Bode Preto - Dark Night EP (2010) [Self-Released] // Grade: B

2010 was the year of OSDM and the Brazilian band Bode Preto proves that no matter where you are from, you can produce some great throwback sounds. Sharp riffs, consistent drumming and an ominous tone set forth by the pristine vocals gives Dark Night EP a classic feel straight from Florida in the 80′s. “Sweet Fever” opens their maiden EP with a swamp-sound intro and a commanding barrage of blast beats. There’s a growl to kick off the head-bouncing metal fest. Seriously addicting.

The second cut on the 4-track EP is “Verminoso” and again, the pace and tempo forged on Dark Night EP is addicting. Like chopping through corpses in a mortuary, the basslines and riffs intermingle in a rigidly-righteous way! I love the break at the end of the track. “Golden Darkness” opens with a bit of twang. From there on out, it’s balls to the wall death metal. Reverb is added to the vocals for the first time in the album and it’s eerie as hell!

What OSDM album is complete without a track that references Satan at least once? Enter “The Realm Of Satan”. Bode Preto is great at crafting a tempo and being consistent with it. I guess that has a lot to do with how short each track is, averaging around 2 minutes each, the Dark Night EP is over before you really get into it. That’s my only complaint and critique, otherwise you’ve got a promising death metal band to look forward to in 2011.

Thin and practically transparent, the sound of Modern Witch is purely intentional. By capturing audio on camcorder mics, Mario Zoots creates songs that already sound as though they are deeply embedded in the history of music. As far as cyberpunk philosophy goes, his methods are spot the fuck on. By creating the bootleg without actual release, Modern Witch’s recordings are like Polaroid photos. They steal moments, but give only the crudest and most rudimentary representation of them.  Unlike some of the other artists working lo-fi, Zoots’ production techniques never sound contrived or precious.  On the contrary, they are honest and simple.  His music is excellent, but the beauty is in the way that it is recorded.

It comes as no surprise that Zoots himself is an avid crate digger and historian of post-punk and minimal wave.  A simple conversation with him leaves the brain reeling with 120 nights worth of sodomous music to search and download off the blogs.  For those who have not had the formal introduction, a listen to his new, über low key mix will have to suffice. The Occult House Mixtape is not just a look into a man’s record collection. More importantly, it gazes deep within the mind of a movement.  With songs dating back as far as thirty years, Zoots has created a virtual timeline of subversive electronic angst.  Uncomfortable and restless, these awkward and unkempt beats add a pedigree to our destructive counter culture.

As with any selector worth his weight in salt and sulphur, it is nearly impossible to discern the vintage tracks from their progeny. Songs that sound like they came out in ‘82 may well have been released on Soundcloud yesterday.  There are those that lament the days when there were new ideas.  I for one, am proud to be part of the pastiche culture.

Download Modern Witch’s The Occult House Mixtape (Click Here)

Occult House Mixtape by Modern Witch

It’s a good thing that it’s probably a snow day for you and you’re stuck home instead of at work…if you’re on the East Coast that is because you can feel free to view our only NSFW best of list free of impunity! Last year Ellen counted down the ten favorite pictures she shot over the course of that year. It was incredibly popular which given the subject matter isn’t at all hard to imagine.

With an even bigger 2010 than 2009, Ellen’s back to giving all ye Bloglin faithful her ten favorite photos that she shot for Stagg Street (and beyond) this year. So relax, grab a second cup of coffee and ease into your boner shorts for this very special best of list. I’ll leave the words to Ellen now. – My Pal the Crook

What a year 2010 has been.  I shot more girls than in previous years so needless to say there naked ladies everywhere.  I got a chance to photograph many new mdoels for both Stagg Street and the Мишка 2011 Calendar.  Plus I shot a whole 11 part series for Playboy TV, that gave me the opportunity to meet girls who had never posed naked before! But they did get naked for me.

So here I’m going to share with you my 10 favorite photos of the past year, It’s a Best of List, Boner Shorts style! It’s also totally NSFW so head after the jump and we’ll get right into things shall we?

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Well he’s done it…Sucklord has gone and convinced an actual Chelsea gallery to not only give him a retrospective show, but let him sell his bootleg toys out of it for a month. Hell has frozen over…or at least New York has under all of this snow.

All jokes aside, I love the Suckadelic figures. Greg and I were first introduced to Morgon AKA Sucklord via his Band of the Lost mixes a long time ago in a New York Streetwear scene very far away. When we had our own Pop-Up shop off of Bedford Ave many years ago now, Sucklord even made a special edition Kreactivader figure to celebrate the launch of our JK5 collection. I remember this one guy, in his late 40s drove all the way down from Maine (Maine!) just for that figure. Anyway, I’ll leave you now with their official press release to hock this show/shoppe.

The Boo-Hooray Gallery reluctantly announces the first Suckadelic retrospective gallery exhibition. Intentionally confusing, misleading, disappointing and really funny, these limited edition parodies of action figures reverberate with a vicious wit and are oddly eyeball-pleasing in the manner of all kinds of toothsome 20th/21st century collage and montage art.

