the surreal and the absurd, dada, fire music, drinking from brown jugs, experimental music in every and any sense of the word...footsteps on ice, dub, street actions and marching bands....turning sound against the organs of control and a violent reaction to all norms of culture, commerce and copyright, critical theory, co(s)mic revolt. Heck Ya!
Sounds Like
The Score
Happy Soccer Mom Ebonics!
by Christopher DeLaurenti
"Ladies and gentlemen!" announces the self-proclaimed "garbage noise
duet" *Sparkle Girl* to an audience huddled in a loftlike space. "In the
middle of the room, there is a box full of crap. *Make sounds with the
crap!*" Slouched in a beat-up TV chair in back, I can't see the box, but
I do count a dozen or so people next to the stage passing out chimes,
rattles, harmonicas, and other small instruments.
A flurried, breathtaking cacophony ensues. Augmented by *Walrus
Machine*, *Jason from the Sea Donkeys*, drummer/composer *Mark Ostrowski
of the Monktail Creative Music Concern*, and others, Sparkle Girl
disgorge a 12-minute fanfare of keening sirens, hoots, bleats, and a
Doppler double-time percussion barrage that simultaneously evokes *the
Allman Brothers* in their early '70s heyday and *the Burundi drummers*.
Three feet away, a woman shakes a tambourine. I angle through the crowd
and savor the blend of engulfing electronics and close-up acoustic
instruments. Suddenly, a muscular pulse stomps the entire room, like *a
club-footed cyclops trying to kick-start the turbine of the Grand Coulee
Dam*. It's an apt fusillade aimed to celebrate 14 years of *Soccer Mom
Ebonics*, Sparkle Girl's homegrown, defiantly inconsistent label devoted
to experimental sound and performance.
Earlier, Sparkle Girl e-mailed me a spreadsheet that tallies a hundred
or so releases. You may have picked one up?they're usually free?at a
*phone booth, record store, protest, or show*. I have a small stack, and
collectively they flout what most of us expect from a label. The absence
of consistent packaging and uniform contents (some have inserts, some
don't) confirm that everything is handmade. Some releases could be
exhibited as art objects. Even those hurriedly scribbled on and shoved
into a case or envelope retain an aura of a made, not manufactured
object. In art-geek speak, Soccer Mom Ebonics purveys multiples, not
commodities.
In the seminal book */Noise: The Political Economy of Music.r{}*a foreshadowing
of structural mutations*, and farther down the road, of the emergence of
a radically new meaning for labor... Music is a foretoken of /evolution
on the basis of behavior/ in the human world, in a crisis announced by
artists' refusal to be standardized by money." Sparkle Girl?and the
legion of other music makers who have given their work away since the
rise of the internet?may help transform the notion of wealth from an act
of accumulation and ownership to something actually useful: the
consecration of altruistic contribution.
As the world teeters on the brink of another Great Depression, perhaps
the newly poor will follow suit, electing to be gainfully employed
despite not earning money; someone just needs to suggest better terms
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Sparkle Girl
Hermeneutic
Soccer Mom Ebonics No Cat
10” Lathe
£16.99
Hand-numbered edition of 100 copies 10” lathe with printed bags and screened obi from this great Seattle-based duo. We’ve been fans of these two for years but nothing could’ve prepared us for this incredible side, a collection of dead-amp drones, perfectly articulated deep-space void navigations, minimal psychedelic improvisations, power electronics and totally fucked vocalese. This is a wide-ranging disc but the atmosphere doesn’t crack for a second, moving from intricate low-level improvisations that could almost be the original Music Improvisation Company through the kind of barren heavy guitar gravities of Matthew Bower’s Total project or the more outré Dead C sides and culminating in a fantastic final track that combines torrents of white noise ala early Whitehouse with a recital of minor crimes and misdemeanours in a cracked Alan Bishop style that somehow manages to be funny, pathetic and extremely moving at the same time. If this hadda been on Siltbreeze (and it could’ve been) you’d be eating spam to pay for a copy. Only got a tiny amount of these as they’re already sold out at source but seriously, this was one of the releases of 2008 and everyone who has heard it has been knocked on their ass. Highly recommended, beautifully presented and soon to be gone forever.
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January 24: Sparkle Girl
Working with the textural limits of sound, Jim Evans and Kurt Delaney deliver some hard love to the politics of listening.
SONARCHY RADIO PRESENTED BY DOUG HAIRE ON KEXP 90.3FM KEXP.org
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AJR endorses this 10".
AJR also endorses weapons collecting.
the two are not dissimiliar.
