Rolo Tomassi – "Demo" (Mayday! – 001) 2005

This is a CD-r....Remember CD-r's.....No?..,and remember how hardcore punk bands each self-released several tapes a month called 'Demo'?..  and then there's MySpace......No?, and CD-r's??? ...why?

That's how bands promoted themselves back in the early naughties. CD-r's disintegrated over time, and MySpace killed itself by totally unnecessary restructuring nonsense and fiddling around with the format. It's still there, floating in cyberspace like the dead astronaut in 2001,after HAL had done for him. Maybe it was HAL who reprogrammed MySpace? If so, would HAL do us all a favor and  please go and reprogram Spotify?Then Twitter, and somehow abandon Musk in space. Probably when one of his stoopid rockets fucks up when he's onboard...can you fix it for us HAL? Please?...Branson and Bozos too while you're at it.

No doubt that Rolo Tomassi are on Spotify too these days,as I saw they did the Download Festival a year or so ago,on the very spot The Monsters Of Rock Festival used to be in the male only days of NWOBHM.....we don't count Girlschool as female by the way.

Rolo don't wear Lycra tights,or have massive curly mullets.Very admirably,Rolo have an unpretentiously sober dress-sense,which is all well and good,but i kinda miss taste-bypassed idiots like Twisted Sister, and Kiss....but they are Americans ;we need Americans to do the things more educated persons would never stoop to.Which leaves us with straight edged wild time signature tennis such as Rolo Tomassi,who are obviously too intelligent to wear make-up,or lycra....lead singer/screamer Eva excepted of course.

This type of Post-Hardcore Math-Jazz does have a tendency to be rather over-clever,and the group makes this mistake on the long third track,which has one of those long silences eventually revealing a wild hidden track, as they obviously had played their mum's Nirvana album and came away impressed by the delayed appearance of "Territorial Pissings" at the end of that horrible record(CD version)....ah well, Never Mind.

Tracklist:

1 Breathing Through A City (Is Much Harder Than Just Breathing) 0:36
2 The Tentatively Titled "Film Noir" 2:28
3 ...And Then The Mannequin Spoke 10:00

DOWNLOAD not the download festival HERE!

Rolo Tomassi – "4 Track Demo Cassette" (danger!laser!phaser!razor!) 2005

Back to the long dead MySpace era for the first rebirth of DIY ethics,as continues with that Bandcamp,Soundcloud nonsense today,where the true gold is lost in an ocean of drone projects and bedroom bands with one member.

These Rolo Tomassi kids must have been 15 when they made this charming package of progressive abstract Jazzcore Math rock..They're like a cross between Gentle Giant and Tool. 

I say Tool,having never listened to one of their albums, and having just seen them live once so i'm imagining what other people say Tool sound like.

For want of better words, these kids must have had a granddad with a Prog and Jazz Fusion collection, and peers who dug slipknot and ...

ahem..Tool. While still at school.

It also helps that they have a sweet girlie screamer as a focus point, refreshingly free of tattoos and piercings, as are the rest of the group,from what i can gather......even today,as it seems that they are still going,but now in their thirties,and certainly rather too Metallic for my liking....but in the beginning...as always...they were nearly perfect.

Tracklist:

1 Codes Within Codes
2 From Ambience To Ambulance
3 Hiroshima 8.16am
4 A Cosmic Accident

DOWNLOAD these gentle giants HERE!

Last Exit ‎– "Cassette Recordings 87" (Enemy Records ‎– EMY 105) 1987

Oh Jesus! How shit is this new Blogger thing wot they've paid some 'expert' to re-jig!? Fucking Hell!

Remember MySpace? This is going the same way. I start a new post with a childlike excitement, then quickly give up in a childlike strop after trying to select labels for my new post.....click and wait technology......But, I won't let the 'Man' get to me with his power games...oooooh no! So here's a transitional Peter Brotzmann work, recorded on the humble cassetten,yet never released on a humble cassetten. Yup, it's Jazz Metal soopergroop , 'Last Exit' innit?

Do I hear a Groan?....unfortunately,yes, Bill Laswell does makes a traditional appearence with anything to do with downtown jazzy types.He's the Thurston Moore of Jazz,although I think Thruston Moore reckons that his-self is in fact the Thurston Moore of Jazz too? What is it with these serial collaborators? They crop up like a bad smell in a toilet,and usually contribute nothing......the jury's out on Eno however,'cus i'm a bit of a fan of our Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno.....but.....with a name like that he is obviously rather Posh,which gave him full Progressive rock qualifications above and beyond the call of duty. Never trust anyone with more than two christian names. A case in point is the beyond awful posh bloke whose childhood ambition was to become Prime Minister of Britain,and worse still, actually did!?......Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson......which is code for 'Bastard'.