The toys and their aggressively situationist piss-take packaging comment on pop culture commodification and the consumer habits of compulsively shopping kidults: The very process that made KAWS, Takashi Murakami, and Michael Lau art-stars on the Art Basel Miami/Armory Show/Venice Biennale tip.

One of the most respected despised and influential figures in the art toy movement for the past decade, the Sucklord has been producing handmade bootleg action figures in very limited runs, each selling out immediately. As the plot thickens, the work of the Sucklord is widely collected in fine art circles, and has been auctioned at Christie’s, Freeman’s and Phillips.

This exhibition marks the first time the entire SUCKADELIC catalogue will be exhibited in one place. For the duration of the exhibit, a SUCKADELIC SUCK-SHOPPE pop-up store will be open. Original artwork, sculptures, silk- screens and paintings will also be for sale.

The work presented in this exhibit is a documentation of my struggle to reach the top of a sinister pyramid scheme; A culture-jacking enterprise where ruthless-yet-compelling super-criminals compete for the imaginations of fickle consumers and a relentless media machine. – Sucklord

The 100 page exhibition catalogue will be available as a limited edition of 500 numbered copies. A deluxe signed limited edition catalogue of 50 copies with an exclusively created Suckadelic figure will also be available.

If you show up on opening night, you’ll have the opportunity to meet the characters from the Suckadelic Universe. We can not guarantee a pleasant experience: the Sucklord, his nemesis Vectar the Intolerable and their cast of super-villains don’t really get along and have been prone to serious falling-outs, resulting in laser gun- battles and sulking.

The exhibition is curated by Johan Kugelberg and Simeon Lipman and will be having its opening party on January 11th at 6pm. The show/shoppe (god I hate that word!) will be up through January 23rd. Psshh, less than a two week run! Poor Sucklord. :(

The shoppe (there’s that dreaded word again) will however be open to take your hard earned cash for crappy bootleg toys everyday from 11am-6pm ’til the end of the show.

Tuesday January 11th, 6pm
Boo-Hooray Gallery
521 West 23rd St.
New York, NY

Tobacco – LA UTI (2010) [Anticon] // Grade: A

Listening to Tobacco is a game of patience. The solo project of Black Moth Super Rainbow’s Tom Fec, Tobacco’s music brings a high level of creativity in the form of face-blasting bass, intense percussion and analog synth rhythms, packaged loosely underneath fittingly perverse album art. Fec tested his own limits under the moniker and those of the listener, on this year’s Manic Meat LP, producing a collection of challenging razor-edged, overblown beats. Fec seems to have recognized that in a catalog of pushing the envelope, Manic Meat was just too much. Tobacco revisits a selection of the Manic Meat beats, and invites on a cast of MCs for the LA UTI EP, reeling in material that had jumped a cliff to teeter right on the edge where it belongs.

In a year where avant rap has been on the popularity upswing, LA UTI does not sacrifice genuineness for creative timeliness. Instead, Tobacco looks back to what worked well and builds an entire EP off that execution. The cameo has been a successful tool for Tobacco, and tracks featuring Aesop Rock and Beck in the past have proven the most palatable material. When Tobacco’s compositions become production for another, what was too hard-hitting is transformed into a dark backdrop of grind and slice aggression—and it is the perfect stage for an MC.

Tobacco and Anti-Pop Consortium seem two entities made for one another on “TV All Greasy”. Anti-Pop’s flow loops and bangs through outer space, tripped-out and explosive against race car synths. Percussion claps thud under zooms and snaps  on “Lick The Witch” with Rob Sonic’s words moving at an expert pace. Your head nods, lost in some other galaxy. Serengeti does an admirable job at not getting lost in the fray of “2 Thick Scoops”, the most challenging of LA UTI‘s productions. Screaming synths and low, banging bass pose a threatening environment, but Serengeti’s carefully chosen lyrics and raw tone cut through the noise. LA UTI ends on its standout, “Lamborghini Meltdown”, three minutes of funk from the dark and disoriented side featuring Zackey Force Funk.

If nothing else, LA UTI is a case and point example of an artist’s ability to learn from and reimagine his own work. But more than that, LA UTI is a head whipping ride through the possibility of collaboration.

This is my 26th installment of Sounds From the Other Side! A full 6 months of bringing you the dark and obscure, the occult and gothic. This week’s artist is kind of a follow -up from last week’s article and as I promised then, there’s a free EP to download!

~▲†▲~ is an anonymous Russian Witch House artist residing in Moscow who has fully embraced the sound and produced one amazing EP that sounds like someone trying really hard and very cleverly to fit in with the Salem, §, Fostercare, oOoOO sound. The droney overdriven synths, haunted ghostly vocal samples, big bass and tinny drum machine snares, echo and ambience, that are the markers of that particular side of Witch House. But I don’t mean that ~▲†▲~ is in any way derivative, each track is just done so well, even if it is using some of the same synths presets most Witch Housers use. This is amazing heavy stuff, an easy rival to anyone out there in the same vein.

