a companion to a book with 28 of Bob Zark's poems and some intense illustrations, notably Chris Crielaard's cover pix of a skeleton beating on a drum and a techno-destructo Kali avatar. Not to mention Cary Gevanter's explicit but anatomically awkward sex act on the cassette cover. Zark voxed and sampled eight of these numbers for home performance. His bark-and-drone delivery over hyperspeed millennial noise, fading out and back in virtually unchanged for each track, takes his stuff which reads kinda flat off the page and brings it to 3D artsy shithead life. That's the title of one of his poems, "Artsy Shithead", not a value judgment. He didn't do a version of "Artsy Shithead" on the tape but he does do "Incredible Stinkin' Art". Awful swill swishin' round and round in its white porcelain frame, ingenious found art, stinkin' so bad you're compelled to stand there and watch it, described in a mock comic drunk slurring voice of artsy shitheadism. The tracks are like glimpses of strobe-lit subway platforms speeding by the window of a Number 5 express train in a dark tunnel. "Dirtwater Backstreet Brooklyn", "A Gooey Lump Of Dreams", "Gotham", and "21st Century Fux" are immersed in some corrosive urban-ness. "The Interview", with its spooky, postmortem JFK idealism, "Meteor", about an athlete superstar and "A Quiet Sunday Afternoon Hiking In The Woods" depart thematically from that dark tunnel, but keep the same industrial throbbing. Order now and get a free Bomb Sniffing Dog Symbol sticker, while supplies last. - River Pearl

Panic Button Pr Est P.O. Box 1905, Stuyvesant Station, New York NY 10009 USA