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Showing posts from November, 2019

What's (Re)New — Thee Oh Sees / Oh Sees / OCS on 8-Track

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Photo Credit: 5Seven Records If you check out the 5Seven Records website right now, you'll be confronted with an annoyingly unreadable nod to the days of GeoCities web pages, vivid green and yellow paragraphs typed out in Times with inactive underlining placed as if joking with the user: "Is it a link? Nope!". As if to drive home antiquity, you'll also be shown some info regarding John Dwyer 's new boxset, which compiles 8-track versions of his work dated 2008 till 2018. This includes records from Thee Oh Sees , Oh Sees , and OCS . It also contains a zine. I imagine the circle jerk comprised of collectors that commenced following this news was significant and led to multiple floods and drownings. While I'm not thrilled with the prospect of an unplayable boxset, (which is the case unless you own an 8-track player), the artifact(s) itself is something to look at. The cool factor is undeniable and there was certainly a lot of work put into it, but its impr

The Day In Headphones: JOBS — "Similar Canvas" b/w "Different Properties" 7"

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As a vivid patchwork of loose and colorful geometry, both the visual and musical aspects of "Similar Canvas"/"Different Properties", the new 2-song single by improv quartet  JOBS and artist Sam King , speak to me as a heavily encumbered personal and maybe even first-world (or suburban) dystopia. With a range of disorganized thoughts being spoken aloud for the title track, dissonant tones being dragged from the strings of a viola as factorial steam-pistons run erratic, vocalist/guitarist Dave Scanlon  is somewhat robotic in his delivery, a relative monotone appropriate to what plays beneath. There is eventually a seasick sway to what perhaps functions as a discernible enough hook, but as King's visuals play with structure, so does the song: "What is the color of the glitter you seek? What is the color of your gestures? What is the color of the jewelry you keep? And I'll take your capital."   For "Different Properties", scratchy to