Boroughs by ~▲l▲~

~▲†▲~ utilizes every weapon in the Witch House arsenal, haunted and spooky at points droning and abrasive at others with even dubstep beats and bass in there at one point, it’s an all rounder, a dubstep Witch House giant of an EP, best listened to loud or in the head phones. Made by someone who really knows what they are doing!

Plus it is the only EP that will be released, according to the ~▲†▲~ Twitter and this online feature on ~▲†▲~ from Russian style and music magazine Look At Me.

The feature in Look At Me is the only place you can download the EP but the article doesn’t reveal any more info on this artist, though it does come with an alternative remix version of the EP by a bunch of Russian Djs organized by the magazine and is pretty good itself!

The ~▲†▲~ Soundcloud page is the only other place of existence online for the group and everything there is available for download, including two mexcellent remixes. So although the EP is supposed to be the first and last document of music by this artist you get the feeling that whoever they are they quite like the project and might continue it, you never know?

•• by ~▲l▲~

Make Me Lake Inside (Cream Sound VS. ~▲†▲~) by ~▲l▲~

As I finish writing this (last minute, just after Xmas, full of food and sleepy from booze) I get the feeling that Russian Witch House might easily be featured on this column once again, because each time I think I’ve exhausted the Witch House supply another obscure and vaguely anonymous band appears from the region that seems well worth a write up.

Our good friend Dirty South Joe paid us a visit and who better than brighten our day with some of that Philly cheer?
Joe was up for a gig with thee Mary Ann Hobbes which turned out to be an epic night.

Joe has been holding the Baltimore Club flag up high for years now and has been a key player in getting Mad Decent’s no holds barred community focused block parties up and running.

Joe’s also had  two big mixes come out this past year, first there was Luvstep which he collaborated on with now Philly resident Flufftronix; and Blood Brothers a muscle anthem mix filled with the best of the best from all of your favorite 80′s action movies soundtracks. Keep an eye on this Brick City Bandit in 2011!

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725

Pretty much my entire knowledge of Baltimore comes from it’s music and The Wire. So I basically think of it as a place full of broken dreams and booty shaking. On the serious tip though, Baltimore is one of those cities that you know has just an awesome music scene that, unless you’re from there, you’re only hearing the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Well, just in time for Christmas, here’s something to change that.

Bmoremusic is a website devoted to, you guessed it, music from the Czech Republic. That was a joke. Anyway, this Baltimore music hub has just released, in lieu of a best of 2010 list, a big ‘ol mixtape that sums up what was going on musically down in Maryland this year. It’s a testament to it’s insider status that the only band I recognized at first pass was Beach House (please, people from Bmore, don’t hate me for that). Check this shit out, and get the full tracklist after the jump!

Download Baltimore 2010: A Mixtape by the Bmore Musically Informed

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Satisfacton Flannel Plaid Shirt ($83.00)

When the Rolling Stones released “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” it couldn’t get played on legitimate radio because of the perceived  boning theme.  Keith Richards claims that it’s familiar riff came to him in his sleep, that he woke up and recorded it and fell back asleep. The original tape consists of two minutes of guitaring and then forty minutes of Keith snoring. Then it became one of the biggest things ever and Devo made a robotic cover that took out all of the song’s sexual vibe. Then Britney Spears did an even more sexualized version in that diamond outfit on the MTV Music Awards. But Britney seems like a victim of sexual brainwashing so there’s something kind of sad about her. The Rolling Stones version still rules the most. Those guys are like demons.

The Satisfaction Flannel shirt features a wide checked plaid in either Red, Blue or Orange plaid with two pockets and is made of a super soft 100% cotton flannel. (You Can Get Your) Satisfaction with Мишка!

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
—
Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA
213-536-4234

Our Swedish representative, Adam Tensta, has been rocking Nordic dancefloors since the release of his debut album, It’s A Tensta Thing, in 2007. After a slew of success domestically, his rap-meets-electronica vibe is now gaining hype internationally.

In particular, his hit single, “My Cool,” has gone as far as being featured on the soundtrack for NBA 2K10 and the past season of HBO’s Entourage (Season 7, Episode 7 – you know, the one where Vince finally discovers coke in Hollywood… I’m still baffled how long it took him to find it, or vice versa).

On the contrary, Tensta has a strong image that openly excludes the influences of both drugs and alcohol on his lifestyle. His single, “Dopeboy (Do I Look Like I Sell Drugs?)” even pokes fun at the contrast of his urbanized swagger and his true strength in character.

Now his lifestyle approach isn’t the only untraditional characteristic of his hip-hop nature, his sound sets him apart, as well. He seamlessly infuses heavy electro-house beats with a calm, fluidity in his rhyming style – think Justice meets a younger verison of The Game.

Obviously, Tensta has no time to rest. He’s currently touching up It’s A Tensta Thing for international re-release. Furthermore, he’s thrown a brand new single entitled “Ok Wow” on the internet, for free – you can get a hold of it by visiting his website and sharing the announcement of the single with all of your social networked “friends”.. well, what the hell are you waiting for? They are anxiously awaiting your musical guidance.