Who the fuck has a realistic childhood fantasy of being a country's leader other than that priviliged line of human aliens with the reptilian DNA? Little undernourished Tommy Atkins from the council estate with the abusive parents' greatest ambition was to learn to read, not study Greek History with a bunch of Oxbridge cronies,and future leaders,and, do it all with a smirk on his face!? Why didn't someone slap those smug jowels at kindergarten and nip this horror in the bud? It might not be too late?

Yes, anyone can become a leader, except the Kings won't let it happen.

So, here we have a group, proudly displaying moustaches and beards when it was patently 'Unhip' to do so, wearing clothes that would impress only Michael Bolton's wardrobe assistant. Their debut sooper pooper groop eponymous debut was rather good in its musical napalm tendancies. This outing is less so,with rather too much of Sonny Sharrocks metally guitar work,and his even worse singing, but it has its moments.Brotzmann's sax is, for once, well mixed,and not stage front.Peter's other main contibution is likely to have been the very Brotzamannesque song titles of "Sore Titties" and the terribly rude, but laughable, "My Balls/Your Chin"!!!?

Recorded at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Copenhagen to cassette,so it has that nice saturated cassette sound that's so hard to reproduce in any other medium.We like cassettes here......sorry about the Laswell though.

Tracklist

1. Line Of Fire
2. Big Boss Man
3. Sore Titties
4. Ulli Bulli Fooli
5. Ma Rainey
6. My Balls / Your Chin

DOWNLOAD the last exit to copenhagen HERE!

Naked City ‎– "Torture Garden" (Earache ‎– mosh 28) 1991

Jazzers, in general,aren't the most open minded of musicians, and do tend towards some rather unpleasant displays of intellectual snobbery......as we all do in different levels; I myself have been guilty of this Darwinian concept.......I do however reserve the right to call stuff like most Hip Hop, modern R &B,Boy Band Pop, and U2, Shit, both intellectually and morally.
John Zorn seems to be from the open end of the Jazz spectrum, along with Joey Baron(drums),and Bill Frisell (gtr),who seem to dispel the myth that Jazzers can't play metal.
(That said, Zorn was witnessed patronising an audience in my home town of Leicester on the Naked City Tour, by suggesting that such a provincial audience would prefer it if he played some Be-Bop; which he promptly did, and followed it up with some sneering comment afterwards.....prick!..i'll have him know that Napalm Death,the group he copied, also came from such provincial places as this, in fact just 20 miles down the road near Coventry...nobodies perfect i suppose?)
The jazz trendies are joined by proper people, Fred Frith,late of 'Henry Cow'on bass, and Yamatsuka Eye from the Boredoms, to provide some very daft vocals.
Whatever the Intellectual genius that John Zorn thinks he is, this style of music was shamelessly ripped off from brummy grindcore legends Napalm Death, with added alto sax, and musicianly polish.
The lower Manhattan art set are probably blissfully unaware of this, and would no doubt be heavily traumatised to discover such an unpleasant fact.
This album collects together all the wildest Naked City moments onto one twelve incher, and is an utterly superb avalanche of madness.....in sustained short spurts of machine gun fire.

Tracklist:

Sado Side
A1 Blood Is Thin 1:00
A2 Demon Sanctuary 0:38
A3 Thrash Jazz Assassin 0:45
A4 Dead Spot 0:31
A5 Bonehead 0:51
A6 Speedball 0:37
A7 Blood Duster 0:13
A8 Pile Driver 0:33
A9 Shangkuan Ling-Feng 1:14
A10 Numbskull 0:29
A11 Perfume Of A Critic's Burning Flesh 0:24
A12 Jazz Snob Eat Shit 0:24
A13 The Prestidigitator 0:43
A14 No Reason To Believe 0:26
A15 Hellraiser 0:39
A16 Torture Garden 0:35
A17 Slan 0:23
A18 Hammerhead 0:08
A19 The Ways Of Pain 0:31
A20 The Noose 0:10
A21 Sack Of Shit 0:43

Maso Side
B1 Blunt Instrument 0:53
B2 Osaka Bondage 1:14
B3 Igneous Ejaculation 0:20
B4 Shallow Grave 0:40
B5 Ujaku 0:27
B6 Kaoru 0:50
B7 Dead Dread 0:45
B8 Billy Liar 0:10
B9 Victims Of Torture 0:22
B10 Speedfreaks 0:29
B11 New Jersey Scum Swamp 0:41
B12 S & M Sniper 0:14
B13 Pigfucker 0:23
B14 Cairo Chop Shop 0:22
B15 Fuck The Facts 0:11
B16 Obeah Man 0:17
B17 Facelifter 0:34
B18 N.Y. Flat Top Box 0:43
B19 Whiplash 0:19
B20 The Blade 0:36
B21 Gob Of Spit 0:18

DOWNLOAD nakedly HERE!

