It’s been a long while since I’ve done a new Digging For Fire entry now and I apologize for that to those keeping tabs. I’ve been meaning to do one for a few weeks now and like with everything you plan on doing, sometimes days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months.

Anyway, yesterday I got into a brief discussion with Glamnation about backpacker rap where Aceylone and Freestyle Fellowship came up. Today while digging through my little section of CDs where I keep Freestyle Fellowship and other west coast backpacker shit I came a cross The Nonce’s World Ultimate. And album I wholeheartedly used to love and honestly just forgot existed until I saw it once again.

The duo of  Nouka and Yusef Alfoat AKA The Nonce were probably best known for their production work on many of the early Freestyle Fellowship and Project Blowed affiliate albums, particularly Aceyalone’s All Balls Don’t Bounce. In the mid 90s though, the duo got on in front of the mic for their one and only album, World Ultimate. A chill, relaxed and jazzy odyssey that was very much on a The Native Tongues tip and way more accessible than most of their affiliated Freestyle Fellowship’s work.

Just check out “Bus Stops” featuring Aceyalone, a personal favorite of mine off the album and actually just 90s Hip Hop in general. If this isn’t the perfect summertime jam, I don’t know what is. While World Ultimate wasn’t exactly a re-invention of the wheel, it was an incredibly solid album featuring no off tracks, tight production and fluid rhymes. It’s unfortunate that this album and The Nonce have been so forgotten over time.

Following World Ultimate, The Nonce released the EP The Sight of Things in 1998 which I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never heard. Afterward Nouka adopted the name Sachs and started releasing solo material, he still raps and produces to this day. Yusef Alfoat, sadly was found dead on the side of an LA freeway back in 200o.

The Nonce – World Ultimate

Ok so this really isn’t much of an obscurity, but it is  a great album that’s been unjustly unappreciated and overlooked… much like the man behind the band, Mark Robinson. Hopefully that names rings a bell but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t. Before forming Air Miami, Robinson was one of the founding members and the driving force behind Unrest, the most overlooked (unless you’re from D.C. I suppose), yet one of the greatest 80s-90s indie bands. Robinson also founded and ran of one of my favorite record labels from my youth, Teen Beat.

Upon the break-up of Unrest, Robinson and Bridget Cross went on to form Air Miami and picked up right where Unrest’s final album, Perfect Teeth left off. Me. Me. Me. was Air Miami’s lone album and is filled with more of the delicate and catchy indie-pop that Unrest made their hallmark in the later portion of their career. Truthfully I’ve always likened Me. Me. Me. to be the true final Unrest album, even if it is without founding member and drummer, Phil Krauth.

I’m not sure what it is about Unrest that has never catapulted them to the sort of revered status other 80s and 90s indie rock bands have achieved. Perhaps it was all of those years spent being much harsher and experimental that have kept droves of people from discovering their later work…but you’ll be hard pressed to find a band that crafted indie pop as touching and haunting as Unrest and Air Miami did in the early to mid-90s. I’m surprised with the whole revival of Shoegaze and Dream-Pop, Unrest and/or Air Miami haven’t gotten some sort of deluxe reissue treatment yet. So take this chance now to get acquainted with the charms of Mark Robinson and Bridget Cross, here’s hoping it won’t be your last taste.

Air Miami – Me. Me. Me.

Ah, Hovercraft! How I used to love you. I even skipped my Senior Prom just to see you play your first NYC show. This band used to mean the world to me from ages 17-19. Upon discovering them, I became obsessed with forming an “experimental noise” band. Looking back on it know, While experimental, Hovervcraft weren’t really so much noise as just amazing spacey Post-Rock. The first thing I did upon getting to college was form a crappy band who I named Hydrofoil and proceeded to rip this album off at every turn for a good year.

Hovercraft hailed from Seattle and unfortunately aren’t best know for their debut Akathisia… one of the best post-rock albums ever released but because bassist Sadie 7 AKA Beth Leibing was also the wife of Eddie Veddar at the time. Something that still to this day tends to overshadow any mention of the band.