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Siltblog said: "Slicin Grandpa ponied up w/their newest release, a split 7" between them & Sparkle Girl. Readers of this Blog knows that Slicin Grandpa can do no wrong, so let's focus for a moment on Sparkle Girl's admission. Hmmmm.......I'd say they sound very much like the grizzly mayhem spawned from that rotator blade off that helicopter just moments before/after it loped off Vic Morrow's head while makin that Twilight Zone movie. SG aren't quite so dramatic, eschewin decapitation for a good old fashioned aural vivisection & since it's unlikely they's ever gonna be invited to play halftime at the Super Bowl, the NFL's none the wiser to their gutteral hijinx. Released on the Soccer Mom Ebonics label in a rd ed. of 500"
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SPARKLE GIRL / SLICING GRANDPA — split — 7" — soccer mom ebonics records
sparkle girl plays dark and crude drone noise that moves and shift in simple eletronic chunks....not a steady wall of drone but crude cut n paste approach. slicing grandpa is one of those trange bands that falls somwhere between TG and toll.... dirge oriented heavy bass playing soup and stew but with a washed out reverberated new wave camp. we like it. it has an underground scum and they keep putting out vinyl which is cool.
dominck fernow
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My Top Three New Listens for 2006:
R.H.Y. Yau and Dave Phillips - Illusion is a Natural Condition
Raionbashi - Kollekte
Stan Reed / Gregor Jabs / Frank Rowenta - Apoplexia 1973
THere's my top three. I don't think I could list a top 5 or even a top 10.
But among my top 20-ish would include, but not limited to:
Brian Ruryk - Smeared Gravity And Guitars Lippin' Off
Cracked Dome - Go Fuck Your Invisible God
Phroq - We Will Shiver With Fear
Eraritjaritjaka - Bloodclaat Noiszse
Daniel Menche - Concussions
Skullcaster - Bone Conduction
Rubber O Cement - Plea Tones from the Cardiophone
GX Jupitter Larsen and Kenji Satori - spoken word noise
Stimbox - Morphic Resonance
Residents - Best Left Unspoken vol. 1
Ctephin - Alchemy
Moribund - Bloodied Filth
Sparkle Girl - Gameplans For Disaster Survival
XV Parówek - Kurz Z Kaluzy
Jazzkammer - Sound Of Music
Jake Vida - Ten Arrows
... to name just a few.
This also doesn't include releases I've acquired very recently and haven't had the chance to full listen to yet.
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sparkle girl DESTROYED - I was wondering if MDH was going to be able to match the sheer level of LOVE that was flowing out and yes, kiddies-
Thanks also to Kurt for fronting me the new Sparkle Girl 10" - listening to it now and it's great - get thee to Easy Street on Queen Anne and find a copy. Oh shit - pass the dust, I think I'm Bowie..
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From the Smooth Assailing Blog-Check it out!
Saturday, September 01, 2007
sparkle girl & slicing grandpa
split 7"
[2007, soccer mom ebonics]
after about thirteen years of making noise, this is the first time that kurt and jim's music has graced the smooth surface of vinyl. they're no strangers to analog mediums, but tape (reel to reel and cassette) has been their preferable modus operandi. while this duo's name may lead you to believe that they don't take a serious approach to their music, that's far from the truth. i was really happy to hear that they play straight-forward experimental noise. not only that, but it's damn good as well. hexis begins by building itself around a layer of undulating mechanical drone. slowly, they'll implement shrill distortion over the lurching foundation, letting that ride before getting a little denser as hexis changes shape: all echoes and rumbles. not content to let one idea go on for too long, the track will shift once again for its noisy conclusion. i like how even though the piece moved along slowly, it never felt cold or dark, like is so often the case, and the more discordant aspects matched up well with the overall feel and never got to the point of being overbearing.slicing grandpa is the duo of john laux (slicing) and lance tarr (grandpa). i know that john's in seattle, if lance's myspace is truthful, he's currently in las vegas. going back to john, you've got quite a few chances to see this guy live as he's in numerous other bands: kount fistula, sizzling mansions, arachnid arcade (a review of this from me is imminent), plain, and krash un lurne. lance also keeps his down-time to a minimum with the rebellion, the billy carter experience and the indestructible pinstripe.
we go from noise to rock-based territory for slicing grandpa's daddy o strangler. this is really fucking good. swirling guitar noise and feedback punctuate the background, along with multi-tracked vocals, which sound great, but i wish they were just a wee bit louder. that main bass groove from grandpa is fucking killer and really makes the song for me. shit, but the singing is rad, too. this is definitely a great cut from these guys. the pun was unintentional so don't roll your eyes at me. i also have a new cassette from slicing grandpa that i'll get to next week.
