The Tenses is a duo comprised of Ju Suk Reet Meate and Jackie Oblivia, two veterans of the weirdo art collective that is known as the Los Angeles Free Music Society. They also form the core of legendary experimental juggernaut Smegma.
The LAFMS have been a singular force in DIY culture ever since the early seventies and encapsuled an endless string of projects and bands that married a sort of proto-punk with trashy guitars, avant-garde music, tape manipulations, free jazz, improv and absurd vocalizations into a hyper original and singular form of music. They're seen by many as the originators of noise music, and have been an immense influence on bands like Sun City Girls, Merzbow, Wolf Eyes, No Neck Blues Band, etc…
The Tenses is one of the latest vessels for Ju Suk and Jackie to explore the outer realms of sound and space. Compared to the mothership that is Smegma, it is a more compact and intimate project where turntables, tape collages, distorted surf guitar and coronet are used to create elaborate, haunted atmospheres.
After releases on Harbinger Sound and their own Pigface Records, The Tenses now add another chapter to their history with 'Howard', their new LP on Belgian imprint audioMER. 'Howard' is a mind expanding tour de force that scrambles spoken word deconstructions and spontaneous freak outs into a musical non-sequitur; a strange and disorienting trip.
Loops of voices from long lost instruction movies, shortwave radio dramas that get overrun with sirens, various non-instrumental sounds, and an bewildering stretch of Link Wray-like guitar riffs; 'Howard' is a record that oozes paranoia, the perfect soundtrack for making explosives in your basement.
Comes in an edition of 300 copies,
with photography by Wouter Van De Voorde,
designed by Jeroen Wille and Wouter Vanhaelemeesch.
This record is distributed by N.E.W.S. distribution
InsideOutMusic is very pleased to announce the signing of British psychedelic rock band Knifeworld for the release of their forthcoming new album The Unravelling later this summer. The eight-piece band led by Kavus Torabi (Cardiacs, Gong) have been working on the long-awaited follow-up to 2009’s Buried Alone: Tales of Crushing Defeat. The band had this to say about the signing:
"Knifeworld are very happy to be signing to InsideOut. Our forthcoming album, The Unravelling, is so close to completion we are terrified to mention it. Nonetheless it will be the first Knifeworld album to feature the full psychedelic majesty of our eight piece line-up. It must go off like an atom bomb in your broken hearts. An atom bomb that will make a mockery of all you hold dear. An atom bomb of love. InsideOut hold the trigger and we've dared them to press it. Press it real good now."
Johnny Thunders was the legendary hard-living rock’n’roll guitarist who inspired glam-metal, punk and the music scene in general.
‘Looking For Johnny’ is a 90-minute film that documents Thunders' career from his beginnings to his tragic death in 1991.
When Johnny Thunders died in New Orleans on April 23rd 1991, he left behind a mystery. Though MTV and international broadsheets reported the guitarist’s demise, for many in the mainstream, Thunders was perceived as an enigmatic outlaw. He was adored by a legion of devotees and cited as an influence by at least three successive generations of musicians. Thunders refused to play the corporate game and was both elevated and damned for it.
‘Looking for Johnny’ is the creation of the documentary maker, Danny Garcia (‘The Rise & Fall of The Clash’). The young Spanish filmmaker was seized by a question that wouldn’t let go – ‘just who was Johnny Thunders?’ He spent 18 months travelling across the USA and Europe, filming interviews with fifty of the people who were closest to Johnny, building a compelling narrative drawn from first hand testimonies.
The film examines Johnny Thunders’ career from the early 70's as a founding member of the influential New York Dolls, the birth of the punk scene with The Heartbreakers in both New York City and London, and later incarnations including Gang War and The Oddballs. It also explores Johnny’s unique musical style, his personal battle with drugs and theories on the circumstances of his death in a New Orleans hotel in 1991 at age 38.
Interviewees include Sylvain Sylvain, Lenny Kaye, Walter Lure, Billy Rath, Bob Gruen, Terry Chimes, Alan Vega, Peter Perrett, Sami Yaffa, three of his managers: Marty Thau, Leee Black Childers and Malcolm McLaren, and many others.
The film includes forty songs with historic film of Johnny with live performances from all periods, including unseen New York Dolls and Heartbreakers footage and photos. Filmmakers Bob Gruen, Don Letts, Patrick Grandperret, Rachael Amadeo and others contribute classic archive footage, helping illustrate the charisma, chaos and heartbreak inherent to the guitarist.