Back in the mid 90s NO ONE was making anything that sounded like this… sure there were all sorts of great experimental acts, but had the grooves and psychedelia down the way Hovercraft did. Their live shows were experiences awash in sound and visuals and guitarist Campbell 2000 AKA Ryan Shinn is still to this day in my opinion one of the most inventive guitarists to strum the instrument.

The band followed up Akathisia with Experiment Below in 1998. And while a decent release, it showed little variety from the far superior Akathisia. After it’s release the band went on to work on a few projects with DJ Spooky and Sterolab before playing their final show in 2001.

If you’re a fan of stuff like Flying Saucer Attack and Godspeed You Black Emperor! You really should have this in your collections.

Hovercraft – Akathisia

In the mid-nineties, I spent many a late night procrastinating on the web instead of working on whatever term paper I needed to finish. Haujobb’s Solutions For a Small Planet was my soundtrack for many of those evenings. There is something magical about this album that, when combined with too many cups of coffee and the glow of a computer monitor, could make it feel like you were just a few clicks away from being dragged into some futuristic H4X0R conspiracy.

Anyone who has read (or partially read, i.e. me) Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash will automatically recognize the sounds from their speakers, which seem like they were scored to go hand-in-hand with the 90s Cyber-Punk epic. Cold, throbbing rhythms that play more like Film Noir than music, really.

Formed in the early 90s, the German group’s name references (not surprisingly) a German translation of the term “skin job”, from Blade Runner. Haujobb spent most of the 90s perfecting a sound that bridged both EBM and IDM. While usually lumped in with the Industrial movement, Haujobb had much more in common with groups like Autechre than 90s era Front Line Assembly. I still hold 1996′s Solutions for a Small Planet as the last true, bonafied industrial-dance classic of the 90s… before things really took a turn for the worse.

Until a few months ago, I had not listened to this album in almost a decade. I was incredibly surprised by how well it still holds  up and just how relevant it still sounds. This is the sort of album that transcends its tag of “industrial” and is a must listen for all electronic music fans and apocalyptic fetishists alike.

Haujobb – Solutions For a Small Planet

Another of my favorite Post-Punk/Neue Deutsche Welle bands, The Abwärts (which translates to “Going Down!”) were a West German band whose biggest claim to fame is that Einstürzende Neubauten members Mark Chung and FM Einheit were two of the Abwärts founding members. Thay Neubauten connection is exactly how I learned about the band.

Computerstaat is the band’s debut EP was released on Germany’s legendary ZickZack imprint in 1980 and is a spazzy 15 minute odyssey of angular rhythms, German howls, electronic noodling and Chung’s steady and driving bass lines that all come together as an arty and hypnotic approach at traditional Punk. For those who download this and can’t get enough, I advise you quickly then steer your attention to tracking down the Abwärts follow-up LP, Amok Koma. This is German Punk at it’s finest!

Abwärts – Computerstaat EP

With Karin Dreijer solo outing, Fever Ray taking the top spot on our Bloglin’s Best Albums of 2009 I thought it was appropriate to do a Digging for Fire featuring her first band, Honey Is Cool. Honey is cool were a Swedish indie-pop band active in the mid 90s for whom Karin sang and played guitar. They never really made much of a splash in the U.S., single “Nach Heart” was as close as they got. I’m not sure though if they were or weren’t fairly popular in their home country though.

Honey Is Cool truthfully are your standard fair when it comes to 90s indie-pop. They veer a bit into the Dream Pop/Shoegaze side of things but never did anything I’d remotely consider revolutionary or even influential. Crazy Love is their second album, released in 1997 and is the one I feel is their most fluid. It’s smooth, sweet and enjoyable. You can even here the faintest of seedlings of the Knife in the electro-tinged “The Lion”. I felt with the Knife and now Fever Ray’s success people might have some interest to hear where Karin started her musical career and fully put into perspective just how far she has come. You’ll instantly recognize her voice, even though without all of the effects it does sound a whole lot more childlike rather than menacing (as we’ve grown accustomed to).

