You Never Told me You Didn't Care About the Color of my Underwear

Beemy, Steum, Largesse, and Craig:

These fucking guys in Wumpus are distracting my self. Off on a tangent, twisted in this wind they're blowing. They're that rare sort of utterly perfect do-exactly-that-one-kind-of-thing-that-I-ain't-got-words-for band, the kind I just want to, you know, listen to. And then repeat. And then rinse if necessary. Not necessarily in any order.

Go find such songisms as Porn on the Web, ...As For The Angels, and Boliver T. Shagnasty. Relish yourself with those "aaaaaah" harmony voices in Triumphantly Trudging Thru Mud. Listen to your head explode in space (which shan't make a sound.) while they sing about Rocketship, feeling at once like way early Pink Floyd mixed with something I just can't still put my fingers into. ("There are no boundaries, no gravity. There are some martians out here with me.") Trade them with your friends. Put them all in your same shoebox.

I'm really afraid to follow the links they've got there. Other bands that appear to be of a similar vench. But I haven't listened so I know nothing. Only am I always ever listening to this Wumpus now.

They blog themselves like little fungers, too: Wumpus Central. Tell me, Steve and Burp, if this doesn't sound like an excerpt from something someone other than these guys mightta put somewheres, "Rory tuned the Rhodes. King Wolfgoat became Freddie First Take. DSSTM trudged. I played my part almost good about 8 times. muchos P ber. some re ber. no capt peever. I am a believer."

We Know, Don't Know, Don't Know if we Know

People Who Pretend to Be Me:

DMusic is way down this time. Maybe just for a minute or an hour or maybe for the glaciatic dripping of an age or a colosum. It returns no calls, it picks up no lines.

In that strange world, when it's functioning, there exists a devious enigma that calls itself, variously Mike Hock and the Pigeon Hand Clap Orchestra and Sir Mike Hock. The sounds that come out of those vacuums are tasty and expressive, though (always?) schizotastic and unforgiving. Mike Hock likes to work with luminaries like that guy who plays robocop and the dead dwarf who used to hang around on stage with Kid Rock. It likes to use synthesized voices to read rambling diatribes while the garbled electronic rhythms slam and pulse and break things all over the fucking room. Mike Hock could be a computer, or it could be a disguise for David Hasselhoff, who hates his own famous face.

There's always this hint there though that Mike Hock is an angry ex-person, someone who used to make music with us but then found a religion or a delicious red velvet cake or heeded the words of the Prophet L'oaf. An entity who grew jealous of our power until one day it decided to turn our brains into pickle loaf. We may never know.

The Consistently Missing o

Ben and Harry:

Aleksey Boytsov, who is The Subconscius Lamp Operators, has a handsome and swarthy list of similar bands & artists over there on his/their besonic.com site. It includes such standouts as The Superluminal Pachyderm, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and Halaka.

Did you catch that?

Okay. I tripped over the consciusly missing the 'o' Subconcius Lamp Operators some time ago on Soundclick. That page is still there. They like cheese. They don't sound like cheese, though, so much as psychedelic strangeness, creating pieces of extended freejazzery with heavy use of weird voice and noise samples alongside the swirls of synth washes and a lot of things that sound enough like bass guitars to confuse the intrepid listener.

For a good introduction to what this guy's all about, take a listen to "Within The Earshot Of Cheese (Complete Version)", on the besonic page. Gaze in undulating glory at the breakdown of its parts on the lyrics page; from "Part 1: Duck Memorials and Apple Cones" to "Part 5: Our Piano Joined The Wolfpack" and beyond. I hear a little eerie-movie-musicness to this stuff, like Fantomas if Fantomas didn't have any guitars or any Mike Patton.

Go listen.

In Other Sporting Goods Availability Noose:

dmusic.com is hiding from me today. For any other dmusic-addled persons reading this: here's to you. Or someone.

Billy and The Have Been's Mittens:

Listen to Zsammy at DMusic. Catchy and quirky, home-produced (in Cakewalk) music that doesn't sound like it. This stuff shines with individuality, but most importantly the songs are good. Clean electric and acoustic guitars, eerie atmospherics behind what might at first seem to be simple material. Stream these: Burning Down the Avenue, Tense Men Meet Here, Pitchblackeyed Man. Listen to it all, though.

Browse The Red Ferret Journal's One Million Free & Legal Music Tracks Wiki. (Credit where it's due: The Left Half of My Brain.)

Otherness:
Our track, Something Fantastic (Hey Ernie), has been nominated as best song in the "Other" category in the First DMusic Awards. We're up against an excellent track from our friends in Blubat called The Spaceman Romantic. There are also other nominees, of course, and at least one of them strikes me as decidedly un-other-like. Regardless, it's all good stuff. Here's the complete list of nominees in all categories.