The film will later be issued on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital services.
A sweeping slice of psych pop, ’23 Floors Up’ is a song of high-rise hotel passions and paranoia. The video is directed by band member Jonny Sanders, who after making the “anti-video” of coloured dots for debut single ‘Cristina’, has been handling the visual aspect of Teleman including the industrial archival footage video for ‘Steam Train Girl’ and the album artwork.
Produced by Bernard Butler, variety abounds on ‘Breakfast’. From the pared-back ‘Cristina’ and the modernist proposition of ‘Steam Train Girl’ (both former singles which clocked up plays across Radio 1 and earned themselves Playlist spots on BBC 6Music and Xfm) to the sax-drenched free download ‘Lady Low’ and the startling 'Mainline', a jolt of warped, electro-fied chain-gang blues.
‘‘It’s like visions from a dream in places,'' singer Thomas Sanders explains. ''I love really strong images. You hear a lyric and as soon as the lyric is said you see it in front of you. A lot of the lyrics are based on personal experience, but a lot of it, is story-telling and a lot of it is fiction,'' adds Thomas. “I’m purposefully ambiguous. I love listening to other people’s interpretations’. If that’s what they’ve understood then that is a meaning in itself. In the same way as if you look at a painting and you see something, you’ve definitely seen it, it’s definitely real for you."
After bringing last year to a close by touring with Suede, the quartet have recently supported Metronomy, Franz Ferdinand and Maximo Park and will be heading out on their own headline tour in May. They are also confirmed for a string of festivals including Field Day, Green Man, Wilderness, Deer Shed and Secret Garden Party.
Pulling together the biblical sound and isolation of the bygone days of revelation with an atmosphere filled with hope and salvation, King Dude has woven his own unique brand of purely American music. He brandishes many varied influences in his songwriting... Everything from British Folk, Americana, Country and Blues can be heard in his songs. Even Heavy Metal tends to slither it's way into the King Dude canon. The resulting songs are much more of a modern day hymn then your average pop song.
Reverent as it is prophetic and stark, King Dude has previously shared his spiritual visions with releases on Dais, Avant!, Bathetic, Clan Destine, and Ván records. Now he has started his own record label called Not Just Religious Music to spread not only his own gospel, but those of his fellow musicians around the world.
King Dude's latest album, entitled Fear, was produced by the legendary Bill Rieflin (Ministry, Swans, Pigface, etc). Below are some of TJ's thoughts on Fear and what it really means to terrify people through song.
When I set out to write the follow up record to my last record Burning Daylight I hadn't quite realized what I was going to do for it's themes and overall concept. Although I had one crystal clear intention - To make the most horrifying music I could. So with that in mind I began to write what would later become Fear.
Now writing a record that is horrifying to me is one thing, writing a record that is horrifying to everyone in the whole world is some other thing altogether. So I really had to begin to think about what inner fear every single person possibly could have. Of course the most common fear everyone on Earth shares would be the fear of dying. But that seemed too obvious to write a record called "Fear" and have it be about the fear of death. There are already way too many songs written about being afraid to die (or not afraid to die for that matter) in fact I have written a few of them myself.
So I chose the next most obvious fear I felt everyone shared. And that is the fear felt during early adolescence. As we move away from our childhood towards our adulthood we (in a sense) watch helplessly from the confides of our own slowly deforming, prepubescent bodies as the "child-mind" is ripped away only (or buried deeply into our subconscious) only to be replaced by the cruel, maniacal, sex crazed "adult-mind" also known as the ultimate product of a civilized adult world reality.
The two other themes that I chose for this record are static in nature, or how shall I say, more tangible. And those two themes are "mirrors" and "telephones". Mirror reflections are often associated in the subconscious with our relationship to our physical bodies but they serve another hidden terrifying purpose which is to remind us that we are in fact separated from the reality conjured in our minds. Another sort of reflection we cast of ourselves is that one of which we cast upon those around us and at times very far away from us through communication. Advanced communication came about recently with the advent of the telephone and the concept of "separation of the mind and body" reveals itself to our subconscious every time we "reach out and touch someone" The mirrored image plays an integral role in the concept of Fear, a concept that will be revealed to the listener when the record is finally in their hands.
The music of King Dude begs the soul to lift itself up from the darkness of ignorance, towards the ever shining glorious Light that exists outside of all of us yet that which we are eternally connected to and at once connects everyone on Earth. You can stream a brand new music video for the title track "Fear" below, and see King Dude's upcoming tour dates with Ghost as well.
