Brando Gassman and Andy Sinclair’s hard-hitting musical skills and unironic love of metal. Sam Locke Warde’s bloody-minded humor and migraine-inducing shrieks. Twenty songs averaging a minute in length. Result? Police Brutality.
Album reviews
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Album Review – Fetal Pig: Autopia
Fetal Pig Autopia fetalpig.bandcamp.com Jesus said “Behold the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin.” For some reason Fetal Pig reminds me of Jesus’ lilies. With a band history going back nearly 20 years, these guys do what they do not because it makes them rich and famous–because it hasn’t–but because […]
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Album Review – Rahlan Kay: Now You Know
Rahlan Kay is the new hip-hop handle for Rowland Gibson, who has in the past been known as Genuyne, DNA and Testfyi. Rowland is a producer and MC from Cedar Rapids who has been a regular in the Iowa hip-hop scene for over ten years. He’s nothing if not persistent. There’s more than a few sketchy MCs around who are legends in their own minds, but Rowland’s different–he’s church folk, a family man and dead serious about his craft.
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Album Review – P-Tek: Oh! What a Miracle
P-Tek (Adam Protextor) makes me feel old, since he’s a friend of my son, Sean. You might know Adam from his involvement with the Resist Evil horror movie, which starred another Iowa City hip-hop head, Coolzey. Adam’s verbal gymnastics and bent sense of humor, in full effect on Oh! What A Miracle! owes a debt to Coolzey and his Sucker MCs posse, but he’s cinematically deranged in his own special way.
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Album Review – The Wheelers: Bubix
The Wheelers are a pan-Iowan band with members scattered between Iowa City and Ames. Other joint efforts between these two cities often result in heavy drinking, name calling and injuries and, while I can’t confirm that The Wheelers encounter a similar fate when they get together, the teetering energy here is very much the same.
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Album Review – Acoustic Guillotine: Self-Titled
Billy Mac and Pete R are veteran Iowa City musicians, going back to the 1980s punk/hardcore heyday. Though this self-titled album is more metal than anything else, I have to plead ignorance as to which metal sub-genre Acoustic Guillotine pledges their allegiance to. Their bass-and-guitar-duo sound lacks metal’s trademark guitar heroics, but they’re too energetic and obtuse to be stoner rock.
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Album Review: The Uniphonics – Crawl
One of the most unfortunate legacies of the 90s was Rap Rock. Guitars and rhymes together don’t have to suck but it seems like those bands were trying hard to do just that. Thankfully the Uniphonics have gone another direction, mixing rhymes with funk. What could be more natural, since hip-hop was built on beats […]
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Album Review: Let's Whisper – Keep A Secret?
Dana and Colin make up Let’s Whisper. They have released a teaser EP with some material that points to the future. It is a splendid piece of listening, one that will show you what the American indie pop underground is all about in the 2010s.
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Pieta Brown – One and All
Local Albums: May 2010 – One and All, the sixth full-length from Pieta Brown, finds the folky at her most relaxed and confident. One and All feels like a commiseration at The Mill: It’s easy, fluid and full of prospective delivered in a comfortable drawl. The album opens with a double-shot of hopeless romanticism. “Wishes […]
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Samuel Locke Ward & Darren Brown – From the Privilege of the Grave
Local Albums: May 2010 – The fact that you can hold this album in your hands is astounding. From the Privilege of the Grave faced nearly every hurdle imaginable–from technical and logistical issues to legal and financial difficulties. That it was worth the wait, is still more astounding.
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Johnny On Point – Keefin It Real
Johnny On Point’s new CD Keefin It Real doesn’t do anything to bring dance music out of the shadows, but I doubt that’s his intent. He doesn’t bother to conform to any genre I know–they’re not House, Techno, Dubstep or what’s currently mis-labeled Electro. The only thing I can really call him is a stone-cold sound geek.
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Idris Goodwin: Break Beat Poems
Local Albums: April 2010 – Back in the day–1979–Hawkeye basketball star Ronnie Lester was a hip hop ambassador. Ronnie took his boom box everywhere , playing “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang nonstop. It was, to Iowa ears, something strange and alien, and yet irresistible. Idris Goodwin’s track “Isiah Thomas Camp” took me back to […]