Listening back to Honey is Cool after a full decade of Karin Dreijer dominating the elctro-pop landscape is a lot like going back and listening to Bjork in the Sugarcubes, just not quite as good. I’m mostly recommending this to either die-hard Knife fans or 90s dream-pop completists.

Honey Is Cool – Crazy Love

Mother Love Bone was supposed to be H-U-G-E! But unfortunately, lead singer Andrew Wood died from a heroin overdose in March 1990, just before the release of their debut album, Apple.

But who were Andrew Wood and Mother Love Bone, and why should you give two shits about their debut album Apple? Well, because it’s a great album that’s mostly been forgotten as an obscure relic of the 90′s Seattle grunge scene. Mother Love Bone formed when Wood left the band Malfunkshun to join drummer Greg Gilmore and former Green River bandmates Stone Goassard, Bruce Fairweather, and Jeff Ament. They oozed classic 70′s arena rock like Aerosmith and Kiss, without ever really venturing into the Hair Metal side of things, and in the late 80′s/early 90′s, to loads of A&R men, represented the perfect bridge from Hair Metal to whatever was to come next. In 1989, they issued their debut EP, Shine, followed by a tour opening for Dogs D’Amour (which I suppose was a big deal back in the early 90′s). Soon after, the band attracted a decent amount of hype as they set to work on Apple. It was around that time when Wood developed a bad heroin problem. The band sent him to rehab as they awaited the official release of their album. Early in 1990, Wood rejoined the band, and they played shows to work the hype surrounding their upcoming release later that spring. In March, not long before the album was set to come out, Wood was found dead in his apartment. Apple’s release was pushed to later in the year, and while it was showered with praise, because of Wood’s death, the album never reached the level of fame that many predicted it would.

Into the flood again
Same old trip it was back then
So I made a big mistake
Try to see it once my way

If anyone understood Wood’s pain it was Layne Staley, who coincidentally died from a heroin overdose a few years after Alice in Chains penned a song in honor of their fallen contemporary. And so Wood’s legacy is best remembered now for the tributes his friends and fellow musicians paid him, rather than the actual music he produced. There is the afore-quoted Alice in Chains hit “Would?”, and of course the tribute album Temple of the Dog (whose name is taken from lyrics off the Apple track “The Man with Golden Words”), which saw former roommate Chris Cornell join his Soundgarden bandmate Matt Cameron, Mike McCready, and former Mother Love Bone members Stone Goassard and Jeff Ament in penning a whole album in memory of their friend that released in early ’91. That album produced a few radio singles and one megahit when later that summer Gossard, Ament, and McCready were joined by drummer Dave Krusen and a dude named Eddie Vedder, and released a little album you may know called Ten. After Ten’s release and Pearl Jam’s quick rise to stardom, the Temple of the Dog track “Hunger Strike” (featuring Eddie Vedder) propelled the entire album to stardom and gave Wood (or his memory, at least) his moment in the sun.

In 2005, director Scott Barbour made a documentary about the life and death of Andrew Wood called Malfunkshun. Unfortunately, much like Mother Love Bone, it flew mostly under the radar.

Mother Love Bone – Apple

How terrible is that album cover? Would you ever randomly just buy any album with a  cover like that? it looks like something that a middle school science teacher with a crappy bar band would do for their $5 demo debut CD-R. I however did buy this album for a whopping 99¢ almost ten years ago when i stumbled upon it. But truth be told I recognized the band’s name, had I not I would have never bought this album, even for a measly 99¢ based on the cover alone.

pragVEC were one of countless London based post-punk bands in the late 70s. They’re best known for housing one-time member Jim Thrilwell who played keyboards and did some vocals on their only album No Cowboys. Thrilwell would shortly thereafter go on to for Industrial giant Foetus. That isn’t pragVEC’s only connection with the industrial and EBM world as their drummer Nick Cash would eventually join Frank Tovey in Fad Gadget.

