"This new batch made me envision a post apocolyptic New Wave Art film Soundtrack--Like, versus the standardized post apocolyptic Future images you see in the graphic novels/motion pictures where everyone is fighting in a barren wasteland, the visions ellicted by the sounds portray quirky artisians that have salvaged their lives from the wreckage of nuclear fallout, combat potential depression from their and the worlds great loss by making new sounds using various found technologies/both analong and digital----Don't knock it! it's just an honest reaction !!!! ( wanna fight agout it? )"
>>>Victor Cayro, cultural eminence
"Baltimore-by-way-of Iowa duo Black Vatican make some wonderful racket, its fried AM radio trashed pop jams recalling recent outings from Ariel Pink's aggressive bottom-of-the-well lo-fi, Panda Bear's Brian Wilson-toting crooning vocal serenades, and, certainly, not-so-recent Pere Ubu. You can hear things frying and being abused--what sounds like kitchenware percussion; big, echoed electronic "zonnngggs;" a rupturing, or close to it, speaker diaphragm. During "I Don't Want to Fight" the drums, vocals, and tortured surf guitar distort into each other, almost becoming indistinguishable, before clearing like a summer drive-by thunderstorm.
As a whole, it's quite fun and bop-able. The album's closer, "Now You've Been Told," just makes us smile--vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Andy Roche, recorded like he's singing from down the hall, is barely intelligible as he makes a sort of pre-lingual babble of "ah"s and "oh"s--in a mix of floating winds, bells, and snare-drum punctuation that enters and exits at will. "Touch Teacher" is some kind of anarchic junkyard dub, and "Doggerel" incites a cosmic-scale aesthetic war in four-minute miniature--circuit-bending fuckery aided by big industrial gobs of dark clatter that duel with tinny, insectile percussion, while Roche intones, in a voice that suggests peaceful transcendence, "doggy doesn't recognize his master/ doggy's just a dog, hereafter." Like the above-mentioned artists, Black Vatican's side of this split LP--Brooklyn, N.Y.'s True Primes' flip side being pissy with breakbeats--pulls itself successfully out of the avant-music time line, fashioning instead a clever feedback loop well worth picking up."
>>>MICHAEL BYRNE, CITYPAPER, BALTIMORE, MD
PAUL METZGER @ THE FREQUENCY SUNDAY NOV 8th w/ SPIRAL JOY BAND! Courtesy WORT Community Radio and Earjerk Records! Don't Forget! MV&EE and Second Family Band Nov. 17th @ the Project Lodge!
Hi Andy! Was a pleasure playing/hanging out with you. Spain and Portugal were beautiful, but it's definitely good to be home. Hope things are well in Chicago.
hey andy !! hope you're fine and the tour was ok ! that was nice to meet you, we'll keep in touch bartolomé ps: we've got a new game in france, it's called "where's is chico"
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