next up are a few releases that kurt from sparkle girl gave to me at the splinter squid affair early last month. coincidentally, this was also at the ssma.
live at the s.s. marie antoinette c60
[2007, soccer mom ebonics]
seattle's kurt delaney and jim evans comprise sparkle girl. they've been raising a ruckus in the area since 1994, having produced and distributed, a mindfuckingboggling, 6,000 releases. they're really big fans of the diy ethos, rarely selling their stuff for actual money. seems they'd prefer to leave their releases at "public payphones, toilets and buses to be randomly discovered". i'd love to see the fucked up reactions of people when they popped sparkle girl's tape into their deck. priceless. kurt heads up the brilliantly named soccer mom ebonics label. looking at a rather incomplete discography of sme, i see releases by climax golden twins, torturing nurse and wolf eyes.
to live and shave in l.a. are from all over the place. it's a rather sizable collective of musicians and being as such, the line-up is revolving. founder tom smith's always the constant, though. outside of smith there's: rat bastard (frank falestra), ben wolcott, mark morgan (sightings), don fleming, weasel walter (the flying luttenbachers), andrew wk, chris grier, graham moore, thurston moore, misty martinez and andrew barranca (gaybomb).
the tape will kick off with tlasila, and they start out with some light manipulations of a garage rock song. it's good, whoever it is. there will be a little bit more of that with a different song, and that will transition into guitar noise, sparse at first, but it'll get more involved, along with minimal electronics. i'm liking the minimalism of it. eventually, tom will start to shout random things, but that's short lived. then all of a sudden it just stops. that halt, he'll explain, is due to "shit not working". after the explanation, they'll get back into it. tlasila will continue with the minimal theme, concentrating more on instrument manipulation and drony atmosphere as well as long periods of silence. i didn't really think that this group made music like this. their performance, for the most part is rather subdued. of course, you've still got smith's caterwauling, but that's a given, and the guitar noise will swell up, but won't get out of control. i've never really been that into tlasila's music, but if there's more like this, i may rethink my stance.
sparkle girl's twelve minute long set consists of slow churning noise. the lead-off of a static hum will make way for denser crackling distortion, and even a bit of yelling. towards the mid-section there's a brief little bit of high frequency modulating then onto multiple layers of echoed and undulating noises. the last few minutes will see a return to the shouts paired with foreboding rumbles. very nice.
one of my favorite things about this tape, outside of the good music, is how kurt wasn't content to let the unused portions of the cassette go to waste. the total running time between the two sets was about thirty-three minutes or so and these are sixty minute tapes. he ended up taking snippets from cassettes snagged from goodwill and filling the remainder up with those. it's brilliant and greatly appreciated, and the audio's not too bad, featuring actual music as well as books on tape.
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Sparkle Girl "Hermeneutic" Soccer Mom Ebonics 10" reviewed by Byron Coley in Wire Magazine 284 (october 2007).
Sparkle Girl are a mysterious Seattle duo who have been around for over a decade and have maintained loose connections with people like the Sun City Girls, Climax Golden Twins and Birchville Cat Motel. The music here ranges from abstract and electric, to classically sliced tape jumble. Sparkle Girl have released thousands of tapes, CD-Rs, and whatnot over the years, but this is one of the first vinyl outings. Lathe-cut down in New Zealand in an edition of 100, its a wonderful slab of old school noise invention. File near Smegma, LAFMS and other classic style gibberage."
Byron Coley
I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4
Two friends and musical collaborators who for the last fourteen years have been sticking thorns in expectations becoming a garbage noise duo, cultural terrorism affinity group and self proclaimed dopplegangers against the corporate music industry.
see also: PIPE! jim's blog at www.soccermomebonics.blogspot.com
thanks/gracias/merci 4 add. new album out & touring EU
"Phenomenal second full-length, Dirty Bomb, is a potent melange of breaks, hip-hop, jungle, dubstep, and political outrage." -The Boston Phoenix
"Music so thoroughly uprooted that its traditions exist only as pivot points; fragments of sounds we know mashed together so intuitively that we barely recognize them" -Pitchfork
"Tenez le vous pour dit, Dirty Bomb le second album de Filastine, est à manier avec précautions. Danger!" -Mondomix
"Filastine es el universo entero, suena crustie sólo lo justo, y la coherencia de su discurso es total. Si Dirty Bomb nace del nomadismo, es la mejor justificacion del hecho." -Go
Olde skozey fetisch performance newly posted @ YouTube. It was the first ever Noise Pancakes at Pubis Noir (in San Francisco's Mission District). There were three audience members in attendance.
Available on the DVD-R: Brutal Sound Effects Volume 1
Online Now!