Despite all of these industrial connections, pragVEC themselves were a pretty traditional sounding post-punk band from the time. They wrote excellent songs and had a great frontwoman in Susan Gogan. I’d liken them to an artier X-Ray Spex or a more accessible Malaria!… less confrontational but more apt to experiment especially with synths which shouldn’t be a surprise considering who was playing keyboard for them). It’s a shame they’ve been mostly forgotten over time.

I’m not really sure when this CD compilation was put out or by whom. Judging by the bubble-jet printed disc art sticker I’d think it was perhaps homemade or a promo for something that never released. The CD oddly takes the first track from their 1979 S/T 12″ and placed it first before going into the entire 1980 No Cowboys album before ending with the rest of their S/T 12″. I’ve re-sequenced everything back to how it was on the original releases and between the two this is the entire recorded output by pragVEC before disbanding in 1982. One interesting side note: When originally released, all of the tracks on No Cowboys were credited to different bands, as if it were a compilation album. Their name on the cover was only added for this CD comp.

pragVEC – No Cowboys & S/T 12″

Pussy Galore, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Boss Hog, Royal Trux and even White Zombie… it all began here with this record. The template for the sleaziest, noisiest bastardization of Rock ‘N’ Roll that graced the late 80s through 90s got it’s cue right here with The Honeymoon Killers 1984 debut album, Honeymoon Killers from Mars.

The Honeymoon Killers themselves owe a debt to bands like the Stooges, The Cramps, Birthday Party and even Einstürzende Neubauten what they ended up creating was distinctly their own. Strip down Garage Rock stompers to their most primal essence, smother them under walls of fuzz and dress them up like a B-Movie and you’ll get The Honeymoon Killers. Honeymoon Killers from Mars is horribly recorded, abrasive, obnoxious and yet entirely enjoyable.

Lead by Jerry Teel, The Honeymoon Killers would in their host Jon Spencer, Christina Martinez, Judah Bauer, Russel Simins, Hollis Queens and Dan Kroha as onetime members in their 6 album career. After the book closed on the Honeymoon Killers, Teel would form the underrated Chrome Cranks in the 90s followed by The Knoxville Girls in his seemingly never ending pursuit to make some of the most unsavory of Rock humanly possible.

The Honeymoon Killers – Honeymoon Killers From Mars

1999 was Matador records 10th anniversary*. To celebrate the label made a 3-disc compilation and threw a series of concerts at Irving Plaza featuring much of their label roster from the time. As party favors, Matador commissioned Matmos & DJ Eclipse to ransack the Matador catalog and produce two separate mix CDs that would be then given to all attendees at the shows. These were never meant to be sold and I can’t really even be certain if Matador ever collected them later on some sort of compilation package or not. Either way neither are readily available on the ‘net.

I’m not sure whatever happened to my copy of the Matmos mix, but I do still have the DJ Eclipse mix (which was my favorite of the two). 1999 was around the time Matador had signed Non Phixion, hence the reason why DJ Eclipse (of all people) ended up making this mix for them. Unfortunately the relationship between the two would never go any further than this promo mix and the Black Helicopters 12″.

The mix is pretty short, just over 20 minutes total… Yett still a pretty solid mix. It’s refreshing and interesting just how comfortable Eclipse is out of his element missing indie rock instead of Hip Hop and so eloquently weaving a decent cross-section of the eclectic matador catalog into a pretty seamless mix. I especially love when he slips in some breakbeats behind Cat Power’s “Back of Your Head”.

On a side not, these mixes hold a special place in my heart because I was the one who actually designed the sleeve sticker and disc artwork. No clue why I indented at the start of each paragraph or why didn’t have all of the type flush left against the same guide. I also realized listening back to this that I (or maybe Matador?) left off the Blues Explosion’s “Very Rare” off of the tracklist. But look at that 10!!! WoooOooo it’s all in perspective and about to come out at yooouuuu!

*Not sure why Matador didn’t really celebrate a 20th anniversary this year.

DJ Eclipse – This CD Is Not Nice (Matador Megamix)