Ass Coffee - Compound The Fracture/Coil Unwind

Taking the piss, or just broken and awesome? With Ass Coffee, it's hard to tell.

Streamwood, Illinois is a fucking weird place. This is the feeling you'll have by the end of Ass Coffee's home-recorded opus-of-weirdness. Their press-release doesn't say anything about them, other than the fact that they're anonymous for legal reasons, and that they make far too many of their CDs to shift, given that they don't ever play live. Obviously, this is a band of mystery.

It's difficult to place Compound The Fracture/Coil Unwind in any one musical field. Yes, it's a lo-fi home-recording - you'll have to turn it up a lot to be able to hear the music - but it's one with grander aims. What springs to mind most, I feel, is the fucked-up multi-instrumental pandemonium that Sun Ra's various orchestral incarnations laid down on disc; certainly, If Your Enemy Has A Screwdriver, Then He's Already Won features some of the same spooky cheesiness that marked Sun Ra's own playing, as well as some Arkestra-alike tension-raisers and rabbit-fucking drumming. It's an interesting mix that ends far too early, though as you progress through the songs, you'll become more aware of a plan behind the music. If jazz is about sensing what's going on behind the notes that you hear, then this CD is jazz, because most of one's listening time is spent trying to decode the framework holding the song together. It's plunderphonics without the laptop manipulation, machine-music played live. Hyperactive bower-birds rockin' out, it's inexplicably entertaining. If something like this came out on Tzadik, it'd be lauded; these guys will probably be forgotten, or, worse, written off because of their penchant for quirky - yet strangely appealing - names. You'll probably never hear My Dog Likes Me Better When I Drink Beer on the radio, but I warrant that a couple of listens and you'll forget about the joke-band connotations such a name carries.

I can't quite tell whether Ass Coffee are taking the piss, are incredibly broken individuals or are sheer genius. Whatever the case, it's worth dropping them a line and ten bucks to hear exactly how brilliant fucked-uppedness can be. It doesn't always work, but the ideas on show here are promising. Polish up and come out of the studio, guys - gigging ain't so bad.

This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com.

The Maroons - You're Gonna Ruin Everything

A group of sidemen take the initiative and step into a perfect-pop headline act of their own.

And now, another chance to play spot-the-iconic-band-connection! Kinda. The Maroons are made up of a bunch of guys who've played with Elliott Smith, The Spinanes, Heatmiser and Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks. They're clearly a team who know their alterna-stuff. With a title like You're Gonna Ruin Everything, though, you'd expect their first album to be a navelgazer, chock-full of songs dedicated to woe and evil twists of fate. And in a small way, it is: tunes like Blindfold Follies tell tales of someone "screaming for validation" and asking for help - though they're couched in such carefully-honed couches of sugar that there's no way you're going to throw this aside like so many others.

This album is blessed from the outset with an immediate familiarity that works; some discs just click when they're played, and this is one of those. Everything's in proportion: the upbeat, driving song progressions, the lyrical descriptions of sweetness in the sadness, the deep, driving bass, the soaring vocals and the pathologically-demented organ - it all works. Surprisingly well.

There's a range of goodness packed in here. Limbo is a fantastic, almost baroque-feel tune that hides some of the catchiest melodies I've ever heard - and that's without the emotional suckerpunch of the kaleidoscope of spirit-like voices that flow through the tune in its closing moments. At the other end of the spectrum, Ruin Everything sees the band fusing mod sensibilities (those chord shards!) with lazy indie swagger - and a swathe of Ebow, too, it sounds like - to produce something that's familiar yet unique.

Vocally, it's difficult to pin this disc down. Admittedly, there's no deep-blues growl, but John Moen's voice covers a reasonable range - though it's in the upper register that he shines. Think Thom Yorke without that obnoxious honking overtone he affects, or a cooler Lemon-era Bono (without the girth) and you're probably there. It's surprisingly effective: normally, falsetto sounds labored and false, but here it just fits.

While the sugar has the ability - if you're not in the right mood - to be musical tooth-rot, The Maroons are a band that you should check out. A more bubblegum Grant Lee Buffalo without half the pretensions -- and enough nous to know when to really rock -- these guys deserve to be huge. Put it this way: Elliot Smith would be this good if he'd lighten the fuck up occasionally. If there's any justice, The Maroons will be big.

This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com.

Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist - Danse Manatee

Though you think of sea creatures, prepare for headaches.

Ah, plunderphonics - the subtle art of laptop-fucking a sound-source until it becomes something it's not. It's a tricky process to get right - or, rather, it's a difficult field in which to produce something that doesn't sound like self-indulgent wanking - but the three talents behind Danse Manatee have had a brave stab at the genre... and failed, I'm sorry to say.

Danse Manatee is not unlistenable; it simply suffers from a lack of direction. The problem with experimental music is that you really have to have some kind of plan behind it - even if the extent of your plan is to acknowledge that you're throwing the rulebook out the window. Tare, Bear and Geologist seem to have been unable to come to a consensus about the disc they were making.

In some places, it works quite well. The opener, A Manatee Dance, as well as tracks like Essplode, are mellow, quasi-Ween events that are quite appealing - while others (Penguin Penguin) sound like an attempt to mimic the hearing of voices in one's head, badly. It's a little like psychedelia with the tone knob turned all the way up: headache-territory without a map. This is frustrating, as I really, really wanted to like this disc, but just couldn't. I'm afraid that it veered onto the wank side of the highway, and hogged the lane the whole way. A room full of random ape-aping vocals and a couple of whacks on a bin-lid do not experimentalism make.

Danse Manatee bears, as far as I can see, little resemblance to the creature that its title invokes. Some of the tracks seemed to be heading seawards - a sound like an ocean of phone-interference appears throughout, and is quite intriguing - but they never made it down to the water to give us the whole story.

The disc's artwork is especially worth mentioning. It's a silk-screened matchbox-style affair, and feels like a piece of art. It's just a shame that the contents aren't equally spiffy.

This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com.