PainKiller ‎– "Buried Secrets" (Earache ‎– MOSH 62) 1992

A Godflesh/Napalm Death/Last Exit supergroup with special guest star, John Zorn on Sax abuse.
You won't find any other Godflesh or Napalm Death record on the coffee table's of any self-respecting Jazz Snob.Sneaking in by the back door as PainKiller, most of this record would be skipped over by most pseudo-intellectual Jazz fakes, and then scramble for cover under the nearest John Coltrane double bootleg.
Anything with a saxophone in it gets labelled 'Jazz',like any punk band with a sax was immediately rubber stamped as 'Jazz Punk' (eg The Cravats).
So PainKiller is ,obviously, 'Jazzcore'.
A more correct epithet is improvised noise; there's as much rock,and Dub in there as there is jazz, but it is definitely improvised.
It has its musical moments, but mostly its like filling your ears with sonic caustic soda.......in a good way.

Tracklist:

Tortured Souls 1:54
One Eyed Pessary 1:51
Trailmarker 0:08
Blackhole Dub 3:29
Buried Secrets 6:13
The Ladder 0:22
Executioner 2:48
Black Chamber 2:29
Skinned 0:54
The Toll 7:26

DOWNLOAD this buried secret HERE!

Pain Killer ‎– "Guts Of A Virgin" (Earache ‎– MOSH 45) 1991

The gore-fest continues with this unlikely combination of Grindcore and Avant Garde Jazz, that gave birth to the sub-genre of,yes, 'Jazzcore'!?
Excellent paint stripping stuff it is too.
Lower Manhattan jazz-bo trendies, John Zorn and Bill Laswell heard Napalm Death, and like envious children wanted to have a go themselves. So the best place to start was to poach Napalm Deaths drummer and lead screamer, Mick Harris, and release it on Earache Records.
A bludgeoning napalm attack on the senses if ever there was one.Zorn's treated sax caterwauling is nothing short of being on the receiving end of a flame thrower whilst cornered in a concrete bunker.
Could be the best release on Earache by a country mile?
It also contravened the laughable 'Obscene Publications Act' for the cover, and was subsequently banned, and replaced with an edited facial shot of the sliced up female in question.
No such censorship is allowed on here however.

Tracklist:

1 Scud Attack 3:07
2 Deadly Obstacle Collage 0:21
3 Damage To The Mask 2:43
4 Guts Of A Virgin 1:19
5 Handjob 0:10
6 Portent 4:00
7 Hostage 2:24
8 Lathe Of God 0:56
9 Dr. Phibes 3:00
10 Purgatory Of Fiery Vulvas 0:26
11 Warhead 1:12
12 Devil's Eye 4:37

DOWNLOAD you gutless virgin ,HERE!

ZOG - "Thee First Commandment Of ZOG" (Year Zero records YEAR038) 2016

Free improvised Jazz/Noise Rock from deepest France. Featuring former Electric Buttocks anchorman, Christophe Medina on drums and vocals, Blind Man Walking Phil Allison on Tenor Saxophone, erstwhile 'Outsider' Nadine Aleman, knob twiddling on the Korg MS10, and Sampler, with Jon Zchivago clawing his own raw path on,what can only be described as a, Bass Guitar.
All music is improvised in one take,with no rehearsals or discussion beforehand,and only the minimum of editing afterwards. Like a Dogma 95 for music.
ZOG channels every dead or dying musician's soul from the last 60 years of popular music, as if remote viewed from one of the plusher corners of purgatory. If this doesn't excite you, you're dead already.
For terrestrial references, think Archie Shepp fronting Can's better half of Suzuki and Liebezeit , with a dash of Hawkwind, and Jean Jacques Burnel gene spliced with Bootsy Collins; a sort of funkier version of John Zorn's Painkiller without the boring dub bits. 

PS...ZOG is avaiable for gigs,festivals,bar mitzvah's and children's partys. Leave any possible leads in the comments section.

Track Listing:

1 - The Smell of ZOG
2 - ZOG brings World Peace
3 - Kneel Before ZOG!
4 - Horses In Love
5 - Faster ZOG, Kill, Kill!
6 - O'Dowd's Spunk Bucket Hostage
7 - Sexyback by Timberlake
8 - Man Bites ZOG
9 - Raining In My Brain
10- ZOG 3:16

ZOG commands you to DOWNLOAD it HERE!