by Batpiss
Batpiss Biomass (PBS feature record)
Batpiss' second Long Player "Biomass" has just been released through Poison City Records. Recorded over 5 days at Cellar Sessions Studios, Biomass follows the sonic vein of debut Nuclear Winter, while expanding into heavier tones and lyrical content. Opener "the Store" is a subdued slow burning dirge of relentless repetitive bass rumble and whining guitar, bolstered by a plowing floor tom drive. The album's tempo is quickly punctuated by the mad shredding on "Death Will..." "Daredevil" and "Orchard". These bring side A to a close with maximum intensity and bring a chaotic, frenzied attack of dual vocals and spastic guitar.
Side B is a more considered affair, with slower, more droning repetitive riffage making up the meat and veg. "Heavy Smoke" is 3 and a half minutes of Ginn inspired off-note guitar bursting behind a green-out vocal urgency. The album's longest track "Pulling Out" starts with 2 minutes of whispered sexual desperation before exploding into variations of plundering doom guitar. The album ends with "Waking up at the Wheel"; possibly the greatest riff ever written, repeating ad-nauseum over the tale of a no-doze induced car wreck, before fading out to obscurity.
Biomass is immediately a Batpiss record. Full of non apologetic direct heaviness, and a passionate disregard for distortion pedals. Play at full volume.
By Erica – Mixing Up the Medicine
Sun Kil Moon Universal Themes (Featured on The Breakfast Spread)
Sun Kil Moon, the Solo project for Mark Kozelek, has delivered his seventh record, Universal Themes. This album follows on from the raw and deeply personal offering of Benji (2014) which saw Sun Kil Moon get his first taste of mainstream recognition.
Universal Themes continues in the same strength of Benji by wondering through Kozelek’s often-mundane, often-devastating, nonsensical and fragmented stream of consciousness. Opening song ‘The Possum’ delivers the guitar-accompanied diary-entry musings that permeate thorough each of the eight ten-minute tracks on this record. This opening offers a glimpse into his raw spoken word detailing the demise of this injured creature. With clear moments of the signature ethereal acoustic sound of Sun Kil Moon, there are also moments of a heavier guitar aesthetic that seep through songs like ‘With A Sort Of Grace I Walked To The Bathroom To Cry’ and ‘Ali/Spinks 2’ both accompanied by Kozelek’s tortured vocal.
From this eight-track release, highlights include: ‘Cry Me A River Williamsburg Sleep Tattoo Blues’, ‘Garden Of Lavender’ and ‘This Is My First Day And I’m Indian And I Work At A Gas Station’. If you can follow the rambling tangential nature of these stories you can share in their emotional intensity; if not the enticing ambient music to accompany it is enough to give these tracks strength.
Overall the long songs offer structural diversity with each memoir giving the feeling that the guitar and drums are shaped around the words that are exhaled from the deepest places within Kozelek. Among his intriguingly vague dribble lies profanity and powerful emotional insight, often towing the line between life’s heart ache and life’s mundanity.
With recent controversy over Kozelek’s behaviour outside of his recorded and on-stage persona, his motive is clear when he sings: “I’ll write songs in my car until the day I die/ Gonna write songs that make people laugh, cry, happy, angry/ Songs that make grown men shit their pants like little fucking babies.” Kozelek seems to relinquish the often-hindering desire to impress and instead he sees the clout in letting that go and just being unapologetic about who you are. This is perhaps the most universal theme of the record. Ultimately in this record, Kozelek can be admired for his honesty and compelling diaristic storytelling style. Kozelek’s candid, intriguing and often-poetic lyrics are what makes Universal Themes truly compelling.
By Beth - PBS FM
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