Godspeed The Punchline
(Elemental) Used LP $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The hodgepodge of sounds at the beginning of ‘Destroy 1998’ promises a manic flurry of music to follow. Indeed, many of the tracks begin with silly, innovative audio experiments. The band’s confident and brash style of noisy indie rock was certainly catching on by 1994. From the hypnotic howling at the beginning of ‘Long End of a Firearm’ to the wonderful cut-and-paste avant noise on ‘Ungalactic,’ the band experiments with more than straightforward angular guitar noise. ‘Outpatient Lightspeed’ and ‘Playboy Stabtone Bloodbath’ pack an album’s worth of punkish energy into a few minutes.” Numbered edition #1082/1500
Godspeed The Static
(Drunken Fish) Used LP $9.00 (Out-of-stock)
The San Diego mutants “at their loosest and most formless” with “moments that are quite interesting — a lengthy chunk of ‘Kick Penmanship’ is taken up by a clanging, staccato guitar riff and stuttering snare drum” — the Nihilist Spasm Band meets Spike Jones & His City Slickers. Stenciled spray-paint front cover, paste-on back cover.
Godspeed The Vortex
(Way Out Sound / Negative Way Out) Used LP $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Eleven stabs of ecstatic lo-fi noise and avant-rock from the mid-1990s, an energetic adaptation of Swell-Maps-meets-Trout-Mask with seemingly random chaotic juxtapositions in rhythm. Two-color screen printed card folded around glued over white jacket. Red labels with no text.
Have You Got It Yet?
(Dirter) Used 7-inch $3.00
Two tracks recorded live in London, where the Branstetters and the Galloway wanted to capture “the spirit of the thing … mess [it] up, like totally skewing everything, destroying everything and still making it totally listenable.” Originally given away for free with the August 1993 issue of Fear And Loathing magazine.
Of Thick Tum
(Justice My Eye / Elevated Loin) Used LP $30.00 (Out-of-stock)
An overlooked milestone in American avant-garde indie rock that has had a wide influence in the underground. In hand-painted and paste-on jacket. From 1992
Spasm Smash XXXOXoX Ox & Ass
(Elemental) Used 2xLP $22.00 (Out-of-stock)
The improvisational 20-track album from 1993 opens with the chaotic and energetic “The Aroma of Gina Arnold,” “heightened by Glen Galloway‘s wavering vocals (including the line, ‘They said all youth was dead, how could they know / Your plastic culture sucks, and it’s gonna blow!’). The frantic San Diego band shines on the choppy ‘Good Blood After Bad’ and the indie metal of ‘Death to Dead Things.’ Spasm Smash subscribes to the notion that songs have a natural energy to them, and when that energy is spent the song should come to a grinding and immediate halt. The liberating frenzy of unabashedly crazy songs like ‘Athletes Who Is Suck’ and ‘Lo Priest’ suggest the band treats their music as grand therapy sessions, complete with distorted guitars and feedback. The mumbling behind the kinetic frenzy on ‘Fingers 6 Steps Ahead of Our Minds’ creates a new energy, while the band erects a new wall of noise on ‘La Jolla My Armpit.’ The scorching guitars and howling vocals on ‘Mindstab, Forklift’ only add to the wonderful loss of control the band mastered early on in their career.”